eResources and eLearning at JISC

1. eResources and eLearning at JISC Susan Eales JISC Programme Manager Digitisation Town Meeting 21st April 2006

2. Agenda • Challenges and opportunities • Repurposing – highlights of the X4L Programme • Jorum • Animated demonstration • Other JISC elearning activities • FE exemplars • Further information

3. Challenges • More students, no additional funding • Students are used to IT and demand access • Widening participation and social inclusion – students have a diverse range of backgrounds and qualifications • Need individualised learning • Learn at their own pace at times that suit them • Need to catch up if they miss classes

4. Challenges • Teacher-directed learning is still a popular method of delivering the curriculum, not all learning can be project-based where the students lead their own research. • Teachers want to have flexibility in how they use materials in the classroom

5. Challenges • Teachers need help in getting ideas on how digitised content can be used to help meet the requirements of the syllabus • Teachers need tools, training and support to help them design and deliver good quality learning experiences for their students

6. Challenges • We cannot rely on commercial publishers to provide learning materials for FE and HE • Too expensive • Too many courses • LEAs will bulk buy, Curriculum Online gives schools ‘learning credits’ whereas colleges and universities are individual entities • However…

7. Opportunities • Often the syllabus is set nationally, eg NVQ, A-Levels • In FE there are subjects that are taught to all students • Health & Safety • Equal Opportunities • In HE there are also some core disciplines, eg Maths, languages, information skills • Core materials that can be repurposed in different contexts rather than developing whole new courses

8. Is repurposing a cheaper, popular, sustainable way of meeting these challenges and opportunities?

9. Exchange for Learning (X4L) X4L was funded by JISC because • There is a lot of existing digital content which could be re-used for learning • We wanted the community to experiment with re-purposing digital content, i.e. see how it can be used again in a different way • What is a different way? • for different curriculum/subject areas • different levels within a subject • independent learning and project work etc

10. Fit Within JISC’s Development Work • X4L and Jorum are part of the JISC Information Environment Development work • The Information Environment needs to be a place where learning materials and ideas about learning materials can be shared in a standard way • Linked with JISC eLearning programmes

11. JISC Information Environment • Fit to serve all kinds of digital content • Fully supporting the submission and sharing of research and learning objects • Providing a range of meaningful, rich and innovative methods of accessing electronic materials • A collaborative landscape of online service providers working together to provide seamless access for users • Underpinned by a common standards framework (both technical and semantic)

12. Aims of X4L • 1. Use and develop the best available tools to explore whether repurposing content can become a popular, sustainable way of producing e-learning materials for the future. • 2. Increase the numbers of people in institutions with the necessary skills to repurpose learning objects. • 3. Expose and begin to tackle the challenges associated with repurposing learning objects. • 4. Begin to populate a national repository with repurposable learning materials, case studies and exemplars.

13. Outline • Over 140 institutions and other bodies involved • Museums, public libraries, commercial partners, • 28 repurposing projects • 3 tools projects • Supporting studies • £6 million over 4 years – June 2002 to September 2006

14. English Literature Physics Engineering English for Speakers of Other Languages Leisure & tourism Health & medicine Art, media & performance Biology Catering Business studies Sociology/social studies Subject Areas

15. Approaches • eLearning development team/learning technologists developing materials and testing with teachers and students; • eLearning development team/learning technologists working closely with subject tutors and librarian;

16. Approaches (Cont’d…) • 3. Senior lecturers working together and employing an IT person for support; • 4. Central team enlisting teachers from particular curriculum areas to develop materials once project has started; • 5. Teachers working on their own.

17. Tools • Open source content packaging tool • RELOAD www.reload.ac.uk • Online assessment creation tool • TOIA www.toia.ac.uk • Learning materials repository • Jorum www.jorum.ac.uk

18. Highlights • Initiating/building communities of practice • Empowering teachers • Colleges and Universities working together • IT support, learning technologists, librarians, teachers working together • Sharing staff development materials • Testing available tools.

19. Issues • Resource discovery • Takes time • Need a plan and librarian input • IPR – 3rd party rights clearance • Need a plan • Need to keep records • Need to make decisions on risks • Supporting letter from JISC • Tools being developed at the same time as projects (including Jorum).

20. Issues (Cont’d…) • Standards? • UK LOM Core • Workflows to achieve embedding and sustainable change • roles and institutional policies

21. Have we Achieved our Aims? • 1. Use and develop the best available tools to explore whether repurposing content can become a popular, sustainable way of producing e-learning materials for the future. √ (??) • 2. Increase the numbers of people in institutions with the necessary skills to repurpose learning objects. √ • 3. Expose and begin to tackle the challenges associated with repurposing learning objects. √ • 4. Begin to populate a national repository with repurposable learning materials, case studies and exemplars. √

22. Jorum Latin – a drinking bowl; its contents

23. Aims & Objectives • Stand as a national statement of the importance of sharing • Provide a home for publicly-funded learning and teaching materials in the first instance • Act as a reference model for other repositories in terms of standards-conformance • Have a “keep safe” function

24. > Jorum Contributor Jorum User Jorum “Getting content out” “Putting content in” Jorum R&D

25. Facts and Figures • Contributor Service launched on 7th November 2005 • User Service launched on 30th January 2006 • 450 learning objects • 1200 by July 2006 • 31 Deposit Licences signed • 119 User Licences signed

