2005 Fall Conference Proceedings by OpenCourseWare Consortium

Advancing the Eﬀectiveness and Sustainability of Open Education Conference

Proceedings

September 28-30, 2005 Eccles Conference Center Utah State University Logan, UT

All materials (unless otherwise speciﬁed) are licensed under a Creative Commons A�ribution License (h�p://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)

Advancing the Effectiveness and Sustainability of Open Education Conference PROCEEDINGS

CREATIVE COMMONS Hal Abelson, MIT/Creative Commons

CONNEXIONS: SHARING KNOWLEDGE AND BUILDING COMMUNITIES Richard Baraniuk, W. Joseph King and Christopher M. Kelty, Rice University

COMMON WISDOM: PEER PRODUCTION OF EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS Yochai Benkler, Yale University

THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR CREATIVE COMMONS TEXTBOOKS Fred Beshears, University of California at Berkeley

CREATING INFRASTRUCTURE TO FACILITATE DATA USE IN MASTER’S COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES Chris Bettinger, Alex Keller and Andrew Roderick, San Francisco State University

GENERATING OPEN COURSEWARE USING PODCASTING, SCREENCASTING, BLOGS AND GAMES Jean-Claude Bradley, Drexel University

DIGITAL CULTURE AND LEARNING IN THE DIGITAL AGE John Seely Brown, University of Southern California, Annenberg Center for Communication

FROM OPEN CONTENT REPOSITORIES TO OPEN SENSEMAKING COMMUNITIES Simon J. Buckingham Shum, The Open University

29 OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO OPEN EDUCATION St ewar t Cheif et, Int er net Ar c hive

32 THE CASE FOR OPENCOURSEWARE John Dehl in, Utah Stat e Univer sit y

33 EDUCOMMONS HANDS-ON John Dehl in and Shel l ey Henson, Utah Stat e Univer sit y

34 THE FOUR PILLARS OF OPEN EDUCATION PROGRAM SUSTAINABILITY: USABILITY, CONTENT, COMMUNITY AND BRAND EQUITY Paul Dhol akia and W. Joseph King , Ric e Univer sit y

37 CREATING A PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE Hel en J. Doyl e, Publ ic Libr ar y of Sc ienc e

40 OPEN LEARNING: A WEB-BASED MODEL FOR SELF-DIRECTED FOREIGN-LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION Jacques du Pl essis, Univer sit y of Wisconsin-Mil waukee

43 UNDERLYING OPEN LEARNING DEVELOPMENT—REFLECTIONS ON ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS IN OPEN SOURCING Jacques Du Pl essis and Al ex Koohang , Univer sit y of WisconsinMil waukee

46 “USING THE CULTURAL ADAPTATION PROCESS (CAP) MODEL” ADAPTING E-LEARNING FOR USE BY NON-WESTERN CULTURES Andr ea Edmundson, eWor l dLear ning .com

50 WIKIPEDIA Terry Foote, Wikipedia Foundation

51 OPEN EDUCATION FOR EDUCATORS: AN EXAMPLE FROM THE GEOSCIENCES Sean Fox and Cathryn Manduca, Carleton College

54 A STRUCTURAL APPROACH RELATING INSTRUCTIONAL THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN THEORY Andy Gibbons and P. Clint Rogers, Brigham Young University

57 REUSABILITY IN THE MATERIALS DIGITAL LIBRARY Sarah Giersch, National Science Digital Library, Laura M. Bartolo and Cathy S. Lowe, Kent State, and Adam C. Powell IV, MIT 4

61 ENABLING OPEN EDUCATION WITH MERLOT Ger ar d Hanl ey, MERLOT

65 SAKAI OVERVIEW Joseph Har din, Univer sit y of Mic higan/Sakai

66 SAKAI, MELETE EDUCOMMONS OVERVIEW Joseph Har din, Univer sit y of Mic higan/Sakai, Vivie Sinou, Foot hil l Col l eg e/Sakai, David Wil ey, Utah Stat e Univer sit y

67 WHY STUDY USERS? UNDERSTANDING THE USE OF DIGITAL RESOURCES IN HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION Diane Har l ey, Univer sit y of Cal if or nia at Ber kel ey

70 STARTING AN OCW: A CASE STUDY Shel l ey Henson, Utah Stat e Univer sit y and Andr ea Sandr y, Weber Stat e Univer sit y

71 OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES Jan Hyl én, Cent r e f or Educat ional Resear c h and Innovat ion

74 DOCUMENTING AND SHARING PEDAGOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE TO PROMOTE EFFECTIVE AND INNOVATIVE USE OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES Tor u Iiyoshi, Car neg ie Foundat ion, Candac e Thil l e, Car neg ie Mel l on Univer sit y and Fl or a McMar t in, MERLOT

77 POLICY ISSUES FOR OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES Sal l y Johnstone, WCET

78 EMBEDDING OPEN CONTENT IN INSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH Er ic Kansa and Mic hael Ashl ey, Al exandr ia Ar c hive Inst it ut e

81 EDUCATIONAL BROADCASTING: RUMORS OF ITS DEMISE ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED Pet er Kauf man, Int el l ig ent TV

84 BUILDING A FREE SOFTWARE ECOSYSTEM IN AFRICA: LESSONS FROM THE AFRICAN VIRTUAL OPEN INITIATIVES AND RESOURCES (AVOIR) PROJECT Der ek Keat s, The Univer sit y of t he West er n Cape

86 THE GOOGLE LIBRARY DIGITIZATION PROJECT: FOR THE GOOD OF THE WORLD OR FOR GOOGLE? Michael Keller, Stanford University

87 AT THE ICT DEVELOPMENT WORK FACE—SCHOOLNET NAMIBIA REALITIES Joris Komen, SchoolNet Namibia

88 BEEN DIGITAL SO LONG IT FEELS LIKE PRINT TO ME Brian Lamb, University of British Columbia

91 THE POWER OF VOLUNTEERS: EFFECTIVENESS AND SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH LESSONS LEARNED FROM OOPS Meng-Fen Lin, University of Houston and Luc Chu, Oops

96 CAN HIGHER EDUCATION REPOSITORY PROJECTS LEARN FROM FLICKR? Cyprien Lomas, University of British Columbia

99 WHY DO SCHOOLS HAVE WALLS? ANOTHER LOOK AT BARRIERS TO PARADIGM SHIFT IN EDUCATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE Liza Loop, LO*OP Center, Inc

102 A SUSTAINABLE MODEL FOR COLLABORATIVE DEVELOPMENT,

ACCESS, AND INTEROPERABILITY OF HIGH-QUALITY ONLINE OER COURSES Gary Lopez and Ruth Rominger, Monterey Institute

108 THE ROLE OF THE LIBRARY IN OPEN EDUCATION

Christine Madsen and Megan Hurst, Harvard University Library

111 INTRODUCTORY STATISTICS ONLINE: THE JOURNEY FROM CLASSROOM TO OPENCOURSEWARE Tom Malloy and Jake Jensen, University of Utah

114 OCW EXPERIENCES

Moderator: Anne Margulies, MIT Panel: Yoshimi Fukuhara, Keio University, Mary Lee, Tufts University, Yoshimi Fukuhara, Keio University, Joaquim Nasser, ENSTA/ParisTech, Jared Stein, Utah Valley State College, James Yager, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health

115 TARGETED USERS OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES: SERVING K12 TEACHERS AND KICKING THE TIRES OF OER Gary Matkin and Jia Frydenberg, University of California, IrvineONLY

118 CONNECT: JAMES BURKE’S KNOWLEDGE WEB

Patrick McKercher, University of California, Santa Cruz

121 THE EGRANARY DIGITAL LIBRARY: A NEW TOOL FOR INFORMATION EQUITY Clifford Missen, University of Iowa

124 THE GLOBAL EDUCATION & LEARNING COMMUNITY (GELC) VISION: WORLD CLASS CONTENT... DEVELOPED BY THE COMMUNITY... JUST A CLICK AWAY Larry Nelson, Global Education & Learning Community

126 OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCES PORTAL: BUILDING COMMUNITY AND STIMULATING USE Lisa Petrides, Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education

128 REUSABILITY OF UNIVERSITY DIGITAL ARCHIVES: MEETING THE

NEEDS OF K-12 TEACHERS Felicia Poe, California Digital Library and Isaac Mankita, University of California at Berkeley

132 USING LEARNING OBJECTS TO PRODUCE LEARNING MATERIALS FOR IN-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION Mike Quickfall, University of Edinburgh

134 GROWING A REUSABLE REPOSITORY: KEEPING THE CONTENT

MEANINGFUL Ross Reedstrom, Brent Hendricks and Richard Baraniuk, Rice University

137 REUSABLE DESIGN WORKSHOP Robby Robson, Eduworks

138 GAMES, SIGNS AND TEXTS: EXPLORING SUSTAINABLE, CREATIVE

LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS THROUGH CULTURAL ANALYSIS AND LOCALIZATION Brett Shelton, Ryan Moeller and Cheryl Ball, Utah State University

142 UTAH’S ELECTRONIC HIGH SCHOOL

Richard Siddoway, Utah Electronic High School

143 MELETE—STREAMLINING OPEN PUBLISHING Vivie Sinou, Foothill College/Sakai

144 STATE OF THE OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OER) MOVEMENT Marshall Smith, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

145 HOW TO MAKE OPEN EDUCATION SUCCEED Robert Stephenson, Wayne State University

149 THE CARNEGIE MELLON OPEN LEARNING INITIATIVE—

INTERNATIONALIZATION OF COGNITIVELY INFORMED, WEB-BASED INSTRUCTION Candace Thille, Carnegie Mellon University

151 FREE KNOWLEDGE COMMUNITIES Kim Tucker, CSIR

152 WHAT AM I LEARNING? PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK IN AN OPEN LEARNING ENVIRONMENT Jody Underwood, ETS

153 IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL NOT COME: USAGE DATA FROM A

RECOMMENDER SYSTEM BASED ON WEB ANNOTATIONS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS Andy Walker, Utah State University and Jennifer Brill, Virginia Tech

156 A REALITY CHECK FOR OPEN EDUCATION

Ed Walker, IMS Global Learning Consortium

159 COREOCW AND ITS CHALLENGES TOWARD QUALITY AND

SUSTAINABILITY Fun-Den Wang, CORE, Meifeng Liu, Beijing Normal University, Zi Mao Zhang, Beijing Jiao Tong University

160 BARRIERS TO THE DISTRIBUTION OF OPEN CONTENT

Fun-Den Wang, CORE and Catherine Ngugi, African Virtual University

162 BASIC EDUCATION ONLINE: AN OPEN-CONTENT PROJECT IN

DEVELOPMENTAL EDUCATION AND ENGLISH FOR SPEAKERS OF OTHER LANGUAGES Cynthia Wilson, League.org

164 OPEN EDUCATION AT UC MERCED

Jeff Wright, Jeff Yoshimi and German Gavilan, University of California, Merced

167 TOWARDS REMIXING ANY CONTENT FROM ANY SOURCE WITH ANY SERVICE: LOWERING THE BARRIER TO USE OF CONTENT IN OPEN EDUCATION Raymond Yee, University of California at Berkeley

170 A NEW MODEL FOR OPEN ACCESS TO SCHOLARLY AND EDUCATIONAL CONTENT Edward N. Zalta, Stanford University

Creative Commons Hal Abelson, MIT/Creative Commons Thursday, September 29, 2005, 10:00-10:45 am 207 Eccles Conference Center If we want to realize the potential of the Web for sharing educational materialsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or any creative worksâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;we run headlong into issues of copyright and licensing. Creative Commons promotes sharing content, and building on each others work, through standard licenses that institutions and individuals can attach to works they publish on the Web. The licenses are machine readable, and there are automated tools that locate open-access materials and verify terms of use. The licenses are organized into a family that lets creators tailor the terms to their particular needs, and the licensing infrastructure is designed to permit internationalization and interoperability across legal jurisdictions. Currently, there are more than 53 million documents on the web published under Creative commons licenses, including major collections like Connexions and OpenCourseWare.

Connexions: Sharing Knoweldge and Building Communities Richard Baraniuk, W. Joseph King and Christopher M. Kelty, Rice University Thursday, September 29, 2005, 2:15-3:00 pm 205 Eccles Conference Center Connexions is an open-access repository of scholarly materials and an open-source software toolkit to help authors publish and collaborate, instructors rapidly build and share custom courses, and learners explore the links among concepts, courses, and disciplines (see cnx. rice.edu). The design of Connexions is based on a set of intuitions that are shared by a remarkably wide range of academics: that knowledge should be free and open to use and re-use; that collaboration should be easier, not harder; that people should get credit and kudos for contributing to research and education; and that concepts and ideas are linked in unusual and surprising ways and not the simple linear forms that textbooks present. But, translating this consensus into real software and real legal assemblages has been anything but intuitive. Connexions is probably best thought of as an experiment into what might be necessary to effectively create the conditions for the widespread re-use of educational or scholarly materials by communities of educators and learners. Connexions creates “modules” of information—smallish documents intended to communicate one concept, one procedure, one set of questions about something. String a bunch of modules together, and you have a course, or weave a curriculum entirely of your choosing. Connexions directly challenges the current notion of a “textbook” by exploding it and asking different people to create its parts in a semi-structured but re-conﬁgurable manner, rather than having a single Maestro do it all and take all the credit. The demand for Connexions’ open-access educational content has been surprising; in 2004 over 6.4 million people from 157 countries visited the cnx.rice.edu website. The ﬁrst goal of this presentation is to explore the design philosophy of Connexions, its impacts, and the challenges we have faced over the past six years. We will pay particular attention to our design decisions regarding: • content organization using XML (including balancing the power of the semantic web for easy sharing and re-use of course materials with the need for new, easy-to-use editing and course 11

• •

building tools); content quality assessment (including replacing traditional ““gate keeper” based pre-review procedures with distributed and scalable post-publication peer review systems); intellectual property (including our deliberations on the choice of the Creative Commons “attribution” license).

