Learning Resource Exchange LRE for Schools

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Learning Resource Exchange (LRE) for Schools

• Frans Van Assche
• Senior Manager Content Interoperability
• Member of the board of directors of the European
  IMS Network

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EUN Content projects

• CELEBRATE (IST)CALIBRATE (IST)eCOLOURS
  (eContent feasibility project)MELT
  (eContentplus)eMapps (IST)- Cultural
  RepositoriesLIFE (DG EAC)iClass (IST)
• Building a European Learning Resource Exchange
  for schools

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What is the LRE Concept?

• It is NOT a centralised portal but a framework
  that supports semantic and technical
  interoperability of content repositories
• Adds value to national content strategies
• federated search from within national portals
• access to high quality content from other MoE
• an open architecture that MoE can implement
  locally
• open source tools ( e.g. for authoring, social
  tagging, and curriculum mapping)
• MoE can monitor/apply new standards
  specifications

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CALIBRATE
Semantic Interoperability
Technical Interoperability
Open Source Collaborative Authoring
Validation Work with Schools/Teachers
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LeMill Collaborative Authoring
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MELT project (eContentplus)

• eContentplus Content Enrichment project (3M
  funding
• enriching content with semantically well-defined
  metadata
• October 2006 December 2008
• includes12 MoE and regional repositories
• Austria (BMBWK), region of Catalonia (XTEC),
  Germany (FWU), Hungary (Sulinet), Iceland (MESC),
  Estonia (Tiger Leap Foundation), MoE Finland
  (NBE), Ireland (NCTE), Italy (INDIRE), Slovenia
  (University of Ljubljana), Spain (MEC), Sweden
  (MSU)
• ARIADNE Foundation
• commercial providers (Cambridge-Hitachi,
  Skolavefurinn)
• 37,913 resources and 124,395 assets

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MELT - Lessons from CELEBRATE

• Educational budgets struggle to cope with the
  demand for more/better metadata created by
  trained indexers
• Even drill and practice LOs could be used as
  part of advanced pedagogy by skilled teachers
• More useful to think of LOs having affordances
  or lending themselves to a particularly
  pedagogical method
• We need metadata that more accurately reflects
  how LOs are actually used in different learning
  contexts

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MELT Approach

• Federating repositories little use if we cannot
  solve problem of volume metadata creation
• MELT - a new metadata ecology involving
• expert indexers
• automatic metadata generation
• Automatic translation
• folksonomies and social tagging
• MELT aims to provide a scalable, cost-effective
  solution to meet the challenge of volume metadata
  creation

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Built-in Features of the LRE

• Which content
• Connected to 14 repositories of MoE
• 100,000 Learning Assets and 40,000 Structured
  learning objects all with a creative commons
  license
• Upload of own learning objects
• Accept metadata for foreign LOs
• Metadata
• Indexing
• For experienced indexers
• For casual users - Folksonomies
• Existing Application Profile for the LOM
  binding
• Also able to deal with Dublin core
• Multilingual Controlled Vocabularies
• Thesaurus of 1200 terms in 14 languages
• Multilingual value spaces
• Automatic Metadata Generation
• Automatic translation of metadata
• Link with curricula interoperability of
  curricula

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Federated Search(2003 2007)
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Built-in Features of the LRE

• Discovery
• Federated Search
• Simple
• Advanced
• Tags
• Agent based
• Browse
• Keywords
• Tags (Folksonomies)
• Other uses of Folksonomies
• Organisation of my favourites
• Community building based on similar tags (later)
• Other features
• Rating
• Annotation
• Ranking
• Tracking based on Attention Metadata
• Turn key solution
• MINOR open source Learning object repository
  with built in features such as federated search

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Repositories and learning resources EDRENE

• Catalogues with descriptions (metadata), actual
  learning resources (data), both traditional
  textbooks and digital materials, only digital
  resources?
• Which types of data files, links, streaming etc.
• Decisions on which types of learning resources to
  include.
• Which learning resources can be included in an
  educational repository and which not?
• What is (not) a learning resource?
• Learning resources that are not specifically
  created for education, e.g. from the cultural
  sector
• Collecting the users own mix of resources
• Networking repositories
• The role of repositories in a Google-world
• Content from producer to user
• Open Educational Resources, (user-generated
  content)

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Repositories and learning resources LRE

• Need for a framework of understanding
• What is a resource? (wrong question)
• What resource should I include (right question)
• What is the right taxonomy for resources?
• Metadata should be open
• Need for collections Collection Level
  Descriptors
• Google
• Try to find an educational resource that you can
  use freely about mathematical operations on
  rational numbers
• OER is not the same as user generated content

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Activities related to educational content (2003
- 2005)
Discovery
Search
Retract
Soc. Recommend.
Agent based
Evaluate
Expose
Choose
Resolution
Describe
Get
Create
Integrate
Reference
or LO
Adapt Reuse
Disaggregate
Aggregate
Modify the sequence
Modify the content
Use/Play
Integrate
Local
Delete
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Key questions

