LRMI Implementation: Overview Issues and Experiences

By Lorna M. Campbell and Phil Barker.
Cetis Report , serial number: 2014:R02.
Topic(s): , , ,

Link: Implementation: Overview issues and experiences (PDF)
Link: LRMI Implementation: Overview issues and experiences (MS Word .docx)

Abstract
This paper presents a summary and synthesis of ten Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) implementation projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates and William and Flora Hewlett Foundations between 2012 and 2013. Funding was allocated to ten OER platforms, through Creative Commons, as part of the Gates funded LRMI project. Cetis were commissioned by Creative Commons to produce cases studies on each project, and to undertake a synthesis of their experiences and outputs.

This synthesis outlines the methodology undertaken, before presenting a brief introduction to each OER platform along with an overview of platform functionality, scope, and technologies deployed. All ten platforms adopted different approaches to implementing LRMI, which are examined in the context of metadata creation and curation workflows. A summary of the implementation projects’ interaction with the Learning registry is also included together with the outlook for sustainable LRMI implementation.

Since its establishment in 2011, the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) has aimed to make it easier to publish, discover, and deliver quality educational resources on the web. From 2011 to 2014 the initiative was co-led by the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) – the 501(c)(3) division of the Association of American Publishers, and Creative Commons, and funded in three phases by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In October 2014 the leadership and governance of LRMI passed to the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, a long-established metadata community with expertise in metadata design, implementation and best practice.
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HEDIIP New Subject Coding Scheme: Impact Assessment and Requirements Definition

By Wilbert Kraan (Cetis), Alan Paull (APS Ltd) (Principal Authors/Editors).
Cetis Report , serial number: 2014:R01.
Topic(s):

Link: New Subject Coding Scheme Impact Assessment and Requirements Definition (PDF)

The New Subject Coding System project was commissioned by HEDIIP (the Higher Education Data & Information Improvement Programme) to develop a replacement to JACS for classifying the subjects of courses offered in UK Higher Education. Cetis (assisted by Alan Paull Services Ltd) were engaged to undertake stage 1 of the project, which involved extensive stakeholder engagement examining the requirements and impact relating to a new subject coding scheme. The findings of this work are presented in this report.

The response of stakeholders to the consultation of stage 1 of the NSCS suggests that, provided a case for change can be stated clearly, it is desirable to introduce a new subject coding scheme. In order to progress that development, the report recommends that:

  • both prototypes be developed further with an expectation to converge them into a single prototype, depending on further feedback;
  • a new governance model be developed under the auspices of an existing sector organisation, with broad representation;
  • a subject coding framework be developed alongside a specific core scheme.

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What is Schema.org?

By Phil Barker and Lorna M. Campbell.
Cetis Briefing Paper , serial number: 2014:B01.
Topic(s): , ,

Link: What is schema.org(PDF)

Schema.org is a joint initiative of the search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex aimed at making it easier to index web pages in such a way that facilitates the building of sophisticated search services. Schema.org metadata may also be used for other applications e.g. in eBooks and as stand-alone metadata records.

This briefing describes schema.org for a technical audience. It is aimed at people who may want to implement schema.org markup in websites or other tools they build but who wish to know more about the technical approach behind schema.org and how to implement it. We also hope that this briefing will be useful to those who are evaluating whether to implement schema.org to meet the requirements of their own organization.

This briefing has been produced as part of the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI), which is concerned with extending and applying schema.org to the description of educationally relevant properties of resources. Other briefings in this series will provide an in-depth overview of LRMI.

[If you wish to take advantage of the CC-By licence and edit your version, there is a copy on Google docs that you may clone, or you may download a zip archive of the files used to create the PDF in Scribus, this archive includes the plain text and the images.]

 

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Learning Resource Metadata Initiative: using schema.org to describe open educational resources.

By Phil Barker, Cetis, School of Mathematical Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University
Lorna M Campbell, Cetis, Institute for Educational Cybernetics, University of Bolton.
Cetis Other Publication , serial number: 2014:X01.
Topic(s): , ,

Link: Learning Resource Metadata Initiative: using schema.org to describe open educational resources (PDF).

Abstract
This paper, presented at the Open CourseWare Consortium Global Conference in Ljubljana in April 2014, discusses the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI), an international project that aims to facilitate the discovery of educational resources through the use of embedded metadata that can be used by search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex) to refine the search services they offer. LRMI has extended the schema.org metadata vocabulary with terms that are specifically relevant to aiding the discovery of learning resources. In order to understand LRMI metadata it is necessary to first introduce schema.org metadata. LRMI was later funded to assist a number of services providing open educational resources in modifying their display interfaces so that they included relevant embedded metadata. In addition to synthesizing the lessons learned from these implementations, the current phase of the LRMI project is engaging with potential users, including search providers and learning resource developers, with the aim of extending the uptake and implementation of the specification.

Also available: video and slides of presentation from conference web site.
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Beyond MOOCs: Sustainable Online Learning in Institutions

By Li Yuan, Stephen Powell and Bill Olivier.
Cetis White Paper , serial number: 2014:WP01.
Topic(s): , , ,

Link: Beyond MOOCs Sustainable Online Learning in Institutions (PDF)
Link: Beyond MOOCs Sustainable Online Learning in Institutions (MS Word .docx)

Executive Summary

The key opportunity for institutions is to take the concepts developed by the MOOC experiment to date and use them to improve the quality of their face-to-face and online provision, and to open up access to higher education. Most importantly, the understanding gained should be used to inform diversification strategies including the development of new business models and pedagogic approaches that take full advantage of digital technologies.