The second goal of the presentation is to present a case study of building an inter-institutional, global community of electrical engineering faculty and researchers in the area of digital signal processing (DSP). Members of this growing community point to a crisis in engineering education today, with decreasing enrollments, less engaged and less prepared students, and pressure to cover increasing amounts of material. Curricula are increasingly stove-piped and disconnected, in spite of research indicating that for women and underrepresented minority students, the study of science and engineering is made meaningful by connections to other fields. Moreover, a leading complaint from industry regarding engineering graduates is their lack of collaboration and team skills and lack of hands-on design experience. The Connexions DSP community aims to attacks these issues head-on by breaking away from traditional textbook and lecture-based education and towards a new framework where communities of educators, students, and field practitioners continually interact, collaborate, connect, and explore active content. The field of digital signal processing (DSP) is an ideal venue to study, because DSP technologies are embedded in a host of important, fastmoving applications, including cell phones and modems; MP3, JPEG, and MPEG encoding for digital audio, cameras, and television; medical imaging scanners; radar and sonar systems; remote sensing satellites; and antilock braking systems to name just a few. DSP has become a central theme in electrical and computer engineering curricula—the first course in many ECE departments. DSP is even trickling into community colleges and high schools. And, thanks to new software tools and ever-advancing computer power, DSP applications can make otherwise dull-seeming engineering mathematics come alive via the sights and sounds of multimedia. We will study the approach of the Connexions DSP community to build and sustain the community through collaborations with for-profit corporations (National Instruments, who are building a free “LabVIEW” 12

player that will allow interactive DSP simulations to run in any web browser and who are contributing training materials to Connexions), publishers (Cambridge University Press, who will be publishing DSP texts for free in Connexions), and professional societies (the IEEE, who are exploring a peer review process for Connexions DSP materials).

Common Wisdom: Peer Production of Educational Materials Yochai Benkler, Yale University Thursday, September 29, 2005, 8:30-9:45 am 216 Eccles Conference Center The networked environment seems to have successfully released enormous creative energy in domains ranging from software design to encyclopedia writing. It has come, in many cases, to compete with and outperform traditional proprietary, market-based production. The question we face is whether the basic economics and organizational strategy that have proved so successful in other areas are equally applicable to learning objects and other educational resources. The answer seems to be: it depends. To download the full paper or purchase a printed copy please see http://www.lulu.com/content/162436

The Economic Case for Creative Commons Textbooks Fred Beshears, University of California at Berkeley Friday, September 30, 2005, 10:00-10:45 am 205 Eccles Conference Center According to a recent survey, University of California students now spend 40 percent more on textbooks than they did six years ago. This presentation examines how colleges and universities may be able to signiﬁcantly reduce these costs by creating a coalition for the acquisition and distribution of electronic textbooks. We begin by noting that although the textbook market seems rather tranquil at present, the same cannot be said for vendors of Learning Management Systems. One signiﬁcant proposal that could disrupt the learning software market has been put forward by Ira Fuchs, Vice President for Research at the Mellon Foundation. In a recent article, he proposes the creation of Educore—an organization dedicated to the development of open source educational software. According to Fuchs, Educore would be made up of more than 1,000 colleges and universities around the world. And, to pay for the cost of software development, each member institution would be asked to contribute between $5,000 and $25,000 per year, based on size. Inspired by Fuchs’s vision, this presentation explores the idea of establishing a global coalition of similar size that would acquire and distribute high-quality creative commons content that could be used in any of the following combinations: (a) as the basis of an online course, (b) as an electronic textbook, or (c) as a customized printed textbook for use in a traditional college course. Unlike MIT’s Open Courseware initiative, this presentation focuses on content for the big introductory courses that account for a large percentage of student eyeballs and a substantial portion of the textbook market. The business model for the coalition would be simple: traditional colleges and universities would agree to pay membership dues to purchase content from one or more open universities such as the British Open University. The coalition would not develop the content; it would purchase content in bulk. In addition to saving money, this presentation also looks at how open textbook content could give faculty the freedom to customize course materials. We examine the economically feasibility of an open textbook initiative 15

by reviewing how such open universities now spend on content development. We then look at how much it would cost to buy this content on an ongoing basis. Finally, we divide the cost of purchasing the content by the number of students in the coalition to see how this cost compares with the current cost of textbooks. According to our discussions with faculty, we find that a fair number of those who teach Berkeley’s large introductory courses would be willing and able to substitute open content for the commercial textbooks currently in use. But even if most instructors continued to use commercial textbooks, we believe that the figures show that it may still be that enough students will be able to use the initiative’s content to justify the small per-student cost. We also look at how schools may encourage instructors to use open textbook content by providing faculty stipends as well as paid student and staff support to help customize course content. We outline how some schools could support these costs by establishing a course material customization fee that could be far less than the current cost of commercial textbooks. Also, in our discussions with faculty we identify textbook selectors and authors to assess their stake in the textbook industry. Our initial findings are that only a very small percentage of faculty actually write textbooks. We also find that of this number only a small percentage report that they make a significant amount of money from their textbooks. On the other hand, we find that faculty who select textbooks for large survey courses are interested in the money that would be generated from a course material fee. In summary, it should be noted that this presentation is not a specific business proposal. Instead, the main purpose of this presentation is to stimulate discussion of a number of different but interrelated cost savings issues, each representing a different lever that policy makers could move separately or together. Some schools, for example, may want to treat the open textbook content simply as a library resource. Other schools, however, may want to provide faculty with financial incentives and resources to customize the coalition’s open content. If these costs were substantial, then policy makers might need to consider a course material fee, which students might accept if it’s less than what they currently pay for comparable commercial textbooks. Also, any specific policy proposal would need to address licensing issues governing how said customized content would be owned. And, finally, different means of distribution (electronic vs. print) would 16

entail different costs that would have to be addressed. The main point, however, is that a creative commons textbook initiative may not only save students money, it could also give faculty more freedom to customize the content of their courses. See related papers at: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/content2/20050407015813 and at http://istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Fall2005/opentextbook. html

Creating Infrastructure to Facilitate Data Use in Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Colleges and Universities Chris Bettinger, Alex Keller and Andrew Roderick, San Francisco State University Thursday, September 29, 2005, 10:00-10:45 am 201 Eccles Conference Center Technological innovation has ushered in an unprecedented expansion of social science data collection and dissemination. Because of these innovations, research and teaching now stands at the brink of a revolution in data usage that will fundamentally change how work is done in most social science disciplines. Doctoral Granting Institutions (DGIs) have played the leading role in this expansion, producing the bulk of social science data and dissemination tools; Masters level institutions (MLIs) have, for the most part, been consumers of this data with faculty constructing subsets of data for teaching and engaging in secondary data analysis. Thus while MLIs have been at the leading edge in open education endeavors, these endeavors have rarely been supported with leading edge technology. The above mentioned innovations open new opportunities at MLIs for leveraging technology in its open education efforts but formidable barriers need to be addressed if MLIs are to take full advantage of this brave new world. DIVA is a hardware backbone and set of software tools that faculty can use to enhance course content with real social science data and make their efforts more accessible to students and other interested parties. The software is built in PHP5, thus making both content and software open. It includes a data manager who helps faculty but, more importantly, creates a data community of faculty who can mutually support one another in their various endeavors. DIVA reshapes MLIs ability to deliver education in four ways. Using data across the disciplines: A convergence in data use has gained momentum over the last decade; in the future social science research will employ multiple methods as a matter of course.1 Because it handles the gamut of social science data types, DIVA software stands alone as a tool capable of facilitating the totality of multi-method research. DIVA is the only repository of social science data that houses multiple forms of data.2 This is a decisive break from the parochial division of data that kept disciplines from fully exploring all dimensions of 18

a given problem. Scholars expanding their vision of social research and crossing disciplinary lines have been hampered in their efforts by the fact that they go against the structure of academic research.3 Most major data repositories, for reasons of coherence, provide only one form of information.4 Most research support ofﬁces focus on a particular mode of research. But MLIs are faced with having to use multiple forms of data without the support faculty need from such research centers. DIVA changes this by providing the infrastructure that supports a disciplinary convergence in data use and cross-faculty communication. Reducing data management: DGIs operate the major data repositories. Without exception, these data repositories are accompanied by centers for research support. Lacking the resources of DGIs, MLIs typically leave social science faculty to operate as their own research support. The data manager and data handling tools of DIVA provide a modest level of support though much of the burden is still on individual faculty. However, DIVAs DIVA’ software platform allows for much easier cataloging of data resources and supporting documents. As faculty create subsets of data for use in research and teaching, that data can be seen and used by other faculty if the creator so chooses. UCLAs Department of Statistics and the Interuniversity Consortium UCLA’ for Political and Social Research’s Site for Instructional Materials and Information are all crude examples of this idea. DIVA is more robust and easily managed than any of these extant systems. It permanently lowers the barrier to bringing original data into the classroom by providing instructors a wide gamut of data and supporting documents created by their colleagues. Increasing collaboration: Collaboration between faculty is ubiquitous in social science. This past year, the majority of papers in the American Economic Review, the American Political Science Review, and the American Sociological Review were coauthored pieces, most often between faculty at different institutions. As we expand beyond the data terrain familiar to each of us, collaboration will increase as faculty lean towards working with others whose expertise complements their own. DIVA facilitates such collaboration. The data manager serves as a key player in putting faculty in contact with others who share similar substantive interests but have different methodological training. In the summers, faculty have the chance to meet like-interested researchers in the multiple open training workshops hosted by DIVA. Moreover, 19

DIVA exposes faculty users to the work of other users; searching through its holdings is a tacit invitation to make contact with others. Beyond serving as a conduit for making contact, DIVA software facilitates collaboration. Research teams or researcher-community collaborations can use it to create a common workspace accessible only to team members. The space can contain data files, notes, drafts of papers, and anything else that would need to be shared between team members. The researchers can access this data from any computer with an internet connection. Though common at DGIs, this capacity is absent from most MLIs, a pity given that MLIs do more work with the immediate community than do DGIs. The logistical nightmare of sharing in-progress work and common files simply disappears with DIVA. Sharing and disseminating information: MLIs are increasingly commuter campuses. At this institution, for example, faculty and students generally prefer to work from home but are often forced to come to campus to use resources. DIVA liberates users from this constraint; its data is available from any computer with an internet connection. As long as a user has appropriate permissions, they can access data wherever and whenever needed. Future versions of DIVA will also allow access to data analysis software. DIVA will utterly change faculty and student work patterns, making their efforts more efficient and convenient. DIVAs software improves how researchers share information with DIVA’ the public. Faculty can use the software to rapidly design websites containing data, reports, accompanying photos, and so forth for public or client consumption. Since there is no need for the faculty member to learn web publishing software, DIVA can serve as the dominant public face for research.

Generating Open Courseware using Podcasting, Screencasting, Blogs and Games Jean-Claude Bradley, Drexel University Friday, September 30, 2005, 11:00-11:45 am 205 Eccles Conference Center Being able to share course content with anyone who wants to learn can be a powerful benefit of creating online educational material. However, the migration of class content from an in-class to an online environment is a daunting task for many faculty. There are two main perceived risks associated with this transition. The first is the time risk. Faculty are hesitant to commit to producing online content when they have little experience and face steep learning curves. The second is the failure risk. There is a possibility that the online experiment will not proceed as hoped or expected and the fear is that the student learning experience will be compromised. These are both valid fears. The generation of a fully online class can require considerable time, skill and resources and can fall short of expectations. The use of screen capture technology as part of a strategy to convert course materials to an online format has proven to be effective to minimize both time and failure risks. The time risk is minimized because screen capture technology requires a very short learning curve and the faculty need to change very little of their current lecturing style. If an instructor usually gives lectures from PowerPoint then there is little to change except perhaps using the mouse to point instead of a laser pointer. For courses usually taught using an overhead projector or chalkboard, the transition to a tablet PC can be made with very little change in instruction method. The failure risk is minimized because the screen capture can be initiated with minimal disruption to the normal delivery of the lecture and the video can be initially provided to students simply as a bonus resource on a selective basis. As long as the instructor does not promise that this resource will be available, there is a minimal risk of adversely affecting the learning experience. As a next step, faculty may offer an online option for their class. In this case students can opt to receive their instruction online only when they are comfortable with the technology. This approach also permits a convenient parallel channel to deliver content. The avi files generated by the screen capture technology can be converted to mp3 audio files and distributed by podcasting. This option was actually requested by a student who had difficulty with the streaming video due to low bandwidth at home. He reported that listening to the audio 21

and following along with the lecture notes was adequate for most of the content. Other comments by students in class evaluations were uniformly positive. Screencasting and podcasting lectures is proven to be an effective, high impact and low cost approach to experiment with online education with minimum time and failure risk to faculty with little technical expertise. In addition, the use of blogs as a vehicle for the distribution of podcasts and screencasts can be leveraged to manage student assignments and to make them publicly available. Finally, some examples of the use of online content within a 3D online multi-player gaming environment will be demonstrated.

Digital Culture and Learning in the Digital Age John Seely Brown, University of Southern California, Annenberg Center for Communication Thursday, September 29, 2005, 8:30-9:45 am 216 Eccles Conference Center Rethinking how today’s kids that grow up digital learn, think, work, communicate and socialize. Understanding today’s digital kids is of growing importance, not only to educators, but also to human resource departments, strategists and marketing folks. Understanding the social practices and constructivist ecologies being created around open source and massively multiplayer games will provide a glimpse into new kinds of innovation ecologies and some of the ways that meaning is created for these kids—ages 10 to 40. Perhaps our generation is focused on information, but these kids focus on meaning—how does information take on meaning?

