Over 7000 visitors from 96 countries since the launch in October 2008.
Our fabulous developers have now completed the rebranding and republishing of all the media files.
The VAL test site has icons for RSS feeds and iTunes subscriptions and these processes work.
Meta data and tagging data lists are complete.
NEXT STEPS
Confirm DMU copyright process (today 2pm).
Complete information for file uploads to Jorum (need to consider a "how to use" file and "accessibility guildelines".
Get feedback from on-line surveys and critical friend (Stephanie Henderson).
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
DMU Staff OER Survey
The survey has over 50 responses so far and I'm anticipating some more. At first glance, as with any new initiative or concept, getting the defintiion and clarity of vision will be an essential first step. Most people hadn't heard of open content and didn't have a clear definition in their mind of what it was.
Interesting that the vast majority of people readily share work with immediate colleagues but no further. The route for a sustainable OER culture will need to push individuals out of their comfort zones, and put measures in place to overcome barriers: copyright, IT development support, incentive for developers and reusers, internal and external routes for sharing, ensuring best quality through peer review.
What has staggered me most through the survey is hardly finding anyone who has heard of JORUM.
Interesting that the vast majority of people readily share work with immediate colleagues but no further. The route for a sustainable OER culture will need to push individuals out of their comfort zones, and put measures in place to overcome barriers: copyright, IT development support, incentive for developers and reusers, internal and external routes for sharing, ensuring best quality through peer review.
What has staggered me most through the survey is hardly finding anyone who has heard of JORUM.
Going forward with OER
Discussions are on-going amongst the project team regarding how to create a sustainable OER culture. These are points from a chat with Suzanne Bickerdike at Leeds.
Development
Raise awareness of copyright and how to correctly attribute when using existing open resources / images e.g. Wikimedia. Can we produce a catch-all guide to attribution?
Raise awareness of the fact that repackaging software such as Articulate or Engage (and perhaps Xerte) may not produce fully accessible resources, so consider providing a range of materials to meet all needs and in particular with respect to addressing accessibility issues.
Be realistic about the timeframes for re-using and re-pursing resources which is quite time intensive.
Dissemination
Give prior thought to how resources will be disseminated via JORUM, which are probably equally pertinent suggestions for other routes.
Label resources carefully, i.e. if there are several parts to one subject resource.
Can’t amend files easily after they have been added so work to get them right.
Package resources with “how to” files and “accessibility”” – could also have packaged a feedback form.
Review how easy it would be for staff to download and use resources to promote “reuse” as much as development.
Cultural shift
Need to alleviate staff apprehension of making open content since it is not always easy to determine if elements / images etc within existing resources are copyright free.
Producing open content requires a significant individual effort for currently no reward, or incentive. How would you incentivise / encourage re-use of resources as well?
A cultural shift would start by staff promoting OER in their own faculties and internally before going externally.
Step-by-step guidelines for staff on how to generate / retrieve open content would be useful.
The feeling that OER will need a concerted push – it will initially rely on a few enthusiastic individuals, and will need on-going support for development, reuse and dissemination.
Development
Raise awareness of copyright and how to correctly attribute when using existing open resources / images e.g. Wikimedia. Can we produce a catch-all guide to attribution?
Raise awareness of the fact that repackaging software such as Articulate or Engage (and perhaps Xerte) may not produce fully accessible resources, so consider providing a range of materials to meet all needs and in particular with respect to addressing accessibility issues.
Be realistic about the timeframes for re-using and re-pursing resources which is quite time intensive.
Dissemination
Give prior thought to how resources will be disseminated via JORUM, which are probably equally pertinent suggestions for other routes.
Label resources carefully, i.e. if there are several parts to one subject resource.
Can’t amend files easily after they have been added so work to get them right.
Package resources with “how to” files and “accessibility”” – could also have packaged a feedback form.
Review how easy it would be for staff to download and use resources to promote “reuse” as much as development.
Cultural shift
Need to alleviate staff apprehension of making open content since it is not always easy to determine if elements / images etc within existing resources are copyright free.
Producing open content requires a significant individual effort for currently no reward, or incentive. How would you incentivise / encourage re-use of resources as well?
A cultural shift would start by staff promoting OER in their own faculties and internally before going externally.
Step-by-step guidelines for staff on how to generate / retrieve open content would be useful.
The feeling that OER will need a concerted push – it will initially rely on a few enthusiastic individuals, and will need on-going support for development, reuse and dissemination.
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Jan Update
VAL has now been designed using an "accessible template that all the pages can sit in. This makes it really easy to make further changes, as you only have to change the template, and it cascades down to the pages. It still looks similar, but will be easier to update and is accessible".
Next steps include to look at "DUBLIN metadata standards later to add to each template". Also, republishing of video files in MPEG4 format and convert to FLV. Each file needs to have a title page with branding for when it is downloaded.
Next steps include to look at "DUBLIN metadata standards later to add to each template". Also, republishing of video files in MPEG4 format and convert to FLV. Each file needs to have a title page with branding for when it is downloaded.
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Quiz Generation
Just had a SKYPE call to the OER meeting in Oxford. Terry mentioned that questions could be published using IMS QTI standards, and then placed on JORUM.
Here is a link to some information that I'll need to go and look at.
http://www.imsglobal.org/question/
Here is a link to some information that I'll need to go and look at.
http://www.imsglobal.org/question/
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Steps for mobilisation
The multimedia developer has developed several steps to mobilising the resources on VAL.
