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Building Repositories for Digital Learning Objects: Challenges, Issues, and Opportunities. Susan W. Alman & Christinger Tomer University of Pittsburgh November 6, 2008.
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Building Repositories for Digital Learning Objects: Challenges, Issues, and Opportunities Susan W. Alman & Christinger Tomer University of Pittsburgh November 6, 2008
Digital repository systems represent an important option for learning organizations that want to leverage the economical and social benefits of re-usable learning objects. The presentation examines the options that a learning organization can exercise in building a digital repository for learning objects, identifying both open source and proprietary solutions, assessing select systems in terms of functions, features, costs, interoperability, and compatibility with relevant technical standards.
Web-Based Information Science Education • Web-based Information Science Education (WISE) is a groundbreaking opportunity in online education, established under funding from ILMS and now essentially self-sustaining. • Leading library and information science schools have extended their reach on a global basis to broaden the educational opportunities available to students. Led by Syracuse, Illinois, and Pittsburgh, WISE uses advanced online technology to enrich education and foster relationships among students, faculty, and universities. • The vision of this initiative is to provide a collaborative distance education model that will increase the quality, access, and diversity of online education opportunities in library and information science. Originally a seat bank operating under an established exchange rate, WISE is now also involved in developing new curricula across its member programs and in association with various professional organizations.
The WISE+ Repository • Mandate to build a repository of learning objects from a wide variety of courses offered in library and information science • Based on preliminary data, most of the objects are likely to take the form of PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, audio and video recordings, i.e., *.mp3, *.avi, *.mov, *.swf, etc., and HTML documents and Web sites • Objects developed without explicit mandate for reusability or sharing
Roles of Institutional Repositories • First: to "serve as tangible indicators of an institution's quality and to demonstrate the scientific, societal, and economic relevance of its research activities, thus increasing the institution's visibility, status, and public value” • Second: to provide tools to assist universities "re-shape the scholarly communication process” • Third: while institutional repositories centralize, preserve, and make accessible an institution's intellectual capital, at the same time they will — ideally — form part of a global system of distributed, interoperable repositories that provides the foundation for a new disaggregated model of scholarly publishing. Raym Crow, The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper. The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition, Washington, D.C., August 2002.
What are E-Learning Repositories? An E-Learning repository is a database that contains useful teaching and learning information that is available via the Internet. Users are allowed to query the database in an attempt to locate information that can help to explain and clarify various topics.
Educational Content Standards • Besides open formats for general content and digital formats there are also specific standards being developed for describing educational content. Using these standards can provide a basis for the creation of reusable content across eLearning institutions and platforms. • The following are two metadata application profiles that may be used to describe educational content: • The SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) is a collection of specification and standards for web-based E-Learning Content packages. • The LOM (Learning Object Metadata) of the IEEE LTSC has the goal to describe learning resources (digital and non-digital).
Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) is a collection of standards and specifications for Web-based e-learning. It defines communications between client side content and a host system called the run-time environment (commonly a function of a learning management system). SCORM also defines how content may be packaged into a transferable ZIP file. SCORM is a specification of the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative. SCORM 2004 introduces a complex idea called sequencing, which is a set of rules that specify the order in which a learner may experience content objects. The standard uses XML, and it is based on the results of work done by AICC (CBT), IMS Global, IEEE, and Ariadne.
Learning Object Metadata • Learning Object Metadata is a data model, usually encoded in XML, used to describe a learning object and similar digital resources used to support learning. The purpose of learning object metadata is to support the reusability of learning objects, to aid discoverability, and to facilitate their interoperability, usually in the context of online learning management systems (LMS). • The IEEE 1484.12.1 – 2002 Standard for Learning Object Metadata is an internationally-recognized open standard for the description of “learning objects”. Relevant attributes of learning objects to be described include: type of object; author; owner; terms of distribution; format; and pedagogical attributes, such as teaching or interaction style.
Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is a low-barrier mechanism for repository interoperability. Data Providers are repositories that expose structured metadata via OAI-PMH. Service Providers then make OAI-PMH service requests to harvest that metadata. OAI-PMH is a set of six verbs or services that are invoked within HTTP. OAI-PMH is based on a client-server architecture, in which "harvesters" request information on updated records from "repositories". Requests for data can be based on a datestamp range, and can be restricted to named sets defined by the provider. Data providers are required to provide XML metadata in Dublin Core format, and may also provide it in other XML formats. A number of software systems support the OAI-PMH, including EPrints, Open Journal Systems from the Public Knowledge Project, Desire2Learn, DSpace and HyperJournal from the University of Pisa.
Meta Encoding and Transmission Standard The METS schema is a standard for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library, expressed using the XML schema language of the World Wide Web Consortium. The standard is maintained in the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress, and is being developed as an initiative of the Digital Library Federation.