From Open Content Repositories to Open Sensemaking Communities Simon J. Buckingham Shum, The Open University Thursday, September 29, 2005, 2:15-3:00 pm 309 Eccles Conference Center Summary The Open Content movement is concerned with enabling students and educators to access material, in order to then learn from it, and reuse it either in one’s studies or one’s own courses. The core efforts to date have focused on enabling access, e.g. building the organizational/ political will to release and license content, and in developing open infrastructures for educators to then publish and reassemble it. The key challenge in the next phase of the open content movement is to improve the support for prospective students to engage with and learn from the material, and with each other though peer learning support, in the absence of formally imposed study timetables and assessment deadlines. This paper reports on tools for e-learning and collaborative sensemaking developed at the UK Open University which are now being considered as candidates for open content learning support. Framing the challenges The Open University (OU) is Europe’s biggest University, with over 220,000 students. With 170,000 students online, the OU is the UK’s largest e-learning institution, and specializes in providing the support that distance learners require through small group tutors, online interaction, print and digital media. Fundamentally, the OU’s perspective is that open distance learning does not ‘‘just happen’ when a student encounters ‘content’, but that the engagement must be crafted and scaffolded. This is of course a core element to any instructional design approach, but the challenges are more acute when most of the time the student is working alone much of the time, and it is in this context that the OU has developed particular instructional design strategies. Arguably, this is the mode in which most learners will engage with open content most of the time (but this hypothesis may be refuted by studies of open content learners, and possibly by emergent patterns of social software use). I propose four key challenges for the open content movement to move to the next level: 1. Engage the instructional, multimedia design and computersupported collaborative learning research and practitioner 24

communities, some of whose members will engage with open content when they catch the vision. These fields are as much craft as science, and require situated, focused application to the open content context. 2. Contextualize this knowledge to embrace the particular demands of what we might term Open Learning Pedagogy which cannot assume the same work process support normally present in a coherent course for which one is paying, and pursuing with a stable cohort of peers. In an Open Content user scenario at present (e.g. a web search brings up a new learning object), there may well be no study guide, assessment, expert support or peer group, or they may not be apparent on initial inspection. 3. Develop engaging, integrated tools to support learning, not just resource discovery. 4. Develop engaging, integrated tools to provide the social support often needed to maintain motivation when pursuing serious study with difficult material. In the remainder of this abstract I will sketch some of the sensemakingsupport and social software tools at the Open University for supporting (3) and (4) above, based on (1) and (2). Tools for collective sensemaking We use the term collective sensemaking to refer to the broad spectrum of activities that occurs when an individual or group must construct meaning from an array of environmental inputs. [1] They must literally “make” sense by giving form and utterance to the emerging picture they are constructing as they grapple with the material. Our tools are designed to assist users in giving form and shape to their ideas as they evolve from ill-formed, inchoate structures to more formal, rigorously organized expressions, very much as in the cognition of writing. One example is the D3E is a tool for document-centric discussion. [2] The document could be a research paper, a policy proposal, or a multimedia student assignment. The tool makes it easy to transform an HTML file or URL into an interactive document, tightly integrated with topic-specific or section-specific discussion threads. D3E has been used since 1996 to publish the award-winning e-journal JIME [3] in order to support conversational Web peer review. D3Eprints is a specialization for the auto-generation of document discussion spaces for Eprint 25

archive documents. [4] The OSLO group has already integrated this kind of functionality into open content repositories. [5] Another example of such a tool is the Compendium semantic hypermedia concept mapping tool [6] which has been used in online contexts as diverse as NASA science teams [7], modeling the Iraq debate [8] and long term doctoral research [9]. Another is the ScholOnto suite of tools for annotating, visualizing, ﬁltering and navigating networks of knowledge level claims about the connections between documents in a literature. [10] These make use of a metadata scheme which focuses on the connections between ideas/resources, as opposed to trying to classify the resources themselves, which is the usual focus of metadata or annotation. It then becomes possible to ask queries which will get you nowhere with a conventional search engine: Whose work supports or challenges this article? On what previous results did this idea build? What impact has this result had: has anyone replicated the data? Has anyone extended the methodology? All of these are examples of the missing interpretational, sensemaking layer in a content repository –the space for expressing and contesting perspectives –but with the difference that they provide explicit support for working with conceptual structure which is lost in email lists or threaded web boards. Social software A raft of community-building tools has emerged in recent years, all of which are now being assessed for their potential in a learning context: blogs, wikis, RSS feeds. We are also focusing on the slippery notion of online presence, which, we hypothesize, will be an important affordance of mature open content repositories as students seek like-minded peers. We are developing augmented instant messaging with tools such as BuddySpace [11] which include conceptual and geographical visualizations of online peers, Hexagon [12] which provides lo-ﬁ video snapshots of colleagues, and FlashMeeting [13] which offers video conferencing to anyone with a Web browser and the Macromedia Flash plug-in. We envisage that integrated into an open content environment, these and other tools will offer a spectrum of communication options to learners, for peer-to-peer interaction and tutoring. All of these tools are now being trialed in the Open University. A more detailed overview, and the replayable webcast of a hybrid physical/ 26

virtual workshop which deployed many of them live, can be accessed from the e-PhD project. [14] Some of these will be demonstrated in the presentation to better convey their affordances. Conclusion It is early days for the open content movement, but an important trajectory to pursue is to bring to bear the pedagogical expertise and software design expertise needed to tackle the four challenges proposed. Examples have been given of emerging tools for sensemaking and social presence awareness. Future work aims to integrate these into open content repositories, to move them from the ďŹ rst key step of gaining access, to the ultimate reason we are doing this: facilitating learning. References [1] Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications [2] Digital Document Discourse Environment: http://d3e. sourceforge.net. [3] Journal of Interactive Media in Education: jime.open.ac.uk. [4] Eprints: Open Archives Initiative server software: http://www. eprints.org. [5] Open Sustainable Learning Opportunities: http://oslo.usu.edu/. [6] Compendium Institute: http://www.CompendiumInstitute.org. [7] Clancey, W.J. et al. (2005) Automating CapCom Using Mobile Agents and Robotic Assistants. Proc. AIAA 1st Space Exploration Conference: http://eprints.aktors.org/375. [8] Okada, A. and Buckingham Shum, S. (2005). Results of Iraq Debate Modelling in Compendium: http://www.globalargument. net/experiments/1. [9] Selvin, A.M. and Buckingham Shum, S.J. (2005). Hypermedia as a Productivity Tool for Doctoral Research. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 11 (1), 91-102. [10] Scholarly Ontologies project: http://www.kmi.open.ac.uk/ projects/scholonto. [11] BuddySpace instant messaging and presence visualization: www.buddyspace.org. [12] Hexagon video presence: http://hexagon.open.ac.uk. [13] FlashMeeting: www.ďŹ&#x201A;ashmeeting.com. [14] e-PhD project, Knowledge Media Institute: http://www.kmi. open.ac.uk/projects/e-phd. 27

Overcoming Barriers to Open Education Stewart Cheifet, Internet Archive Thursday, September 29, 2005, 2:15-3:00 pm 207 Eccles Conference Center One of the basic barriers to open education online is the ability to provide a safe and secure digital home for educational content and to provide free and open access to that content with an appropriate user interface. The Internet Archive is focusing on overcoming these barriers by building a secure digital repository for educational materials in all formsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;text, images, audio, video, and software. The use of rich media in education, such as audio, video, animation, and computer generated simulations, is an established practice in expanding the scope and pedagogical value of educational materials. However, the world of digital audio and video is a complex one, with different standards, changing standards, and high costs for storage and bandwidth. The emphasis at the Internet Archive has been to overcome those barriers by providing free infrastructure to educational institutions to enable them to provide the full spectrum of educational content to educators and self-learners, including actual video and audio recordings of class sessions. Two new initiatives at the Internet Archive are aimed at further addressing these issues. The Education Collection One is a new separate Education Collection which will aggregate a variety of materials, in a variety of media formats, to simplify the process of accessing and interacting with these educational materials. In addition, the Internet Archive is now working with private and public on campus networks to make these materials available through their existing online student services. Educational resources in the new Education Collection will include the complete course schedule from ArsDigita University. The curriculum includes courses such as Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Basic Object Oriented Programming, Mathematics for Computer Science, Discrete Mathematics, Relational Database 29

Management Systems, Applied Probability, Digital Logic, Computer Organization and Design, Algorithm Design and Analysis, Distributed Systems, Graphical Display of Information, Design of Dynamic Database Driven Web Sites, Theory of Computation, Artificial Intelligence, Solutions to Problem Sets, and Unix Workshop. Another component of the Education Collection will be new National Repository of Online Courses from the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education. These are interactive, flash-based courses covering the subjects of Calculus, Physics, Environmental Sciences, United States History and United States Government. Existing online educational content in the Internet Archive collection will also be added to the new Education Collection. These include the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute post graduate lectures in mathematics. These include over 400 full video lectures by distinguished faculty from universities around the world. Subjects covered include such diverse mathematical topics as fast multiplying, geometry, Fountain Codes, Gauge Theory, Quantum Fourier Transformations, and Fermat’s Last Theorem. Another part of the new Education Collection will be demonstration courses from the MIT Open Courseware program including the introductory course on Differential Equations complete with lecture notes and actual in class video lectures. This course contains 33 lectures, each in three different file sizes, covering such topics as Oscillations, Linearity, Formal Polynomials, Fourier Series, LaPlace Transforms, Matrices, and Autonomous Systems. Additional education materials will be offered in the humanities, literature, and history. One major collection is the audio lectures from Naropa University featuring readings and lectures on the history of American poetry and literature with such distinguished presenters as Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and others. Other educational resources available include the Prelinger Collection of cultural ephemera, a collection of over 600 Universal Film Newsreels from 1929 through 1967, and a collection of United States presidential audio recordings from the University of Virginia. 30

Open Access Text Archive In the area of educational texts, the Internet Archive is about to launch a major new initiative called the Open Access Text Archive. This is a signiďŹ cant new step toward developing advanced book scanning and processing technology so that full, searchable, downloadable text materials can be made available to students without any use limitations and without any exploitation of this content, or user data, for commercial purposes. Supported by a two million dollar grant from the Sloane Foundation, this initiative involves both new hardware and software and new systems for distributing the content enabling â&#x20AC;&#x153;book to bookâ&#x20AC;? processes which transform existing analog books into digital books which can then be reprinted as analog books, where appropriate. Partners in this new initiative include the University of California and the University of Toronto. The Internet Archive is also taking advantage of international differences in copyright law to customize certain collections in various media forms in other parts of the world to maximize public access to worthwhile educational content. This is being done utilizing separate data repositories in Alexandria, Egypt and Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The Case for Opencourseware John Dehlin, Utah State University Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 10:00-10:20 am 216 Eccles Conference Center In 1999, MIT took a bold leap in deciding to make all of their university course materials freely available on the Internet through “MIT OpenCourseWare”. Today, the materials for over 1,200 MIT courses are openly available. In addition, more than 50 universities worldwide have followed MIT into the Opencourseware arena. In this session, we will review the progress of the Opencourseware movement. We will discuss the current list of adopters, some of the lessons learned, and the beneﬁts of joining this movement (from a professorial and institutional perspective).

eduCommons Hands-On John Dehlin and Shelley Henson, Utah State University Friday, September 30, 2005, 10:00-10:45 am 207 Eccles Conference Center Interested in joining the opencourseware movement? If so, eduCommons is your key to success. eduCommons is an open source “Opencourseware Management System” funded by the Hewlett Foundation. eduCommons provides support for course importing (via IMS Content Packaging), course design, metadata at the object level, the tracking of copyright clearance, search, workﬂow, web publishing, discussion groups and many other features critical to a successful opencourseware implementation. Come see how eduCommons can make your opencourseware project a smashing success.

The Four Pillars of Open Education Program Sustainability: Usability, Content, Community and Brand Equity Paul Dholakia and W. Joseph King, Rice University Thursday, September 29, 2005, 1:15-2:00 pm 205 Eccles Conference Center In the last five years or so, dozens of open education programs have been launched by major universities or consortia of universities. Most of these projects share similar goals such as compiling repositories of educational materials, enabling access of hitherto inaccessible educational materials to new audiences, e.g., developing country students, fostering collaboration among authors, instructors, and/or students of a particular subject, and allowing customization and personalization of educational materials to suit particular local contexts. Like any other product or service, the growth in number of open education programs has been accompanied by increasing competition for both available financial resources, and for the finite pool of authors and users. Under such circumstances, how can the founders and organizers of an open education program ensure its sustainability, (i.e., adequate revenue generation to fund program operation)? For approximately the last year and a half, we have been systematically working to answer this question for the Connexions project (http://cnx. rice.edu) at Rice University. Connexions is a mediated environment comprised of a powerful and comprehensive set of open source software tools for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the web. Its “Content Commons” contains educational materials organized in small chunks or “modules” that are easily connected into larger courses. All content is free to use and reuse under the Creative Commons “attribution” license. Our current perspective is that an open education program such as Connexions can be made sustainable to the extent that it provides significant and non-substitutable value to its constituents. Our ongoing research suggests that the four crucial drivers of value for open education programs participants are: (1) ease of use of the software environment, (2) the quality and depth of available content, (3) the size and vibrancy of the user community, and (4) the equity of the open education program’s brand. Our view is rooted in the “customer equity” marketing paradigm (e.g., Rust, Zeithaml, & Lemon, 2000) which 34

posits that a firm’s value is the cumulative value of its customer base, which in turn is comprised of the aggregation of the different value components that each customer obtains from using the firm’s offerings. Applying this concept to Connexions, we see our role as increasing the “customer equity” of three distinct Connexions user groups: authors who create new content, instructors who customize and repackage content and deliver it offline and online, and consumers who consume the content and learn. As the aggregate value of the Connexions site to these three constituent groups increases, the growth will enable us to pursue particular revenue models to make the project sustainable (Weber, 2004). In the presentation, we will discuss our model of open education program sustainability by elaborating on each of these four success factors in detail, in particular the ways in which they provide value to our constituent groups, and how they drive the program’s sustainability. Here, we briefly describe each of the four drivers. First, consider the software tools that enable the user to interact with the educational content repository. Considerable prior research on technology acceptance within the information systems literature has shown that perceived ease of use is a primary driver of adoption of new technology in general by individuals (e.g., Davis, 1989; Bagozzi, Davis, & Warshaw, 1992) and for software adoption in particular (e.g., Venkatesh & Davis, 2000). It is very important to have a navigation, authoring, and communication interface that is intuitive, easy to learn, and easy to use for both first-time and seasoned users of the education site. Second, the quality and depth of content is important in allowing users to accomplish the goals for which they have adopted the open education program site. Many users discover the open education repository and first visit through a referral from a search engine. They are searching for specific information, for a specific purpose. Content quality is therefore crucial for creating initial perceptions regarding the site among new users. More importantly, users revisit the site and become “sticky” users when they find deep content concerning the topic that they are interested in (e.g., Partow & Slusky, 2001). These findings suggest that it may be better for a site to provide deep content in a few specific subject areas than to provide shallow content across a lot of different subject areas. Where the first two drivers can be said to provide functional value 35

to users, the remaining two drivers deliver symbolic value (e.g., Tan & Ming, 2003). The third success factor for open education program sustainability is an engaged user community community. Considerable recent research has suggested that an active and engaged community of users of sufficient size around any particular subject is an important driver for attaining many of the open education program objectives such as collaboration, learning, and loyalty among users (e.g., Algesheimer, Dholakia, & Herrmann, 2005; Dholakia, Bagozzi, & Klein Pearo, 2004). Users can derive value from community participation through many ways: getting specific questions answered, gaining recognition and prestige from their knowledge, obtaining social support, etc. Furthermore, research has shown that initial community participation should be targeted among seasoned users of the site, with little or no recruitment of new users into the community (Bagozzi & Dholakia, 2005). Fourth and finally, the brand’s image is an important differentiating attribute in the currently cluttered and competitive marketplace of open education programs (e.g., Keller, 2003). In our presentation, we will consider how to increase the equity of the program’s brand using the extensive academic research on brand management and the psychology of branding.

Creating a Public Library of Science Helen J. Doyle, Public Library of Science Thursday, September 29, 2005, 10:00-10:45 am 309 Eccles Conference Center As recorded in the year 1869 in Nature, the prominent international journal of science, the role of scientific publications is: “First, to place before the general public the grand results of Scientific work and Scientific discovery; and to urge the claims of Science to a more general recognition in Education and daily life. Secondly, to aid scientific men themselves, by giving early information of all advances made in any branch of natural knowledge throughout the world, and by affording them an opportunity of discussing the various scientific questions which arise from time to time.”