The critical discourse emerging around MOOCs is providing an opportunity for institutions to develop a more strategic approach to online learning. This includes enhancing existing classroom teaching practices, promoting institutional reputation and developing new revenue models. There are indications that some MOOCs are becoming more focussed on corporate training, which suggests that they may not pose a immediate threat to the existing pedagogical, revenue or business models of higher education institutions (HEIs). The number of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) will continue to grow with the development of credit bearing courses likely to be a trend.
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Survey of the State of Analytics in UK HE and FE institutions

By Adam Cooper, Stephen Powell, Li Yuan and Sheila MacNeill.
Cetis White Paper , serial number: 2013:WP03.
Topic(s):

Link: Survey of the State of Analytics in UK Higher and Further Institutions 2013 (pdf).
Link: Survey of the State of Analytics in UK Higher and Further Institutions 2013 (MS Word docx).

An informal survey was undertaken by Cetis in May and June 2013. Subscribers to a number of email circulation lists – with members coming largely from institutional IT, administration and educational technology responsibilities – were invited to respond.
The purpose of the survey was to:

  • Assess the current state of analytics in UK FE/HE.
  • Identify the challenges and barriers to using analytics.

Chart showing reported data sources for analytics
Chart showing reported data sources for analytics
For the purpose of the survey, we defined our use of “analytics” to be the process of developing actionable insights through problem definition and the application of statistical models and analysis against existing and/or simulated future data. In practical terms, it involves trying to find out things about an organisation, its products services and operations, to help inform decisions about what to do next.
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Engaging Developers in Standards Development; the Cetis Code Bash Approach

By Lorna M. Campbell and Adam Cooper.
Cetis White Paper , serial number: 2013:WP02.
Topic(s):

Link: Engaging Developers in Standards Development; the Cetis Code Bash Approach (PDF)
Link: Engaging Developers in Standards Development; the Cetis Code Bash Approach (MS Word .docx)

A linear process in which a written standard is created and then implemented in software is liable to fail for many reasons arising both from the difficulty in writing a specification that is sufficiently precise and accurate while also allowing for necessary flexibility in use, and from the intrinsic complexity of the human activities and IT systems in which it will be realised. Engaging software developers in the standards development process has been found to be an effective means to improve the written standards, to enlarge the scope of practical interoperability between software, and to identify and share effective practice. Over a period of years, Cetis developed an approach to this kind of engagement which we called a “Code Bash”. This white paper outlines the motivation, typical outcomes and practicalities of running a Code Bash and is intended to motivate people working in either formal or informal standards-development settings to engage developers in the process and to provide them with some ideas to adapt to their own setting.
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The Benefits of Open. Open Scotland background briefing paper

By Lorna M Campbell (Cetis).
Cetis Other Publication , serial number: 2013:X02.
Topic(s): ,

Link: The Benefits of Open (PDF)
Link: The Benefits of Open (MS .docx)
This background paper presents executive summaries and links to key documents and publications relating to all aspects of openness in education.

Open Scotland is a one day summit facilitated by Jisc Cetis in collaboration with SQA, Jisc RSC Scotland and the ALT Scotland SIG. The event will provide an opportunity for key stakeholders to critically reflect on the national and global impact and opportunities of open education, provide a forum to identify shared strategic interests and work towards a more integrated Scottish approach to openness in education.
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Activity Data and Paradata

By Lorna M Campbell and Phil Barker.
Cetis Briefing Paper , serial number: 2013:B01.
Topic(s): ,

Illustration of activity data and paradataLink: Activity Data and Paradata (pdf)
Link: Activity Data and Paradata (MS Word .docx)

This briefing introduces a range of approaches and specifications for recording and exchanging data generated by the interactions of users with resources.

Such data is a form of Activity Data, which can be defined as “the record of any user action that can be logged on a computer”. Meaning can be derived from Activity Data by querying it to reveal patterns and context, this is often referred to as Analytics. Activity Data can be shared as an Activity Stream, a list of recent activities performed by an individual. Initiatives such as OpenSocial, ActivityStreams and TinCan API have produced specifications and APIs to share Activity Data across platforms and applications.

While Activity Streams record the actions of individual users and their interactions with multiple resources and services, other specifications have been developed to record the actions of multiple users on individual resources. This data about how and in what context resources are used is often referred to as Paradata. A specification for recording and exchanging paradata has been developed by the Learning Registry, an open source content-distribution network for storing and sharing information about learning resources.
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Cetis Analytics Series: Case Study, Acting on Assessment Analytics

By Sheila MacNeill (Cetis) and Dr Cath Ellis (University of Huddersfield).
Cetis Analytics Series , serial number: ISSN 2051-9214 Vol 2, No 2.
Topic(s):

Link: Cetis Analytics Series Vol 2, No 2. Acting on Assessment Analytics (pdf)
Link: Cetis Analytics Series Vol 2, No 2. Acting on Assessment Analytics (MS Word docx)

Over the past five years, as part of its overall developments in teaching and learning, The University of Huddersfield has been active in developing new approaches to assessment and feedback methodologies. This has included the implementation of related technologies such as e-submission and marking tools.

In this case study Dr Cath Ellis shares with us how her interest in learning analytics began and how she and colleagues are making practical use of assessment data both for student feedback and overall course design processes.
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