26. Jorum Contributor - “Putting Content In” • Allows colleges and universities to deposit learning and teaching materials • Jorum hosts publicly funded project outputs and content developed at institutions • Learning Resources – small assets (documents, images, diagrams) and comprehensive learning objects. Non-subject specific, covering FE & HE levels • Teaching Resources – e.g. tutor guides, lesson plans, staff development materials

27. Licensing Model • Contributor Institutions sign a Deposit Licence • Contributors grant Users a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use materials for educational (non-commercial) purposes: • Aggregate, annotate, excerpt and modify • Search, retrieve, display and download • Save, print • Incorporate into learning environments & compile into study packs • Promotional purposes

28. Licensing Model (Cont’d) • Only one licence per institution • Schedule for unlimited number of authorised depositors • New schedules can be provided at any time to add new or change authorised depositors • Paper based, but terms and conditions appear at each log in • Take down policy

29. Jorum User • FREE service • Institutions sign up to the service via JISC Collections • Users log in using Athens username and password • Available to teaching staff from UK F/HE institutions • Able to find, preview, download, reuse and repurpose materials for use with learners in their institution • Institutions will nominate 1 site representative and 1 technical support representative

30. Support • New Jorum website containing support and training materials for both Users and Contributors • Regular training events and demonstrations • 24/7 access and a dedicated helpdesk: support@jorum.ac.uk • JORUM-UPDATE JISC Mailing List

31. R & D 2005/2008 • Ensure Jorum remains world-leading • Licensing • Continuing preservation watch • Desktop client • Federation with other repositories • R & D reports and model licence available on the website for use by all Demonstration…

32. JISC eLearning Programme Strands • eLearning • eFramework • Pedagogy • Innovation • learning spaces • Distributed elearning • HE Academy subject centre projects • Learning design

33. JISC e-Framework The primary goal of the e-Framework Partnership is to produce an evolving and sustainable, open standards based service oriented technical framework to support the education and research communities.

34. The e-Framework will contain:

35. Domain SpecificServices “Domain” view of services e-Learning e-Research e-Admin Common Services Messaging/Collaboration E-ResourcesManagement Middleware (Security and Logging)

36. Service description example • Name– Calendaring • Description:– Supports the sharing of calendars, such as personal calendars and course timetables. • Scope & definition: – A Calendaring service provides access to Calendars, including course timetables. A Calendaring service should support creating, reading, updating and deletion of calendars for persons (staff, students),and groups (courses, modules, departments). • Applicable standards: – IETF RFC 2446 - iCalendar Transport-Independent Interoperability Protocol (iTIP), – IETF RFC 2445 - Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar), – IETF RFC 2518 - HTTP Extensions for Distributed Authoring -- WEBDAV

37. Reference models • For example: • Name: time management • Domains: e-learning, e-science, e-admin, digital library, repositories • Description: • The time management reference model deals with the problem of sharing and co-ordinating the schedules of people and resources in an organisation. • It describes a workflow in which various actors can view schedules, edit them, or request an edit in them. • The purpose of the model is to make it easier to co-ordinate people and resources such as rooms, equipment and documents

38. JISC e-Learning and Pedagogy Work • Overall aim: ensure that e-learning in UK post-16 sector is ‘pedagogically sound, learner-focused and accessible’. • First theme: design for learning • Practitioner planning perspective • How to support effective practice with e-learning? • Second theme: understanding my learning(or learners’ experience of learning?) • Learner participating perspective • How to support ‘good’ e-learning experiences?

39. Why the Interest in Learning Design? • Learning activities are central to learning • Designing/selecting and orchestrating tasks (‘designing for learning’) is a challenge • especially in computer-based learning environments

40. And… • There is a need for conventional ways of representing activities and tasks, so: • effective activities/tasks can be shared • practitioners can make informed decisions about activities and approaches • evaluators can compare outcomes of different approaches • practitioners, researchers and developers of systems can communicate about what is effective for learners • learners themselves can reflect more effectively – and critically – on their learning activities

41. What is ‘Learning Design’? • Broadly: • The planning and ordering of learning activities in a course or session • A ‘practitioner planning’ view on a learning situation, e.g. a lesson plan or scheme of work • Narrowly: • A new IMS specification for sequences of interaction between learners and system components (compare LOM for content, PDPs/LR for learner data) • A sequence of activities specified according to LD

42. Features of Learning Design • Focus is on interactions rather than on content • Use cases can be expressed in machine-readable terms • interoperable with learning management systems and other standards-based educational software • Use cases can also be expressed in ways readily understood by practitioners (e.g. graphically) • Potentially enables re-use of activity sequences/flows with different subject content

43. JISC Design for learning Work • Practitioner planning perspective • Learning task/interaction based • Which learners? • asked to do what? • to achieve what outcome? • using what tools and resources?

44. Cont’d… • JISC Design for Learning work could also support a practitioner evaluating/reflecting perspective • Our aims: • Review and investigate what makes for ‘effective practice with e-learning’ • Help practitioners to make more effective design decisions • Help developers to design systems – especially learning design tools – that support effective practice

45. FE Exemplars • Developed for JISC Collections team • Show case some of JISC subscription collections for FE subject areas • Support librarians, provide inspiration to teachers • Increase value for money of collection • Increase number of subscriptions • Demonstration…

46. Further Information • www.jisc.ac.uk/programme_x4l.html • www.jorum.ac.uk • www.reload.ac.uk • www.toia.ac.uk • www.elearning.ac.uk • Susan Eales [s.eales@jisc.ac.uk]