The more freely accessible these publications are, the greater their value to scientists, doctors, educators, patients, students, and other members of the public. And the more freely new scientific discoveries are shared, applied, and built on, the greater the impact scientific research will have on health, education, economic development, and other challenges society faces. Unfortunately, most peer-reviewed scientific journals, including Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html), are hidden behind costly subscription and toll-access barriers. In the 21st century, when information can be disseminated immediately and inexpensively via the Internet and people have come to expect instant access to information, most of the world’s treasury of scientific knowledge is simply not freely available to the public. In other words, there is no “public library of science.” Open Access as a Disruptive Technology As an open access publisher and advocacy organization, the Public Library of Science (PLoS, http://www.plos.org/) is changing this scenario by demonstrating a new financial model for scholarly publishing that does not generate revenue by restricting access to our journals. As practiced by PLoS, “open access” publication allows anyone with a connection to the Internet to find, read and use our 37

journals. And PLoS journal articles are governed by a progressive copyright license that permits the liberal re-use and re-purposing of the entire work: PLoS journals, for example, use the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/2.0/), which requires only that the author(s) of the original article be acknowledged. By removing both financial and legal barriers, PLoS aims to liberate the scientific and medical literature into the global information commons— to create a “public library of science” for the global community. And we hope to transform the entire scientific publishing industry into a system based on open access business models. Open Access as a Sustainable Business Model PLoS journals employ a new business model for scholarly publishing that relies on generating revenue from publication fees, rather than from subscriptions. This business model is a natural outgrowth of the advent of electronic publishing and the Internet, which offers a rapid, inexpensive, and efficient means of disseminating and accessing information. To make our journals financially sustainable, we ask authors to pay a charge, currently set at $1500 per research article, to publish in PLoS journals, a fee generally covered with funds from authors’ research grants or institutional budgets. To ensure that all work that passes our journals’ peer review standards will be published, we have a policy to waive fees for any author that indicates an inability to pay part or all of the publication charge, no questions asked. (It’s worth noting that not all open access journals employ the same business model, and that there are other ways besides publication charges to finance publishing and avoid charging subscriptions.) Open Access as a Global Public Good With their unrestricted access and progressive copyrights, open access journals such as those published by PLoS are simply a means to a greater end—that is, the unrestricted sharing and re-use of knowledge that enables more immediate and creative applications of new discoveries and ideas. PLoS believes that open access will not only transform scholarly communication, but will transform the way scholarship and research is incorporated into all areas of public life by facilitating unlimited “creative re-uses” of the literature. 38

Perhaps most importantly, open access journals can help bridge the “knowledge gap” between wealthy and less wealthy countries and institutions and between people with access to libraries and subscription journals and those who lack access. Open access journals contribute to the global movement that believes access to information is a human right, not a privilege, and that information is a valuable commodity that can help underserved communities improve their conditions, be they urban community colleges, rural health clinics, local policy-making organizations, or individuals. An Open Access Future Open access publishers like PLoS are fully dedicated to transforming the way scientists communicate among themselves and with the public through their peer-reviewed publications. The combination of electronic dissemination of new research discoveries and the progressive copyright licenses provided by Creative Commons creates a powerful force for change in scholarly communication and, ultimately, for increasing the impact of our collective investments in scientiﬁc and medical research. Nonetheless, we and other open access publishers have much to do to ensure that the full impact of our journals is realized. Our audience is larger than the research community or health practitioners—and we now need to serve that global audience better. We are eager to infuse technological innovation and creativity into our newly established open access journals, creating a “public library of science” that leads the way toward an open access future.

Open Learning: A Web-based Model for Self-directed Foreign-language Instruction Jacques du Plessis, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Friday, September 30, 2005, 11:00-11:45 am 307 Eccles Conference Center Research Objective This research project on open learning and web-based instruction harnesses more than two decades of foreign language teaching experience. The objective of this research is to determine how to succeed in building an online learning community consisting completely of volunteers. The following objectives were addressed. Within an open access web learning environment, how is it best possible to: • attract and retain learners • enable learners to follow alternative routes in their studies and how to keep track of their progress • present multiple ways to address the same subject matter to allow students with different perspectives and contextual backgrounds to understand • build collaboration between novice learners and advanced learners and native speakers • establish a feedback system in order to evaluate the learning content and how well it addresses the learning objectives Methodology The methods to attract students require a consistent effort to get the word out to the global online population. The following methods were employed: • tactics to rank high on popular search engines, especially on Google • strategies to attain a good ranking based on speciﬁc search terms • networking with similar sites to cross link to each other’s sites • distributing the URL to discussion boards and relevant listservs • submitting the website for peer review and using positive feedback to promote the site with noted scholars and persons with inﬂuence within the subject domain to further promote the site Retaining students addresses complex variables, including (i) the diverse reasons for participation by at will learners, (ii) variables 40

related to the wide geographic distribution of students, (iii) learner experiences and perceptions of the interface and the content, etc. Through a systematic approach personal contact was made with each learner and collaboration and communication tools were exploited, including threaded discussions, chat rooms, blogs, and VOIP to change the expected paradigm from student and website interacting to student interacting with website resources, and using the website as a mediation tool to communicate with other learners and speakers (Zhu and Baylen, 2005). The website follows a modular approach that allows students to focus on any content unit. There is no rigidly prescribed path to follow and units stand independent of each other. The expanding list of collaboration tools allows students to make each others acquaintance and to collaborate in a synchronous or asynchronous mode. Regular email with the whole online community promotes a sense of belonging and the willingness to reach out to other site participants. A checkbox progression sheet and comment box enables learners to track their progression and to plan their study. An analysis of website trafďŹ c reveals visiting patterns, how newcomers ďŹ nd the site and how often users return. Findings With the range of learning options today, the no-fee, open access learning platform is not meant to replace other options, but it has proved to address an unmet need. In this instance, with the subject matter being a less commonly taught foreign language, the wide range of prior experience with the language demands an instructional design that is modular and allows equal access to any level. Users completely determine when they do their learning and what they want to learn. The geographic spread of users is truly global, including every continent. The reasons for committing to the learning differ widely. It remains an ongoing challenge to exploit the communication and collaboration tools to support the learning community. The quest remains to generate social interaction centered on the language learning objective so that novice and experienced learners and native speakers provide the scaffolding to help each other along and to have 41

interaction with native speakers. Ample opportunities can be created to listen to live radio in the target language, listen to streaming audio (stories, songs, interviews, etc.) and to watch video clips on varying topics. Many of these resources are not available in some foreignlanguage classrooms. Within this framework the resources form a support to the individual. A collaborative community provides the dynamic support to cover the inflexibility of static resources. The learning community also provides emotional support and motivation. Conclusions An analysis of traffic to the site, as well statistics internal to the site has proven that open learning at no cost is popular. The use of audio and video streaming and interactive activities has confirmed that the limitations of web-based instruction are not rigid. It is postulated that the concept of self-instruction at the college level can be greatly expanded. In this specific project, the next phase is to offer online examinations and possibly tie the examinations to university credit. Open learning on the web is enhanced by increased access to broadband. The target audience is truly global. The new challenge is how to move beyond static presentations and how to create learning communities in online learning and anchor a self perpetuating community of learning and teaching collaborations. References Chizmar, J.F. and Williams, D.B. (1996). ““Altering Time and Space through Network Technologies to Enhance Learning” CAUSE/ EFFECT Volume 19, Number 3, Fall 1996, pp. 14-21. Accessed online on July 14, 2005 at http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/html/cem/ cem96/cem9634.html Davis, H. J. (1997). “The progression and future of open learning: A stakeholder perspective within management development”. Journal of Management Development, 1997, Vol. 16 Issue 5/6. Zhu, E. and Baylen, D. (Sept. 2005). “From learning community to community learning: pedagogy, technology and interactivity”. Educational Media International; Sep. 2005, Vol. 42 Issue 3, p 251.

Underlying Open Learning Development—Reflections on Elements of Success in Open Sourcing Jacques Du Plessis and Alex Koohang, University of WisconsinMilwaukee Thursday, September 29, 2005, 3:15-4:00 pm 309 Eccles Conference Center Higher education institutions have begun the formation of open source applications in recent years. They reduce vendor control and lock-ins. They are flexible and possess definitive access, control, ownership, and freedom (Young, 2004). Freedom to choose, increasing user access, increasing user control, encouraging the formation of a global community/communities of practice, promoting quality, and enhancing innovation in teaching and learning are among many benefits open learning model offers (Coppola & Neelley 2004). Claroline (http://www.claroline.net), .LRN Course Management (http://www.collaboraid.biz/products/dotlrn), Moodle (http://moodle.org) and EduZope (http://www.eduzope.org) are some examples of open source CMS options. Open source is software’s source code made freely available to anyone who wishes to expand, modify, and improve the code. The success stories of open source model are Linux (http://www.linux. org) and NetBeans (http://www.netbeans.org/about/index.html). The source codes to both Linux and NetBeans are available to anyone who wishes to reuse as they see fit, under the terms of use. Other examples of the open source model are learning object repositories such as CAREO (http://careo.netera.ca), Distributed Learning Object Repository Network (DLORN) (http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/dlorn/ dlorn.cgi), MERLOT (http://www.merlot.org/Home.po), Open Course (http://opencourse.org), and OpenCourseWare (MIT) (http://ocw.mit. edu/index.html). The research emphasis of this paper is to explore the reasons why open source works. The specific areas addressed include the structuring of the community, the evangelism efforts, the license agreement, and quality control. The paper uses the essay, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” (Raymond, 1999) as a basis to explore the underlying differences between 43

traditional commercial software development and the open source models. Several open source developments are investigated and a review of literature is used to analyze the communities of practice, the development cycles, the mainstream acceptance of these applications, and the longevity of these development projects. As Raymond (1999) indicated, we ﬁnd that the Bazaar’s infrastructure is crucial. Without an infrastructure the mission of the Bazaar is frustrated. However, a good infrastructure allows the vision of the Bazaar to be realized and the affordances of group-think and groupproduction can be realized. When looking at software development, the ﬁrst analogy describes the traditional corporate environment and the open source development environment. The cathedral-type system requires order and it is managed top-down. This model claims private ownership and exists primarily in a spirit of competition. The source code is proprietary and every effort is made to make users dependent on the cathedral’s products. The bazaar-type of development is less predictable. It is an environment where strangers all over the globe participate in the development and enhancement of software. The tire-kicking, willing contributions, bartering, and collaborations happen freely to express and meet the needs of the participants. Unlike the cathedral, the bazaar exists because people are willing to publicly collaborate in development. The bazaar is based on public ownership. Should an entity depend on a product, their source code can protect them should the development infrastructure disintegrate. The concept of reusability can be seen from the context of either a service or a product. The transformation of libraries helps explain this reality. Traditional libraries provide reusable products (books). The same book can be checked out many times. On the other hand, digital libraries provide a reusable service. The library would be subscribed to databases. This access to the database is a reusable service. The moment this access fee is not paid up, the library loses the service and with the service gone, there is no product either. A library that purchased a product instead, would still have the product should the 44

money to enhance the acquisitions dry up. It is then a question of ownership once the money has been paid. Within the context LOs, the future will continue to offer both types of reusability. What should be avoided is to predominantly have access to LOs as a service which implies being at the mercy of an institution or individual for access. Textbooks (a tangible LO) illustrates what will be in the future, but it also illustrates what is lacking in alternatives. Textbook companies strive to produce the best possible product. The catch is the cost. The product is good, but the costs are high, and the textbook company has to ensure that the textbook has to be purchased frequently to maximize the return on their investment. This is done with copyright protection and frequent updates and new editions. In theory, an open-source textbook could bring great minds together to continually develop a superb product and to ensure free distribution. This might offer a much-needed alternative that is presently not adequately nurtured. Although there is evidence of open source code as far back as the 50â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, the infrastructure that the Internet provides in tying together the global community has laid the groundwork for the development of networking and P2P interactions and a social understanding of new ways of working and collaborating. Many of these efforts are now maturing. The maturity is rated against the success of the products and how well such products hold op to their commercial counterparts. The time is right for several developments to migrate into each others purviews, viz. open source development, open learning, sharable open content, especially reusable learning objects, unfettered by copyright restrictions. References Coppola, C. & Neelley, E. (2004). Open source open learning: Why open source makes sense for education. Retrieved October 27, 2004, from http://www.rsmart.com/assets/OpenSourceOpensLear ningJuly2004.pdf Young J. (September, 2004). Five challenges for open source. Chronicle of Higher Education.