• What is the use of Educational content
• if it is too hard to integrate it in my own
  technical environment or I cant use it in my
  LMS?
• if it is too hard to adapt it (although Im
  allowed to). What travels well?
• if it is too hard to get it
• if I dont know whether and how I could use it
• if I have no means to evaluate it
• if I cant find it
• if I cant share it and expose it even if I want
  to

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Metadata why
Discovery
Search
Retract
Soc. Recommend.
Agent based
Evaluate
Expose
Choose
Resolution
Describe
Get
Create
Integrate
Reference
or LO
Adapt Reuse
Disaggregate
Aggregate
Modify the sequence
Modify the content
Use/Play
Integrate
Local
Delete
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Different (semiotic) layers
Social
Political
Pragmatic
Semantic
Semantic
Syntactic
Empirical
Stakeholders with different concerns
Technical
Physical
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Users
Social
Political
Pragmatic
Semantic
Semantic
Syntactic
Empirical
Technical
Physical
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System Developers
Social
Political
Pragmatic
Semantic
Semantic
Syntactic
Empirical
Technical
Physical
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Content Developers
Social
Political
Pragmatic
Semantic
Semantic
Syntactic
Empirical
Technical
Physical
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Policy Makers
Social
Political
Pragmatic
Semantic
Semantic
Syntactic
Empirical
Technical
Physical
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Researchers
Social
Political
Pragmatic
Semantic
Semantic
Syntactic
Empirical
Technical
Physical
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Structure and organisation, features and
functionality EDRENE

• Repository architectures
• The organisation behind the repository, resources
  (labour and economy, etc.)
• User/producer/public/private involvement
• Exchange and import of data among repositories,
  other collections, databases and LMS systems
• Browsing and searching, push, harvest, extract
  data from repositories to other web services,
  personalization strategies, the impact of
  emerging web 2 technologies
• Linking to libraries and purchasing systems
• Examination of the respective merits of federated
  search and metadata harvesting

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Structure and organisation, features and
functionality LRE

• Harvesting, Federated search, mass upload, user
  provided content and metadata
• Not OR but AND
• BECTA report A comparative review of federated
  resource discovery services
• LOM ( application profiles) or DC ( application
  profiles)
• Not OR but AND
• Interoperability of application profiles
• Standards based (see later)

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Hierarchy of Application Profiles
LOM
Generic Appl. Prof.
Generic Appl. Prof.
Appl. Prof. 1
Appl. Prof. 2
Appl. Prof. 3
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Use and usability, quality and assessment EDRENE

• Quality frameworks and criteria, including the
  development of quality criteria for learning
  resources that "travel well" in a European
  context
• Pedagogical metadata, also including e.g.
  learning styles, and the variety of use of any
  content
• Linking and mapping resources to multiple
  curricula
• Assuring quality and ethics
• User feedback, reviews and evaluation
• Stimulation actions

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Use and usability, quality and assessment LRE

• Quality travel well
• See chapter in the quality handbook for education
• MELT deliverables on quality and travel well
• Personalisation learning styles
• iClass project
• Linking and mapping resources to multiple
  curricula
• CALIBRATE goes beyond that
• Rating, Annotations, and Ranking
• See MELT CALIBRATE

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Rights and regulations EDRENE

• Rights Management
• Examples of use of Digital Rights Management and
  identity management,
• Creative Commons licenses and other relevant
  licensing schemes and strategies for dealing with
  intellectual property rights within the
  educational sector, nationally and in a European
  context.
• Screening and rights clearance
• Agreements with producers (professional
  publishers, authorities, organisations,
  institutions, teachers) and other
  repositories/databases.

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Rights and regulations LRE

• Commercial publishers
• Digitalbrain, Giunti, Hachette Multimedia,
  SamonaWSOY in CELEBRATE
• Editis, Klett, FWU in eCOLOURS
• Cambridge-Hitachi, FWU, Skolavefurinn in MELT
• CELEBRATE ODRL
• CALIBRATE pushed it back to publishers
• Need for IdM
• CALIBRATE, EQO SSO
• Further experiments with SAML Liberty Alliance
• Creative commons
• First big institution to implement it in 2004
• Teachers dont know how to use it correctly
• Biggest problem how to deal with variants

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Standardisation EDRENE

• Standards of metadata profiles and data formats
• Standards to allow for interoperability among
  repositories both within a language area and
  across language borders

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Standardisation LRE

• Experience
• XVD, VDEX, ZTHES, SKOS
• LOM (AP), DC (AP)
• SQI, SPI, SRU, SRW
• OAI-PMH, webservices, https
• IMS Content packaging
• IMS QTI
• IMS Common Cartridge
• IMS Learning Design
• ADL-SCORM
• ADL-CORDRA
• ACCLIP
• Involvement in International organisations
• CEN/ISSS WSLT
• IMS co-chair of federated architectures
• Board of directors of European IMS Network
• Alliances GLOBE (EDNA, Merlot, ARIADNE, NIME,
  EDUSOURCE, )
• FRED

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Going Forward

• The most important Europe-wide (and potential
  global) player in e-learning content may become
  the European SchoolNet (EUN) through their
  European Learning Resource Exchange which is
  currently under development. OLCOS Report,
  March 2007
• We hope it will be also due to EDRENE !!!!

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Thank you

• lre.eun.org frans.van.assche_at_eun.org