Re-Usable Learning Objects Chiappe defined learning objects as: "A digital self-contained and reusable entity, with a clear educational purpose, with at least three internal and editable components: content, learning activities and elements of context. The learning objects must have an external structure of information to facilitate their identification, storage and retrieval: the metadata. " Chiappe, Andres.; Segovia, Yasbley; Rincon, Yadira (2007), "Toward an instructional design model based on learning objects" (html), in Boston, Springer, Educational Technology Research and Development, Boston: Springer, pp. 671-681. Rehak and Mason define it as "a digitized entity which can be used, reused or referenced during technology supported learning”. Rehak, Daniel R.; Mason, Robin (2003), "Engaging with the Learning Object Economy", in Littlejohn, Allison, Reusing Online Resources: A Sustainable Approach to E-Learning, London: Kogan Page, pp. 22-30.
Re-Usable Learning Objects, con’t Learning objects are a new way of thinking about learning content. Traditionally, content comes in a several hour chunk. Learning objects are much smaller units of learning, typically ranging from 2 minutes to 15 minutes. There is a general consensus that learning objects should be: self contained reusable - can be modified and versioned for different courses accessible - indexed and retrieved using metadata interoperable / portable - operate across different hard/software durable - remain intact across upgrades of hard/software capable of aggregation
Reviewing Key Digital Repository Software Packages Basic Choices, Key Variables
Islandora Fedora-Drupal module The Islandora module allows Drupal users to view and manage digital objects stored in Fedora. There is a demo Amazon ec2 image running here http://ec2-75-101-195-219.compute-1.amazonaws.com/. Drupal and Fedora are installed. If you have an Amazon AWS account you can launch your own version of the image. The public image name is ami-e9d23680. Once the image is started you will have to login to the newly created image using ssh and start Fedora. You will then be able to use a browser to view your new AMI instance by browsing to the system’s public DNS address.
SIDEBAR: the Virtues of Cloud Computing • Capital expenditure minimized and thus low barrier to entry as infrastructure is owned by the provider and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. • Device and location independence which enables users to access systems regardless of location or what device they are using. • Multi-tenancy enabling sharing of resources (and costs) • Reliability by way of multiple redundant sites, which makes it suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery. • Scalability which meets changing user demands (e.g. Flash Crowds) quickly, without having to engineer for peak loads. • Security typically improved due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc. • Sustainability through improved resource utilization, more efficient systems and carbon neutrality.
SIDEBAR 2: the Virtues of Embedding the Repository in a CMS • Contextualization • Access to collaborative resources & services within the same platform, including documentation, modules, plugins, etc. • Ability to leverage resources of surrounding development communities (in the instances of popular, open source CMSs such as Drupal, Joomla, or Plone)
EPrints EPrints is an open source software package for building open access repositories that are compliant with the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. It shares many of the features commonly seen in document management systems, but is primarily used for institutional repositories and scientific journals. EPrints has been developed since 2000 at the University of Southampton and released under a GPL license.
EPrints Technology EPrints is a Web and command-line application based on the LAMP architecture (but is written in Perl rather than PHP). It has been successfully run under Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X. A version for Microsoft Windows is being developed but will be released under a non-GPL license. Version 3 of the software introduced a (Perl-based) plugin architecture for importing and exporting data, converting objects (for search engine indexing) and user interface widgets. Configuring an EPrints repository involves modifying configuration files written in Perl or XML. Web based configuration tools are in development. The appearance of a repository is controlled by HTML templates, stylesheets and inline images. While EPrints is shipped with an English translation it has been translated to other languages through (redistributable) language-specific XML phrase files. Existing translations include Bulgarian, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian
DSpace Developed co-operatively by Hewlett-Packard and MIT. The first version of DSpace was released in November 2002. In 2007, HP and MIT jointly announced the formation of the DSpace Foundation, a non-profit organization that will provide leadership and support for the DSpace community. DSpace is written in Java and JSP, using the Java Servlet API. It uses a relational database, and supports the use of PostgreSQL and Oracle. It makes its holdings available primarily via a web interface, but it also supports the OAI-PMH v2.0, and is capable of exporting METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) packages. The DSpace community has attempted to base its formal structure along the same lines as the Apache Foundation community development model.
DSpace Using the Manakin UI Default view of a DSpace instance established as part of learning laboratory
Selecting a Digital Repository Key Factors & Considerations
Why We Selected DSpace • Strong commitment to ongoing development • Easy to install & maintain; stable under significant demand • Tomcat is easy to manage; Eprints reliance on mod_perl makes it difficult to configure • Portable/will run successfully on various Oss; upgrade path is well-designed • Customizable metadata • Flexible workflow model
A content management system and blog were included in order to provide facilities supporting the preparation and delivery of documentation, collaborative work, discussion forums, and other forms of resource sharing. The blog was created to support end-user communications and solicit comments, but will probably be phased out owing to the availability of similar capabilities available through the CMS.
Creating a Peer Review Ratings System • Building on the Evaluation Criteria Developed by/for MERLOT • Quality of Content • Potential Usefulness as a Teaching/Learning Tool • Ease of Use • Institute an Interactive Ratings System
If We Knew Then What We Know Now ….. ….. would probably take a much longer look at the system –PEIU’s Islandora --which integrates Fedora into Drupal …… explore the possibility of building the repository behind the eduCommons platform …… spend more time on establishing guidelines for the development of genuinely shareable/usable learning objects