“Using the Cultural Adaptation Process (CAP) Model” Adapting eLearning for Use by Non-Western Cultures Andrea Edmundson, eWorldLearning.com Friday, September 30, 2005, 11:00-11:45 am 203 Eccles Conference Center The term globalization gained currency in the 1970s as Western corporations rapidly expanded into other parts of the world (Jarvis, 2002), accelerating cross-cultural exchanges (Walker & Dimmock, 2002). Industrial anthropologists, such as Hall (2003; 1981) Hofstede (1984;1997; 2001) and Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner (1998), have identiﬁed cross-cultural dimensions—categories of characteristics across which cultures can be compared and contrasted—to begin to explain how members different cultures communicate, perceive time, or view themselves in relation to others and to the environment. Thus, as e-learning options proliferate and globalization continues members of this expanding audience of learners are more likely to encounter courses created by another culture. Most e-learning courses are designed in Western cultures; however, the largest and fastestgrowing consumer groups live in Eastern cultures such as China, Japan, and India (Van Dam & Rogers, 2002). Educators will thus be challenged to provide e-learning opportunities that result in equitable learning outcomes for targeted cultures by addressing differences in educational systems and cultural values. In particular, corporations that have outsourced sections of their workforce will be challenged with providing training for employees in non-Western or non-American cultures. Today, much of this training is provided via e-learning. However, to be successful, e-learning courses, typically designed in western cultures, will more likely be successful if they meet the needs of learners in non-western cultures. This presentation is based on current literature and an exploratory, quasi-experimental study (posttest-only control group design), The Cross-Cultural Dimensions of Globalized e-Learning: Pre-testing was neither desirable nor useful in this study, as the researcher was interested in the differences between learning outcomes caused by the culture, rather than the knowledge or skills generated by the e-learning course. The study examined the effects of cross-cultural dimensions on learning outcomes for employees in functionally equivalent jobs in Western and Eastern cultures. Participants from the United States and India completed a Level 1 e-learning course (one with minimized 46

cultural influences) that was designed in the United States. Results (scores, time to complete the course and number of attempts needed to complete the course) were compared for 757 participants, using students’ t tests. Subsequently, 204 randomly selected completers of the e-learning course then reported their perceptions of the e-learning experience in an online survey. The problem addressed in this study was: ““Are e-learning courses designed in a Western culture equally effective when used in an Eastern culture?” The research questions used to address this problem were as follows: When taking an e-learning course designed in a Western culture, do participants from Eastern and Western cultures experience equitable learning outcomes? Do they have different preferences for or perceptions of elearning? If there are strong similarities or significant differences in learning outcomes between the two cultures, in participants’ use of features, or in their preferences or perceptions, are these similarities or differences related to the cross-cultural dimensions described in the literature? Learners from both cultures achieved equitable learning outcomes, suggesting that characteristics of a Level 1 e-learning course can mediate the effects of culture that may inhibit the achievement of equitable learning outcomes. In addition, while cross-cultural dimensions did seem to affect learners’ preferences for and perceptions of e-learning, both Eastern and Western participants were willing to try new approaches to learning that did not align with their cultural profiles, as identified in the literature. Based on the results of this study, the cultural adaptation process (CAP) model was presented as a preliminary guideline for adapting elearning courses for other cultures. The use of this model could assist corporations who are training their outsourced employees in another culture to ensure that all employees understand the training and acquire the desired skills. 47

Domestically, providers of e-learning will be challenged to accommodate increasingly culturally heterogeneous audiences of learners. In 1997, 36% of students in the United States were from nondominant ethnic groups, yet 86% of new teachers were white, and only 3% of teachers spoke a second language (from the National Center for Educational Statistics in Carter, 2000). From an instructional point of view, incompatibilities between the cross-cultural characteristics of e-learning courses and learners could cause inequitable learning outcomes (Henderson, 1996). For example, members of cultures may prefer to learn in a particular manner (Gardner, 1989; Horton, 1999), or they may have speciﬁc approaches to problem solving (Lave, 1988; Soh, 1999) and creativity (Gardner, 1989). Or, a pedagogical paradigm espoused by one culture could alienate or confuse targeted learners (Hall, 1981), as could unintentional cultural biases in instructional design (McLoughlin, 1999). Thus, both producers and consumers of elearning in cultures other than the designing culture may beneﬁt from understanding and applying principles addressed by this study. References Carter, R. T. (2000). Reimagining race in education: A new paradigm for psychology. Teachers College Record, 102(5), 864-898. Gardner, H. (1989). To open minds: Chinese clues to the dilemma of contemporary American education. New York: Basic Books. Hall, A. (2003, June 2003). A Paperless Society Society, [Electronic newsletter]. The Public Library of Steubenville and Jefferson County [2003, Sept. 30]. Hall, E. T. (1981). Beyond culture: Into the cultural unconscious (1st ed.). Garden City, NY: Anchor Press. Henderson, L. (1996). Instructional design of interactive multimedia: A cultural critique. Educational Technology Research and Development, 44(4), 85-104. Hofstede, G. H. (1984). Culture’s consequences: International differences in Work-Related Values (Abridged ed. Vol. 5). Newbury Park: SAGE Publications. Hofstede, G. H. (1997). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind (Second ed.). London; New York: McGraw-Hill. Hofstede, G. H. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Horton, W. (1999, 2003). Multicultural multimedia: Teaching and 48

reaching the whole wide world, [Website]. William Horton Consulting. Available: http://www.horton.com [2003, February 14]. Jarvis, P. (2002). Globalization, citizenship and the education of adults in contemporary European society. Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education, 32(1), 5-19. Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice: Mind, mathematics, and culture in everyday life. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. McLoughlin, C. (1999). Culturally responsive technology use: Developing an online community of learners. British Journal of Educational Technology, 30(3), 231-245. Soh, K.-C. (1999). East-West difference in views on creativity: Is Howard Gardner correct? Yes and no. Journal of Creative Behavior, 33(2), 112-125. Trompenaars, A., & Hampden-Turner, C. (1998). Riding the waves of culture: Understanding cultural diversity in global business (2nd ed.). New York, London: McGraw Hill. Van Dam, N., & Rogers, E. (2002). E-learning cultures around the world. e-Learning, 3(5), 28-32. Walker, A., & Dimmock, C. A. J. (Eds.). (2002). School leadership and administration: Adopting a cultural perspective. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

Wikipedia Terry Foote, Wikipedia Foundation Thursday, September 29, 2005, 1:15-2:00 pm 207 Eccles Conference Center A general overview of Wikipedia, which will include a descrition of the Wikimedian Foundation, and what Wikipedia is. Also I will discuss the ““4 freedoms of Wikipedia”, and other core principles of Wikipedia. Statistics will be covered, including Wikpedia’s trafﬁc numbers, and number of articles. Wikipedia is also one of the web’s most successful communities, and the community aspects will be discussed.

Open Education for Educators: An Example from the Geosciences Sean Fox and Cathryn Manduca, Carleton College Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 3:15-4:00 pm 205 Eccles Conference Center Giving learners direct access to detailed information about a subject is one obvious focus for open education efforts. Putting the textbook (or lecture notes, or class handouts) in as many hands as possible is a powerful step in the right direction. But open information does not equal open education. Information on a subject of interest is most effective if it goes hand in hand with tools and approaches for mastering the material. Access (e.g. through a syllabus for an existing traditional course) to a particular pacing and ordering of information represents a small step in this direction. But the broad audience of educators (and self-educators) would beneﬁt from more guidance in making effective use of subject-matter material: which elements are key and which are peripheral? which activities make sense for all learners and which are most effective in particular educational settings? where are the common stumbling blocks and what activities will help expose them? how can we tell when the material has been mastered? The audience for this kind of information includes educators who work outside the resource-rich environments of our traditional educational institutions as well as others: the independent learner who wants to understand how to make effective use of a discussion board in bringing together a study group of peers, the instructional designer who needs to understand common student misconceptions in order to build an effective online tutorial. Explicitly providing resources for this diverse group of educators about how to teach and learn the material is an important element in opening the educational doors to all. Our work at the Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College provides one example of how a community of educators can openly disseminate its expertise—both what to teach and how to teach it. We have focused the efforts of several collaborative projects into the creation of a website that provides materials for those teaching undergraduate geoscience (http://serc.carleton.edu). The site includes a rich collection of over 1000 learning activities captured directly from the experiences of geoscience educators within traditional educational settings. These activities are presented in a context of best practices reﬂecting community expertise on a range of current challenges 51

such as: creating truly student-centered active-learning experiences, integrating data-rich material drawn from current research, developing quantitative skills, and effectively using visual materials. The site builds explicit bridges between the work done by cognitive scientists on the nature of learning and effective practice in teaching geoscience. Although aimed initially at geoscience educators in traditional settings, primarily the approximately 7000 geoscientists currently teaching in U.S. colleges and universities1, the site has a two-fold connection to the open education world. First, the site itself serves as an open resource for those interested in learning about teaching geosciences. It has been an explicit goal of the contributing projects to capture the teaching expertise of current practitioners and make it available through the website in ways that benefit a wider audience. Significant work has been done to develop low-barrier mechanisms for capturing activities and to engage the community in developing contextual materials that will advance the common understanding of what it means to effectively teach geoscience.2 To promote wide reuse the materials on the site are offered under a Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial“ ShareAlike” license. The site draws a significant audience beyond the traditional core community including over 20,000 visitors a month from outside the U.S. Second, the activity collections on the site provide insight into current classroom practice among geoscience faculty—an important piece of the puzzle for those interested in constructing effective learner (rather than educator) oriented materials for open use. In collecting activities we have purposefully gone beyond simply aggregating the related digital artifacts, or attempting to ‘record’ in an historic sense what happened in a particular class. Our description of each activity also attempts to capture the expertise of the instructor; the why as well as the how. What were the choices made in constructing this activity; what are the tricks and insights to making it work effectively? This meta-information about the activity is critical if we expect others to adapt the material for their own use. It also represents a first step in building an understanding of how the current geoscience classrooms really work; an understanding that stretches beyond ‘what material is covered’ to include ‘how is it taught’; an understanding than can inform the development of effective learner oriented educational materials. 52

In opening education to the widest possible audience we must be sure to provide access not only to the ‘raw’ knowledge but also the strategies, tools and collective wisdom on how best to teach and learn that knowledge. Projects such as this that draw from, make public, and work to advance the best practices of our traditional educational system have an important role to play in open education. This work is funded by the National Science Foundation under the grants: DUE 0127141, DUE 0226243, DUE 0226199, and EAR 0304762. Any opinions, ﬁndings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reﬂect the views of the National Science Foundation. References 1. Manduca, C.M., Mogk, D.W. and Tewksbury, B.J., Macdonald, R.H., Learning about Teaching: Results of a Survey of Undergraduate Geoscience Faculty, Journal of Geoscience Education, May 2005. 2. Fox, S., Manduca, C. and Iverson, E. Building Educational Portals atop Digital Libraries D-Lib, January 2005.

A Structural Approach Relating Instructional Theory and Instructional Design Theory Andy Gibbons and P. Clint Rogers, Brigham Young University Thursday, September 29, 2005, 2:15-3:00 pm 201 Eccles Conference Center The topic of this paper is the architecture of instructional theory. Instructional designers have been at a loss to describe in other than monolithic terms how instructional theories influence their designs. This situation can be improved if theorists will provide a more nuanced view of instructional theory and of instructional design theory. We describe an architecture of instructional theory that relates elements of an instructional design in a more detailed way to instructional theories. Rather than tracing the origins of an entire design back to a single, monolithic instructional theory, this architecture also allows multiple elements of a design to be related to multiple local instructional theories. Our discussion distinguishes between instructional theory and instructional design theory theory. Instructional theory deals with the structure of instructional conversations. Instructional design theory deals with the manner in which those conversational structures are selected and formed into a design. The substance of an instructional theory consists of categories of design building blocks and the rules by which building blocks may be articulated to operate together. The substance of instructional design theory consists of methods for analyzing and decomposing design problems, classes of design structure, and principles for deriving design processes appropriate to different types of design problems. If instructional theory reflects the theorist’s view of effective instructional structures and operations, then instructional design theory reflects the theorist’s view of effective design structures and operations. This distinction between two major categories of theory for instructional design parallels similar views of theory in design fields in general. In virtually all mature design fields there exist multiple domain theories that describe fundamental building blocks from which designs may be created and rules for articulating these building blocks together in workable ways. There also exist in those fields theories for accomplishing designs. Both kinds of theory have been critical to advances in design in those fields. An additional level of design 54

theory, which we shall call general design theory, crosses disciplinary boundaries and encompasses design in all fields. Application of this more abstract general design theory has accelerated the development of discipline-specific design theories in many fields, including architecture, engineering, software, and digital design. In this paper we approach a more detailed description of instructional theory and its architecture through a description of instructional design theory in terms of design layers and design languages. We show how this approach to the description of design theory makes possible more detailed discussion of instructional theories and their comparison against a common background. Traditionally, instructional design theory has been described in terms of generic design processes, but process is only one of many possible approaches to the decomposition of design problems. We suggest consideration of an alternative decomposition scheme that has been fruitful in many other design fields: decomposition in terms of artifact functionality. This kind of problem decomposition creates separate design layers representing design sub-problems that can be addressed more or less independently. Each layer accounts for a certain number of design decisions regarding specialized functions that are eventually seamlessly integrated to become part of a complete design. Design languages are used to give specific content to designs within these layers. Design languages consist of collections of primitive building blocks that can be combined into designs and the rules that govern the combination of these building blocks in design expressions. Design languages are supplied by, among other things, the terms used in specific instructional theories. Problems within each layer are solved using the terms of multiple design languages—some from instructional theory and some from colloquial sources—that pertain to the specific layer. Designs are expressed in the terms of these languages. The specific layers of a design evolve and change based on their utility to the designer, according to a number of factors that include design criteria, resources, tools, new technology, new construction methods, available designer skills, and designer awareness. Each design includes its own unique combination of layers. We suggest a list of high-level layers that is generic to virtually all instructional design projects. Each project, however, breaks these layers into more detailed sub55

layers, according to decisions of the designer, so layers are created or destroyed according to the dynamics of a given project. Within the context of this view of instructional design theory, we propose that an instructional theory can be described as a set of specialized, mutually-consistent design languages containing defined terms that are distributed across multiple design layers. This insight unifies the concepts of design layers and instructional theory and, more importantly, shows the relationship between instructional design theory and instructional theory. Design theory provides the structural framework within which specific instructional theories can be analyzed and compared. Instructional theories dwell within a framework of layers; however those layers are construed according to the theorist’s way of structuring instructional conversations. We propose that this architecture of instructional theory gives designers a tool to create quality designs more consistently, can facilitate communications about designs and theories, can allow designers to work efficiently in design teams with a greater degree of mutual understanding, suggests functionalities for more advanced and productive design tools, and allows experienced designers to convey design knowledge and judgment to novices more quickly.