Part of the challenge is making sure resources are downloadable to a full range of devices. Currently for example, SWF animations with action script interactivity will not play on Apple products.
Task 1 - logos and copyright.
a If resources are to go on JORUM, the creative commons licence needs to be upgraded. An alternative is to leave it as it is and just provide JORUM with the link.
b Viv to design a "FRONT END" LOGO - HEA Bioscience / JISC / HEA / DMU....Terry suggested leaving the images off for copyright reasons and just provide the text.
c Branding needs to be inserted into each individual video, so edited and reublished in Pinnacle.
Task 1 - conversion of SWF animations and FLA video into Vodcasts.
a Republish the original video (from Pinnacle) into MPEG4 and other formats.
b Republish the animations as MPEG4.
c Remove the quiz elements i.e. lose the interactivity and have these as separate elements. There aren't to many of these anyway.
d Possibly - pull out the audio and publish as MP3.
e Rather than structuring the main resource as a series of pages, structure as individual elements, totalling around 70 I think!!!
Task 2 - accessibility check.
a Redesign the webpage template to use DIV tags rather than tables for the design, so that screen readers can read the content.
b Ensure that all the resources come with a downloadable transcript.
Task 3 - usability.
a Improve navigation buttons.
b Publish as SCORM compliant - so that resources can be inputted into VLEs, and JORUM.
Task 4 - testing.
Test on a number of devices - iTouch (Apple), Creative Media Player, Nokia Smart Phone, Blackberry.
Part of the challenge is making sure resources are downloadable to a full range of devices. Currently for example, SWF animations with action script interactivity will not play on Apple products.
Task 1 - logos and copyright.
a If resources are to go on JORUM, the creative commons licence needs to be upgraded. An alternative is to leave it as it is and just provide JORUM with the link.
b Viv to design a "FRONT END" LOGO - HEA Bioscience / JISC / HEA / DMU....Terry suggested leaving the images off for copyright reasons and just provide the text.
c Branding needs to be inserted into each individual video, so edited and reublished in Pinnacle.
Task 1 - conversion of SWF animations and FLA video into Vodcasts.
a Republish the original video (from Pinnacle) into MPEG4 and other formats.
b Republish the animations as MPEG4.
c Remove the quiz elements i.e. lose the interactivity and have these as separate elements. There aren't to many of these anyway.
d Possibly - pull out the audio and publish as MP3.
e Rather than structuring the main resource as a series of pages, structure as individual elements, totalling around 70 I think!!!
Task 2 - accessibility check.
a Redesign the webpage template to use DIV tags rather than tables for the design, so that screen readers can read the content.
b Ensure that all the resources come with a downloadable transcript.
Task 3 - usability.
a Improve navigation buttons.
b Publish as SCORM compliant - so that resources can be inputted into VLEs, and JORUM.
Task 4 - testing.
Test on a number of devices - iTouch (Apple), Creative Media Player, Nokia Smart Phone, Blackberry.
Friday, 27 November 2009
Nottingham OER 25th Nov 09
Really gutted to have missed the OER conference at Nottingham. Car broken and garage has broken it even more. This is what I have gleaned from Twitter.
Links reported - YouTube Education
http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400
OER Africa
http://www.oerafrica.org/
Google Trends - evaluate use of search terms, appear in news stories etc.
http://www.google.com/trends
Notts - great publicity!
http://unow.nottingham.ac.uk/resources.aspx
Oxford - open spires
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/oer/openspires.aspx
Article about OU Open Learn
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6869552.ece
OU Labspace
http://labspace.open.ac.uk/course/category.php?id=10
HumBox for sharing and reusing resources
http://humbox.eprints.org/
IP
http://www.techdis.ac.uk/
Tweets from the conference are stored here...
http://twapperkeeper.com/olconf/
TWITTER TAGS
#otteroer
#olconf
#ukoer
Points:
Time and effort needed to build sustainable resources and relationships, trust, use, reuse, adapt. To understand OER need to understand your audience demands, and measure the impact - good old market research principles then.
OER been around for some time MIT - but not always good stuff in my opinion. With OER comes a certain amount of courage.
Copyright - which type. Creative Commons. How to construct meta data or tags. UKLOM and JACS subject classification (comment from Dave Parkes).
Links reported - YouTube Education
http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400
OER Africa
http://www.oerafrica.org/
Google Trends - evaluate use of search terms, appear in news stories etc.
http://www.google.com/trends
Notts - great publicity!
http://unow.nottingham.ac.uk/resources.aspx
Oxford - open spires
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/oer/openspires.aspx
Article about OU Open Learn
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6869552.ece
OU Labspace
http://labspace.open.ac.uk/course/category.php?id=10
HumBox for sharing and reusing resources
http://humbox.eprints.org/
IP
http://www.techdis.ac.uk/
Tweets from the conference are stored here...
http://twapperkeeper.com/olconf/
TWITTER TAGS
#otteroer
#olconf
#ukoer
Points:
Time and effort needed to build sustainable resources and relationships, trust, use, reuse, adapt. To understand OER need to understand your audience demands, and measure the impact - good old market research principles then.
OER been around for some time MIT - but not always good stuff in my opinion. With OER comes a certain amount of courage.
Copyright - which type. Creative Commons. How to construct meta data or tags. UKLOM and JACS subject classification (comment from Dave Parkes).
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