Reusability in the Materials Digital Library Sarah Giersch, National Science Digital Library, Laura M. Bartolo and Cathy S. Lowe, Kent State, and Adam C. Powell IV, MIT Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 2:15-3:00 pm 307 Eccles Conference Center Effectiveness of Virtual Labs Laboratory experience has long been considered a critical component of all undergraduate science coursework. In addition, engineering program accreditation [1] requires that programs provide their graduates with training to demonstrate certain abilities, such as the capacity to design and conduct experiments. Traditionally, these abilities have been developed through physical laboratory training. However, there are many practical difďŹ culties associated with providing meaningful hands-on lab experience, especially in large introductory undergraduate science courses. Online environments, such as digital libraries, may offer both needed assistance and new opportunities by supporting virtual lab experiences for introductory undergraduate science classes [2]. Many of the current obstacles related to offering physical labs, such as dwindling budgets, limited physical space, and forecasted increases in undergraduate enrollments may be alleviated or minimized if the same instructional objectives of a physical laboratory experience can be achieved through a virtual lab. An open research question is to what extent new technology, such as digital repositories, can address the absence of a traditional laboratory experience. The ABET/Sloan Colloquy5 suggested that creating an inquiry-based, collaborative learning experience may be more important than whether the experience is physical or virtual [3]. The colloquy identiďŹ ed thirteen engineering laboratory learning objectives (i.e., instrumentation, models, experiment, data analysis, design, learn from failure, creativity, psychomotor, safety, communication, teamwork, ethics in the lab, sensory awareness) that can be used to assess achievement for both physical and virtual laboratory experiences. It has been suggested that many of these objectives can be achieved outside of a physical lab, with some exceptions (such as, instrumentation, psychomotor, and sensory awareness), and that objectives fall into a hierarchy of importance [4]. Ethics, data analysis, communication, and teamwork were considered essential. Models, experiment, instrumentation, and safety were 57

considered very important. Sensory awareness, psychomotor, learning from failure, and design were considered important. MatDL investigators at MIT and KSU conducted student surveys to begin to address questions concerning the effectiveness of a virtual lab as well as the potential value of a digital library in supporting the experience [5]. A small group (8) of MIT students taking Solid State Chemistry Virtual Laboratory were asked to assess change in their understanding (1 = signiﬁcantly worse, 3 = no change, 5 = strong improvement) of the 13 ABET laboratory objectives as a result of the virtual laboratory experience. Survey results indicated students thought that the virtual lab was successful in improving their understanding of many of the 13 ABET laboratory objectives, with the most perceived improvement being associated with experimental, team work, ethics in research, and communication (Means 4.50, 4.50, 4.63, 4.75, respectively) [6]. These early results support the opinion that some lab objectives may be successfully achieved through virtual lab experience [4]. Three objectives that were associated with the most perceived improvement (team work, ethics in research, and communication) have been identiﬁed as essential objectives of the laboratory experience. A subset (3) of the MIT group of students also completed a survey that gathered opinions about MatDLs MatDL’ potential value (1 = very valuable, 3 = somewhat valuable, and 5 = not at all valuable) in accomplishing eight educational objectives [5]. In general, students expressed positive opinions with responses ranging from 1 to 3 (see Table 1). They expressed a very positive estimation of MatDLs MatDL’ potential to support a virtual laboratory experience and a similarly positive view regarding its potential to give students practical experience with licensing and publishing their own work; to support interaction with students at other institutions; and to increase student awareness of applications in materials science (all M = 1.33). Students were also quite positive about MatDLs potential to give students access to classmate’s publications; MatDL’ increase student interest in research; and make courses more interesting by making available related research data (Means 1.66, 2.0, 2.0, respectively). These preliminary results suggest that students view MatDL as potentially valuable in supporting a variety of educational objectives, including a virtual lab experience. 58

Conclusion The use of digital libraries and related services within the scientific community is a relatively new development with the potential to change and improve communication and collaboration for researchers, educators, and students. One anticipated outcome of the investigation in the MatDL project is to reduce the time it takes for new knowledge generated in the laboratory to reach the classroom for the materials science community [7]. It may also encourage new collaborations both within and outside this community. The potential for new technologies and the conventions that develop around those technologies to encourage new collaboration between separate but related groups within and between scientific disciplines has been noted. References 1. Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. 2004. Criteria for accrediting engineering programs. <http://www.abet.org/criteria_ eac.html>. 2. Borgman, C.L. 2001. Digital libraries and virtual universities. In F. T. Tschang & T. D. Senta (Eds.), Access to knowledge: new information technologies and the emergence of the virtual university. 207-242. Pergamon, New York. 3. Feisel, L. and Peterson G. 2002. A colloquy on learning objectives for engineering education laboratories. Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Mission Bay, CA, June, 2002. 4. Rosa, A. 2003. The Challenge of Instructional Laboratories in Distance Education. ABET Annual Meeting October 31, 2003 <http://www.abet.org/AnnualMeeting/2003Presentations/Distance Ed-Rosa.pdf>. 5. Bartolo, L.M., Lowe, C.S., Sadoway, D.R., Trapa, P.E. Large Introductory Science Courses & Digital Libraries. Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries. 366-67, Denver, CO, USA, June 2005. 6. Bartolo, L.M., Lowe, C.S., Sadoway, D.R., Powell, A.C., and Glotzer, S.C. (2005, March). NSDL MatDL: Exploring digital library roles. DLib Magazine, 11(3). Available at doi:10.1045/march2005-bartolo or <http://dlib.org/dlib/march05/bartolo/03bartolo.html> 7. Bartolo, L.M, Lowe C.S., Feng, L.Z., Patten, B. (2004). MatDL: Integrating Digital Libraries into Scientific Practice. Journal of Digital Information, 5(3), Article No. 297, 2004-08-23. Available at <http://jodi.tamu.edu/Articles/v05/i03/Bartolo/> 59

About MatDL The MatDL partnership includes information/library scientists and materials scientists at Kent State University, the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (MSEL/NIST), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Michigan (U-M), Iowa State University (ISU), and Purdue University (Purdue). PI: Laura M. Bartolo (Materials Informatics Lab, KSU); CoPIs: Sharon C. Glotzer (Materials Science and Engineering, U-M), Adam C. Powell IV (Materials Science and Engineering, MIT), Krishna Rajan (Materials Science and Engineering, ISU) Donald R. Sadoway (Materials Science and Engineering, MIT); Senior Investigators: Diane Geraci (Science Libraries, U-M), Matt Krane (Purdue) James A. Warren, Deputy Director, and Vinod K. Tewary, Research Scientist (Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory, NIST). MatDL is part of the National Science Digital Library project and is supported by National Science Foundation grant DUE-0532831. Any opinions, ďŹ ndings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reďŹ&#x201A;ect the views of NSF or NIST.

Enabling Open Education with MERLOT Gerard Hanley, MERLOT Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 3:15-4:00 pm 307 Eccles Conference Center Measures of MERLOT Vitality as an Open Education Community and Resource The MERLOT Collection: MERLOT is a metadata repository of over 12,000 records of web-based learning materials, growing at a rate of over 2,000 new materials last year. The materials are cataloged across a wide range of disciplines by its members. Each learning material can also have links to information providing users with the pedagogical context for choosing, evaluating, and integrating the online materials into teaching and learning. • Over 1,700 materials have been peer reviewed and over 8,800 are undergoing peer review. • About 2,100 materials have one or more member comments and evaluations. • Over 2,100 MERLOT members have created their own personal collection of MERLOT materials. • Over 650 materials contain sample student assignments for using the materials in class. Being a “referatory” rather than a repository of the learning materials, MERLOT does not guarantee the 24 X 7 availability of the materials which are stored on servers across the globe. However, the MERLOT software does have an automatic link checker and process for ﬁxing or removing broken links. Less than 2% of the learning material links are repaired or removed at any time. The MERLOT Member Community: In 2005, MERLOT has been used by over 30,000 unique users per month, an increase of over 85% from last year. People are also choosing to become MERLOT members (for free) at a rate of over 700 people per month in 2005, resulting in a directory of over 26,000 proﬁles of people. As registered members, they can become contributors to the MERLOT collection. Over 5,000 of MERLOT’s members are students and about 15,000 are faculty. Design Principles for Open Education MERLOT opened its doors in 1997 at the California State University System and from the start there were a number of key design 61

principles that guided the continuous development of MERLOT as an open education resource and community. • Access to MERLOT must be free to the end user, like our public libraries. • Searching and browsing the collection does not require logging in. • The overwhelming majority of teachers and students who could use a digital library need it to be extremely easy to use. • Users can choose the degree to which they wish to participate in MERLOT. o Minimal information is required to register as member but members can create an elaborate member profile within MERLOT. • MERLOT must be a performance support service. o Provide people just enough information to help them decide if they know enough to take the “next steps” in using or not using the materials. o Provide services that can be easily woven into existing workflow process of teaching and learning for faculty, students, librarians, staff, and others. o Provide people different levels of participation in MERLOT that matches their interests and motivations. • All materials in MERLOT must be directly linked to an individual member who is publicly identified within MERLOT. The social tagging of public content creates a baseline quality assurance process and connection between content and users. • “You get more than you give”. Users must experience and believe MERLOT to be a generous service if MERLOT is to incite volunteerism. Sustaining the Open Education Services of MERLOT If MERLOT is free to end-users, who pays for the costs of designing, developing, operating, and managing MERLOT? The MERLOT consortium has been designed on the principle of “slipstreaming”: Improving your performance by leveraging the work of others. By recognizing the existence of strong needs of many different types of organizations, MERLOT has been able to establish and manage the slipstreaming and enabled each organization to achieve goals they couldn’t do by themselves. There are a number of key ingredients to MERLOT’s slipstreaming 62

success. 1. Leadership and management provided by the California State University System 2. Financial and human resource development through partnerships. a. University partner institutions (15 state systems and 6 campuses) contribute cash to support operations and support faculty on editorial boards. b. Publishers (O’Reilly Media) contribute cash to support editorial boards and co-marketing of blending free and fee-based materials 3. Collection building through federation of digital libraries a. GLOBE (Global Learning Object Brokered Exchange) is a federation of Australia’s EdNA online, European Union’s ARIADNE, Japan’s NIME-GLAD, and Canada’s CLOE. b. Federated search partnerships have been/are being developed with a number of discipline-based professional organizations (AAPT, UNC, JCE, CAUSE, HEAL, etc) c. Partnerships with professional societies for collection development and management are created within MERLOT (ATHE) 4. Developing multiple distribution channels a. MERLOT has or is building MERLOT search services with all the major LMS vendors (Blackboard, WebCT, Desire2Learn, Angel) and open source projects (Moodle). Sakai is planned as well. b. MERLOT RSS feeds (over 450 registered applications) 5. Continuously develop user services to improve value to users and partners a. NSF grants and subcontracts are used to develop peer review services, collaboration services, reusability guidelines, and services for adjunct faculty. 6. Technology implementation through corporate and non-proﬁt organization partnerships a. Macromedia provides licenses for Contribute, Captivate, and Breeze for MERLOT’s portal development and professional development programs. MERLOT provides visible case study and guidelines for effective application of technologies 63

b. Sun Microsystems provides funds and marketing (Sun News Today) to advocate the growing use of technologies c. New Media Consortium’s development of the Pachyderm authoring tool to be marketed to facultyauthoring community. In conclusion, MERLOT is an open education resource and community that is designed to be leveraged by the world and through the worlds’ participation, become a greater beneﬁt for education throughout the world.

Sakai Overview Joseph Hardin, University of Michigan/Sakai Thursday, September 29, 2005, 11:00-11:45 am 203 Eccles Conference Center The Sakai Project is a community source software development effort to design, build and deploy a new Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) for higher education. To date, the Sakai Project is working on its 4th major release, has developed an Educational Partnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Program that now has around 80 members around the world and has successfully demonstrated a model for community source software development among colleges and universities. Come and learn more about the future of Sakai!

Sakai, Melete eduCommons Overview Joseph Hardin, University of Michigan/Sakai, Vivie Sinou, Foothill College/Sakai, David Wiley, Utah State University Thursday, September 29, 2005, 8:00-8:30 am 216 Eccles Conference Center Sakai, Melete, and eduCommons are all open source software that enable the production of online course materials. This demonstration will show how these can work together to enable open distribution of educational materials; speciﬁcally, we will overview Sakai’s capabilities as a Collaboration and Learning Environment, Melete’s course material authoring capabilities, and eduCommons’ opencourseware management functionality. Interoperability of the tools will also be demonstrated.

Why Study Users? Understanding The Use Of Digital Resources In Humanities And Social Science Undergraduate Education Diane Harley, University of California at Berkeley Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 1:15-2:00 pm 307 Eccles Conference Center This paper will describe research into users of digital resources in a variety of undergraduate institutions. The project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Our purpose is to map the universe of digital resources available to undergraduate educators in the humanities and social sciences (H/ SS), and to examine how understanding use and users can benefit the integration of those resources into undergraduate teaching. Our definition of digital resources is intentionally broad, and includes rich media objects (e.g., maps, video, images, etc) as well as text. These digital resources may reside in or outside of digital libraries, and include those developed by individual scholars as well as other entities. Our methods include surveys of faculty, and discussions with faculty, graduate students, librarians, site owners, and educational technology professionals. We are also employing online surveys and transaction log analysis on select local collections. Specific activities are described in more detail below. Discussions with faculty, as well as site owners, use researchers, and those on the service frontlines—librarians and educational technology professionals—have thrown into high relief the complex terrain that we are attempting to describe. We have discovered that such a description entails complicated definitions and analyses of: (1) the scope, variety, and sources of the rich media resources available to faculty, (2) how the resources are actually used (or not used) by faculty, and (3) the variation that exists between and among a diverse group of “users” and “owners” (and that users and owners are often embodied in the same person). For example, many faculty want to build their own reaggregated resources, using their own materials, and then mixing them with resources they have collected along the way. How to manage the multitude of available resources and integrate them into teaching practice is a major hurdle. Although there may be an array of tools available to faculty for collecting, developing, and managing resources, 67

the efficacy and interoperability of these tools for the immediate tasks faculty need supported often fall short. Additionally, there are many non-technical barriers to use that span economic and social realms. Rationale: Why Study Users? There are myriad reasons cited for undertaking and conducting user studies. They may range from product design and usability testing, to policing, to facilitating policy and investment decisions. For our purposes there are three interrelated rationales for conducting the present research: Strategic Planning and Investments, A Focus on the Humanities and Social Sciences, and Consolidation of Effective Strategies for Understanding Use. Activities Our specific approach is to employ multiple methods and empirical data to determine the outlines of how and if available digital resources are being used in undergraduate teaching environments. Activities include: • Ongoing discussion among faculty, librarians, educational technology professionals, and collection/site owners across different higher education institutions. • Creating a useful map of the range of digital resources available to and used (or not used) by undergraduate educators. • Consolidating, through a literature review, existing knowledge about use and users of digital resources in humanities/social science undergraduate teaching contexts. • Surveying site owners about how and why they employ user studies. • Sampling faculty opinion through a survey focused on what digital resources H/SS faculty actually use, how they use them in their teaching, and what barriers exist to their successful use of digital resources. Our first target population for the survey is a random stratified sample of faculty at select University of California campuses, California Community Colleges and Liberal Arts colleges. We are also surveying faculty in other populations. • Understanding the perspective of diverse users and nonusers through analysis of survey and discussion group data along disciplinary, institutional, and other axes. • Testing the efficacy and efficiency of methods of transaction log analysis and online surveys on select local collections. 68

•

Convening collection owners, funders, and use researchers to facilitate the future coordination of comparative use data across a range of (H/SS) digital resources.

Additional Areas for Further Exploration • Is understanding the different perspectives of diverse users important? The humanities and social sciences are not a monolith; discipline, institution type, and individual characteristics may be important. • How does the vast universe and diversity of resources deﬁned by users, and the ubiquity of faculty personal collections, inﬂuence thinking about sustainability and economics of educational resources in the H/SS? • How can the diverse perspectives of users be meshed with the needs and goals of resource owners and developers? • How can use researchers move ahead when there are so few data on effective methods, and use studies are so diverse in audience, purpose, protocols, questions, and methods? • What is the return on investment (ROI) for users as subjects of research? How do people developing sites and tools actually integrate use studies into better products? • Can developers afford the costs of targeting resource creation for audiences ranging from scholars to school children?

Starting an OCW: A Case Study Shelley Henson, Utah State University and Andrea Sandry, Weber State University Thursday, September 29, 2005, 10:00-10:45 am 307 Eccles Conference Center Starting an opencourseware project at an institution involves planning, resources and vision. It starts with a conversation and progresses to garnering faculty and administrative support, and locating resources to sustain the project. The Center for Open and Sustainable Learning (COSL) at Utah State University has created a support structure for schools that would like to participate in the opencourseware movement. This includes software, hosting services, training and consulting services. Weber State University has been working in collaboration with COSL to begin an opencourseware project. This session will describe their experience.

Open Educational Resources: Opportunities and Challenges Jan Hylén, Centre for Educational Research and Innovation Thursday, September 29, 2005, 1:15-2:00 pm 309 Eccles Conference Center The paper presents a project that was launched in August this year by the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) at OECD, and funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. It outlines the main themes and issues that will be covered in the project. The study will concentrate on Open Educational Resources initiatives in tertiary education, although many of the fundamental issues in this field affect the whole educational spectrum. There are many critical issues surrounding access, quality and costs of information and knowledge over the Internet as well as on provision of content and learning material. As it becomes clearer that the growth of Internet offers real opportunities for improving access and transfer of knowledge and information from universities and colleges to a wide range of users, there is an urgent need to clarify these issues with special focus on OER initiatives. There is also a need to define the technical and legal frameworks as well as business models to sustain these initiatives. By Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives we understand: 1) open courseware and content; 2) open software tools (e.g. learning management systems); 3) open material for e-learning capacity building of faculty staff; 4) repositories of learning objects; and 5) free educational courses. A more thorough conceptual analysis will take place in the course of the study. The purpose of this study is to clarify and analyze the above mentioned issues concerning OER, mapping the scale and scope of these initiatives in terms of their purpose, content, and funding and addressing four main questions: 1. How to develop sustainable costs/benefits models for OER initiatives? Many OER initiatives have obtained “seed resources” from private foundations and public authorities. The financial sustainability of these projects in the long term is a key issue. In general, the social value of knowledge and information increases to the degree that they can be shared with, and used by, others. But at the moment, the individual 71

institution providing OER has to bear the costs of providing social benefits on a global scale. Many institutions are not able to do this, especially if seed money runs out. An analysis of the positions of different stakeholders is needed to tackle the question of costs and benefits. 2. What are the intellectual property rights issues linked to OER initiatives? The key issue is to find the right balance between “open material to all with no control” and “open to no one”. The project on “Creative commons” is for example seeking such a balance. A possible challenge is to join Creative Commons with national initiatives to find legal frameworks for OER initiatives. Furthermore there are important distributional and equity issues related to IPR both within countries and between North and South countries. Among academic economists and other experts of intellectual property rights, there is now lively discussions about the economic “raison d’être” of strong intellectual property right rules and their implementation. Taking on board these generic issues, how best to address IPR issues in OER initiatives will be discussed and analyzed. 3. What are the incentives and barriers for universities and faculty staff to deliver their material to OER initiatives? This issue has both an individual and an organizational dimension, and has significant policy implications at national and international levels. Promotion and funding allocations in universities and research institutions are often linked to publication in a few, key, refereed journals often only available in specialized libraries. In parallel, scientific publishing is facing a generic transition from print publishing to online communication and dissemination. Players throughout the scholarly communication product system are developing new skills and new business models, while at the same time maintaining the existing print paradigm. There are thus costs to be born from moving from the print to the online paradigm. The challenge is to work out what to do differently and what new things to do to facilitate an effective communication and dissemination of knowledge and information. 4. How to improve access and usefulness for the users of OER initiatives? There are many different issues linked to this question. One of them is quality assurance. User commentary, branding, peer reviews or a kind of user community evaluating the “quality” and the usefulness of the material might be 72

possible ways forward. Another important challenge is to adapt ““global OER initiatives” to local needs and to create a “dialogue” between the providers and user of the OER. Lack of cultural and language sensitivities might be an important barrier to the receptiveness of the users. Training initiatives for users to be able to apply course material and/or software might be one way forward to reach out to potential users. Also important will be the choice (using widely agreed standards), maintenance, and user access to the technologies chosen for the task. Four main activities are planned within the project: • a concept analysis of the concept of “open educational resources”; • a mapping activity with the purpose of giving the contours of an “OER initiates map”—which HEI are involved in OER activities, where are they located, and what are they doing?; • a web-survey to a restricted number of HEI complemented with site visits, telephone interviews etc to further investigate how institutions tackle the above mentioned issues; • a close co-operation with UNESCO/IIEP Forum on Open Educational Resources/Open content.

Documenting and Sharing Pedagogical Knowledge and Experience to Promote Effective and Innovative Use of Open Educational Resources Toru Iiyoshi, Carnegie Foundation, Candace Thille, Carnegie Mellon University and Flora McMartin, MERLOT Friday, September 30, 2005, 10:00-10:45 am 203 Eccles Conference Center Higher education’s emerging “Open and Share” movement is revolutionizing the way that educational tools and resources are shared across classrooms, institutions, and countries by taking advantage of the growing power of information and communication technologies. However, one of the major impediments to advancing this “Open Education” is the lack of a support structure for sharing ideas, experiences, and challenges to build collective educational knowledge around these open tools and resources. Despite the fact that the “invisibility” and “complexity” of teaching and learning often makes the task of “making educational knowledge public” daunting both technically and intellectually, there are many possibilities for this work to further promote the use of open educational tools and resources as well as continuously improve their quality. For example, if the authors of open course materials document and share their knowledge and experience in designing and using them, it would be enormously informative and helpful for faculty, students, and self-learners to better use these materials. Similarly, if users share their efforts in making the best use of these materials by documenting what worked and what did not, along with their pedagogical innovations, it would allow other users to better adapt these materials to teaching and learning in their own contexts. In addition, this will inform the authors how these materials could be further improved and help to build vibrant and sustaining communities of practice and reﬂection around these open educational resources. Over the last six years, the Carnegie Foundation’s Knowledge Media Laboratory (KML) has been working with its various partner institutions and initiatives to explore how multimedia and network technologies can support educators and students in documenting, sharing, and building knowledge of effective practices and successful educational transformation efforts to collectively advance teaching and learning. This research and development effort has yielded some useful tools and resources that allow more institutions, organizations, and initiatives 74

to do this work more effectively and efficiently. For example, the KML has developed the Knowledge Exchange Exhibition and Presentation (KEEP) Toolkit, a web-based open source technology, to enable a wide range of educators and students to: 1) identify and select materials and artifacts that reflect all dimensions of their teaching and learning; 2) prompt and deepen their analyses and reflections; and 3) organize these materials and reflections and share them as succinct, meaningful and engaging representations online. Since its public launch in March 2004, the toolkit has been widely used by over 6,000 educators and students at over 200 institutions and organizations (as of July 2005) to support their efforts in advancing teaching and learning. Some of these successful efforts have been documented as case studies (http://www. carnegiefoundation.org/kml/keep/cases.htm). This panel session highlights the KMLs KML’ joint pilot efforts with two major OERs projects, MERLOT and Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative, to explore the key issues and possibilities as well as address strategic approaches to successful implementation. Possible synergy of this work and other efforts in promoting the creation and use of OERs, such as the Open Learning System and EduCommons, will also be explored. Case 1: Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning Online and Teaching (MERLOT) The KEEP Toolkit is being used at MERLOT to address two main issues. At the moment, MERLOT provides users with information about each online resource through its peer review, assignments, user comments and personal collections features. These features, however, tend to be context free and focused on their potential uses. A challenge for MERLOT users wishing to use a learning object is to gain access to the author’s knowledge and experience in designing and using the materials. The MERLOT author snapshot, or Author’s Comment, is a way for users to learn from the author about their experience in designing the materials, as well as being able to share their challenges and successes in using the learning object. Snapshots developed by the users of an author’s materials are also under development. The twist here is the snapshot author develops a snapshot that describes how they used materials developed by others, how they adapted it (if at all) and the impact its use had on their teaching and student learning. With these two features provided, members of the MERLOT community will be better equipped to learn from each other’s work, evolving 75

and adapting the use of these learning objects and building on each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pedagogical innovations. The pilot effort between the KML and MERLOT hopes to tackle these challenges using the KEEP Toolkit. Case 2: Carnegie Mellon Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Open Learning Initiative (OLI) The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is a project devoted to developing high quality online courses through its approach to instructional design grounded in cognitive and learning theory, formative evaluation for students and faculty, and iterative course improvement based on empirical evidence. OLI is using the KEEP toolkit to document and communicate both the original design rational and the many variations of contextual use. Course development teams complete the KEEP OLI author template to document and communicate the instructional goals and learning theory that guided course development. Faculty at a variety of institutions who are using OLI courses will complete the KEEP OLI user template to document and communicate a description of the context in which the online courses are delivered and the impact of using the OLI course on teaching and learning. We will link the KEEP OLI author and user documents to the course entry page of each of our OLI courses. The combination of the KEEP OLI author document and the collection of the KEEP OLI user documents for each course will provide potential users with an understanding of the logic and goals behind each of the courses and with rich information about the institutional, sociocultural, and curricular contexts of teaching and learning.

Policy Issues for Open Educational Resources Sally Johnstone, WCET Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 1:15-2:00 pm 205 Eccles Conference Center This session will be your opportunity to explore some of the policy barriers and concerns that could have an impact on the growth of the OER movement. The session will be a guided discussion in which the leader will review policy issues that have already been uncovered, and the participants will have an opportunity to add their own. We shall explore transnational, national, state and institutional issues.

Embedding Open Content in Instruction and Research Eric Kansa and Michael Ashley, Alexandria Archive Institute Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 3:15-4:00 pm 203 Eccles Conference Center Research content is often developed at great expense and effort. The availability of this content for reuse as a basis for follow-up studies has obvious research beneﬁts. In addition, instruction is becoming more and more integrated within the research process. With the emergence of “apprenticeship” and “problem oriented” instructional methods, students are often actively involved in the production and analysis of research content. Thus, students are becoming more than consumers of instructional material—they are becoming active participants in the creation of knowledge. Our own efforts explore ways to embed the production, dissemination, and application of open content within the context of research and participatory learning. The Alexandria Archive Institute is currently developing “ArchaeoCommons “ ” an online resource that provides open content and information management and dissemination services. ArchaeoCommons will focus on the types of content that are thus far underserved through traditional scholarly publication. These include primary ﬁeld data, conference presentations, and digital media relating to world cultural heritage (archaeology, anthropology, history, and related disciplines). Open licensing enhances the value of this content by encouraging its use and reuse by both students and researchers. To develop and sustain ArchaeoCommons, we are experimenting with a variety of “author pays” professional services for primary researchers who are themselves principle producers of content. 1.

Services for Researchers: Many ﬁeld disciplines, especially archaeology, rely on the collaboration of multidisciplinary teams of researchers, each producing large analytic and multimedia datasets. For a large project, integrating and synthesizing such diverse research is a tremendous challenge and a major bottleneck in the publication process. In addition, project directors not only have to justify the value of their work in terms of research outputs, but also in terms of public outreach, instruction, and historical preservation (both physical and digital). To meet these needs, we have successfully

developed and demonstrated key data integration and dissemination technologies. We employ global data schemas developed by the University of Chicago XSTAR project to integrate disparate multidisciplinary datasets into a searchable online resource. We have successfully applied these schemas with the Çatalhöyük Project, and in the process we have created a large openly licensed resource that not only provides students and researchers with rich multimedia content, but also provides the essential analytic data that makes this media meaningful. 2. Consulting Services for Universities: The same recursive and highly generalized data structures that are of such value to field researchers can see wider application. We have entered into a partnership with the Microcosms project, an initiative sponsored by the University of California Office of the President. The Microcosms Project is a system-wide research project comprehensively examining the material collections of the University of California. On the basis of our initial survey, we currently estimate the formal collections of the university to contain more than 150,000,000 objects and specimens, equivalent in scale to the Smithsonian Institution, and to have an approximate replacement value in excess of $40 billion. These collections are central to university research, teaching, public outreach and history. They are also substantial contributors to the state and national economies, important repositories of cultural history, and provide an excellent resource for introducing the general public to the important services being performed by research universities. The publicly accessible Microcosms Database will provide an openly licensed sample of this rich array of multidisciplinary content. 3. Professional Services: We are seeing increasing interest from both individual researchers and professional societies for digital services to enhance the research and networking value of conferences. A serendipitous confluence of events lead to the development of “AnthroCommons “ ”, an online open content conference abstract and paper dissemination service that we built on behalf of the American Anthropological Association, a 9000 member professional society. Following AnthroCommons, two more professional societies as well as 79

individual researchers have sought online conference services from us on a contract basis. 4. Student Apprenticeship and Media Instruction: Through our partnerships with the Presidio Archaeology Lab and UC Berkeley, we are successfully demonstrating the value of building open content into instruction and apprenticeship programs (students helping produce the content they use). Hands-on student digital documentation projects not only capture content and are important for research and historical preservation, but they also provide student apprentices with invaluable skills in problem solving, peer-collaboration, and research design. Students themselves see both the costs (in the form of tuition and fees) and the beneďŹ ts (in the form of enhanced learning and creative expression) of open content. Continued high enrollment levels and enthusiastic course reviews illustrate that students value this approach and are willing to bear its costs. Sustaining open digital resources is a challenge that few institutions or projects have yet answered. For our own case, the issue of sustainability cannot be divorced from the larger context of how research and education takes place. Unless the immediate needs of researchers and institutions are met, open content initiatives will fail to garner sustainable support. Thus, we hope to support the commons by building tools and services around open content that meet the information management challenges faced by individual scholars and institutions. Only time will tell if this is a viable path toward sustainability, or if an open cultural heritage commons will always depend on the same mix of charitable donations, philanthropic granting, and government subsidy that supports most of the humanities and social sciences today.

Educational Broadcasting: Rumors of its Demise are Greatly Exaggerated Peter Kaufman, Intelligent TV Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 1:15-2:00 pm 309 Eccles Conference Center “Open Production Initiatives” Support that Intelligent Television has received in 2005 from foundations, government agencies, and corporate underwriters is being used to outline what kinds of “Open Production Initiatives” can be developed around unique sets of resources in various repositories (for example, the U.S. Library of Congress, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the BBC Archives, Library and Archives Canada, the University of Virginia Library, Egypt’s Library of Alexandria, Columbia University Library) and in various digital and analog forms around the world. Subjects under way include the history of the 20thcentury American South, the history of Harlem, the 1956 Suez crisis, the nature of memory, and the visualization of culture, among others. An “open production,” in the way we are using this term, refers to a production that is assembled in an inclusive manner—open, throughout the production process, to many participants from producers and directors to archivists, museum curators, faculty, and students—and open as well in the methods of distribution employed, from broadcast through online media and DVDs, including even where the content that is produced is provided free of charge to interested parties. An “Open Production Initiative” is an open production that is systematically doing both of these things—involving open production methods and open distribution. While the anchor for an “Open Production Initiative” is usually a public broadcasting documentary, these initiatives are explicitly conceived to produce as many complementary products as appropriate, covering a wide range of media and available through multiple channels and locations. These include, for example, a television series; DVDs, CDs, and books; websites and online archives with more detailed, curated content; museum exhibitions using multimedia material as well as artifacts; virtual museum exhibits (including virtual versions of the above); lectures by leading historians/ commentators; webcasts and podcasts of the above; and teaching resources that are nation-, age-, and curriculum-speciﬁc. New Demands, New Suppliers 81

Many television productions today need to plan for distribution over standard and high-definition broadcast, digital cable, satellite, radio, the Internet and DVDs—when the television itself includes material produced for national distribution, regional and local programming, adult learning services, online and VOD “classrooms” for K-12 learners, university-based lesson plans, and general outreach to groups and individuals. Vast strides have been taken in the field of information management and library science as well, so that television and media generally that is produced today can take advantage of new librarybased tools and standards for sophisticated preservation and access agendas. This includes the creation and curation of major repositories for the video, audio, image, and text assets Intelligent Television is harvesting, producing, and distributing. In education and for university and high-school-age students in particular, the demand for multiple, interactive, customizable, and information-, sound- and image-rich media is growing. Students are now in virtual study groups linked by cell phones and PDAs; they use portable computers and computer-type devices to access, produce, and distribute media. The Internet is swamped by their peer-to-peer file-swapping. Video gaming (and, along with it, popular expectations of sophisticated graphic, sound, and story elements) has emerged as an entertainment medium in its own right. Intelligent Television plans its media production strategies around these important trends. Educational television productions 1) survey the cost structures and sustainability plans of various film, video, and recorded sound archives now digitizing their assets; 2) survey the distribution strategies being developed to provide their materials to the academy, industry, the public; and 3) propose economic structures and prepare prototypes for Open Production Initiatives launched in partnership with these institutions. This paper will describe the work Intelligent Television has been doing with its current partners including the University of Virginia and the Library of Congress, and build on the research and reports that Intelligent Television has been completing on “Marketing Culture in the Digital Age” with the support of the Mellon Foundation and Ithaka and on “The Economics of Open Content” with the support of the Hewlett Foundation. The paper will deal broadly with the business and marketing issues surrounding online content and digitized audio-visual 82

archival content for education in particular.

Building A Free Software Ecosystem In Africa: Lessons From The African Virtual Open Initiatives And Resources (AVOIR) Project Derek Keats, The University of the Western Cape Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 2:15-3:00 pm 207 Eccles Conference Center The AVOIR project is an ambitious effort to unify software developers, educational specialists and others in Africa to build capacity to produce educational software while at the same time building software design, development, and support capacity in the higher education sector. AVOIR is a network of nodes, currently with 13 nodes that we are aware of as well as some incipient nodes that are beginning to become visible in various ways through the usual Free Software processes. A core principle of the AVOIR project is that the ecosystem should cater for the design, development, training, and support of the Free Software that is produced as well as its marketing. The ecosystem should include and support the creation of businesses based on the products and processes of the ecosystem in order to achieve sustainability. Nodes should grow through their own processes (for example, by creating opportunities for student projects), nodes should be able to replicate (for example, by providing training and support to institutions wishing to establish new nodes) and the ecosystem as a whole should work towards sustainability beyond research funding. A snapshot picture of AVOIR will be provided to illustrate how this ecosystem is being developed, and show some of the principles that are being derived from it. The ﬁrst product of the collaboration is an e-learning platform, known as KEWL.NextGen, as well as the KINKY application framework on which it is based. KEWL.NextGen is an advanced e-learning platform that should serve as the basis for creating ‘next-generation’ e-learning features. Its development was based on previous work with KEWL as well as comprehensive interaction with users and potential users. The code is now in version 1.3, with the latest release having taken place at the beginning of September. It is already a comprehensive system, a fully modular platform on which almost any kind of enhancement can be built. Training of a user community is already under way, and a training node has been replicated at one of the partner institutions. Lessons for the creation of networks of content developers are also 84

suggested.

The Google Library Digitization Project: For the Good of the World or for Google? Michael Keller, Stanford University Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 3:15-4:00 pm 207 Eccles Conference Center The Google Library project captured the collective imagination when it was announced last December. Since then some critics, some publishers and some nations have been stimulated to respond in a variety of ways, some not so supportive. This presentation will present the objectives, recount some of the criticism, attempt to make clear the concerns of directly (and perhaps indirectly) interested parties and forecast what some of the immediate/long-term results might be of the project.

At the ICT Development Work Faceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;SchoolNet Namibia Realities Joris Komen, SchoolNet Namibia Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 8:30-9:45 am 216 Eccles Conference Center Writing about the effectiveness and sustainability of open education in Namibia, I am occasionally asked whether my resultant bad hair day tales about Microsoft and other corporate misanthropies arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t simply sour grapes. I call them grapes of wrath! What, indeed, is open education? I see open education embracing the great potential and responsibility of humanity to harness and leverage the advances and freedoms provided by information and communication technology in order to extend educational opportunities to all that want it. My paper touches all the conference themes but in a different order of priorityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; international issues, policy and administrative issues, overcoming barriers to open education, and securing affordable open educational resources.

Been Digital So Long it Feels Like Print to Me Brian Lamb, University of British Columbia Thursday, September 29, 2005, 11:00-11:45 am 207 Eccles Conference Center There is no promise of grand synthesis, and there will be no satisfaction guarantee for those expecting clear answers. What’s being peddled is a series of simple but vexing questions. Primarily: how has digital media changed the nature of literacy? Are its implications as profound on communication and cognition as the introduction of writing into once-oral cultures, or the rise of the printing press? And what do these changes mean for educators? The framework for addressing these and related questions will struggle to remain open-ended, multi-modal, iterative and interactive. The conclusions are far from foregone. The question of how technology affects or even determines the nature of communication is not a new one. The advent of writing transformed how human beings communicate, how they govern themselves, and even how they speak and think, as historians such as Walter Ong (Orality and Literacy, et al.) have argued. Similarly, it is often argued that the mechanization of print was a fundamental factor inﬂuencing the Reformation, modern democracy, the Renaissance, the scientiﬁc method and the evolution of the university. In terms of novelty and effect, there is no question that the rise of digital media represents the greatest advance in text technology since the introduction of movable type. In just a few decades there has been a revolution in the means of production, distribution and consumption of text. Economic models are collapsing, and new genres are emerging. Terms such as ‘author’ and ‘reader’ are revised, reshaped, re-imagined. But will the effects spill outside the boundaries of publishing and provoke broader revolutions, the way that previous advances did? Certainly, there is a new form of internet literacy emerging, one which extends beyond the need for students to be able to assess the information available on websites. There is “network literacy”, writing and reading in a distributed and collaborative environment. Narrative need not be linear or even planned. The notion of a single contained work of writing is itself challenged, as fragments and components combine and recombine across the network, across media and bleed into physical space. And visual and aural communication skills are 88

certainly as integral to modern literacy as textual skills. The concept of remediation increasingly applies to “traditional” print sources, as books and magazines take on the characteristics and apply the techniques of digital media. And what are the effects on the process, culture and institutions of learning? Some observers have expressed puzzlement at the relatively slow pace of adjustment demonstrated by universities and educators to new media. A recent Pew Internet study concluded its experts were “startled that educational institutions have changed so little, despite widespread expectation a decade ago that schools would be quick to embrace change.” When one considers the profound relationship between print media and its conventions with the history and contemporary practice of the university, perhaps this resistance is not so hard to understand. If the characteristics of digital writing are speed, replication, collaboration, and endless re-contextualization, perhaps an institution built on memory, intellectual identity and authority might find the adjustment to a new environment so difficult. What does it mean to educators when writing is perceived as more raw data for a vast distributed remix project? Do texts lose their identity as discrete objects and become part of a flow (or a tidal wave) of information, and in the process see their status as a means of synthesis diminished? What are the effects on cultural and intellectual (not to mention personal) memory? Does the relationship between teacher and learner parallel that between author and reader, and if so can we expect erosion in distinctions between the two? While theoretical approaches to these questions will be referenced, more attention will be paid to concrete examples that illustrate these dilemmas. Many of these cases will be drawn from the churning maw of contemporary digital culture, others from older stories of some unlikely visionaries behaving oddly. Among the historical digressions will be an account of the day Marcel Duchamp and John Cage played a game of chess and composed electronic music via a tricked-out chessboard. Then there’s the case of Glenn Gould, who gave up fortune and adulation as a concert pianist to assemble dense and mostly unappreciated sound collages presenting asynchronous oral histories. In keeping with the thematic emphases of the presentation, participation beyond the nominal presenter will enhance the process 89

and the outcomes. All attendees are welcome to contribute resources and analysis to the online component as well as the face-to-face discussion.

The Power of Volunteers: Effectiveness and Sustainability through Lessons Learned from OOPS Meng-Fen Lin, University of Houston and Luc Chu, OOPS Thursday, September 29, 2005, 11:00-11:45 am 201 Eccles Conference Center Introduction OOPS is an innovative Chinese localization project that uses a volunteer-based model which capitalizes on human generosity and social capital to translate and adopt OCW. Standing on the shoulders of the OCW giants such as MIT, Utah State University and John Hopkins, OOPS aims to break the language barriers and makes open educational materials more accessible to readers in the Great China Region (mainly China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.) The Internet may be one of the most important tools in bringing world knowledge into this region; however, language “remains a signiﬁcant barrier discouraging users from venturing out farther into the cyberworld” (Liu, Day, Sun, & Wang, 2002). For example, only 9.3% of China’s Internet users visit English language web sites (CNNIC, 2005). In a different survey, when asked what language-based web site they most frequently visit in addition to those in Chinese, 33% of Taiwan’s Internet users indicated that they do not visit any other language-based web sites (yam.com, 2005). It is evident that language differences pose one of the biggest obstacles for knowledge sharing in today’s information age. OOPS is a bottom-up model to solve this problem. OOPS Model The distinguishing spirit of OOPS is the recruitment of volunteers from all disciplines and from all over the world to adopt courses and translate them. Launched in February 2004 with only two volunteers, OOPS has, to date, recruited over twelve hundred volunteers from ﬁfteen countries and regions. Over forty courses are completely translated, with several hundred more on the way. OOPS uses an “adoption” strategy where volunteers self-select the course they want to “adopt” and translate. Once the translation is completed, a volunteer editor will edit the translation for grammar and spelling. If a content expert is available for the subject, the edited translation will then be reviewed for technical accuracy before being published online. As a volunteer-based project, OOPS’ operations progress with both advantages and challenges. We will focus on some of the challenges 91

and offer a range of possible solutions that seem to work for us. Effectiveness Challenge #1: Effective utilization of volunteers OOPS has faced a major bottleneck in publishing translated materials online in a timely manner. Once a piece of translation is turned in, we have to locate a qualified and interested editor, coordinate the translator-editor dialogue to reach an agreed-upon version, recruit a reviewer, create two versions (traditional and simplified Chinese) of the files, including the recreation of PowerPoint or Word files, and then publish them online. This process requires a tremendous amount of collaborative work among many volunteers and can be quite time consuming. A delay in any step results in a delay in the process, which could be frustrating for the translator. How to better manage and utilize all available human resources is the first challenge we face in effectiveness. Challenge #2: Effective lateral interactions among volunteers Volunteer interviews confirmed that many volunteers temporarily “leave” OOPS when they lack a task with which they could continue to be involved. They miss the interactions, both with the material, and also with other volunteers. While online postings seem to show that some volunteers want to interact with others in similar disciplines; others like to know who live in the same region. Volunteers’ lateral interactions could strengthen the OOPS community. Finding an effective way for volunteers to interact both inside and outside of OOPS is a longstanding challenge. Challenge #3: Effective dissemination of project ideas To reach out to more volunteers and users, OOPS has undergone many dissemination efforts that include TV, newspaper, and radio as well as online media. Nevertheless, one of the biggest challenges we consistently battle is a public perception that this venture is “too good to be true.” Many people are suspicious about the motivation behind such a generous gesture and suspect OOPS of being an online scam for profit. OOPS sets a higher social and moral standard, asking people to donate their skills instead of money, but such a high standard seems to make the spreading of OOPS more problematic. Possibility #1: Empower leaders and redistribute duties Because OOPS functions as a democratic community, it fosters 92

emergent leaders. Leaders will naturally surface when the “doors are open” and members can step into roles as needs arise. In addition, empowering members to contribute at multiple levels enables the community to be problem solvers. Following are several ways in which OOPS has benefited from unique volunteer contributions: 1) the transcribing project was initiated and maintained by a volunteer, 2) the separate online forums, with subgroups by topics, for the mainland China readers, were initiated and maintained by a group of volunteers, and 3) the logo design and promotion effort was led by a volunteer who continues to oversee new design and marketing efforts. Possibility #2: Foster local/regional subgroups OOPS has recently started separating online subgroups, with the hope of promoting local offline communities for volunteers living in geographically close regions. These offline communities could initiate local efforts such as promotion and gatherings by people who have better understandings of the local culture and context. Based on the online postings, it appears these subgroups have been making connections with local volunteers and were initiating university-based promotions. Possibility #3: Disseminate through click-of-mouse The best way to publicly demonstrate OOPS’ mission is through world of mouth and “click of mouse.” In other words, if we are persistent in our successful grassroots approach we can let our work speak for itself. Our volunteers are truly our best ambassadors because they go beyond translation, editing, or creating web pages. These remarkable workers assist with marketing, with promotion, and help each other. Volunteers sign up for the work, find it enjoyable and interesting, and then recruit their friends. It is our volunteers, with their willingness, creativity, and generosity who are our ultimate solutions for issues of effectiveness and sustainability. Sustainability Challenge #1: Sustaining experienced volunteers Many volunteer translators finish their work and are willing to continue to help. At that point in time, however, there may be no current available course that interests them. Nevertheless, the knowledge they gained during their previous involvement could be a valuable asset to the OOPS community. How could we better sustain experienced volunteers and capitalize on their knowledge to help sustain the 93

community as well? Challenge #2: Sustaining a robust workflow Another way to sustain OOPS relies on a robust community that can maintain its functions despite a 33% turnover rate among volunteers. OOPS has about an overall 33% drop-out rate and online postings reveal that many newcomers ask only a few similar questions repeatedly, such as “where do I find those reading materials”, “how do I go about becoming a volunteer”, and “why I have not received adoption confirmation.” The continued influx of newcomers necessitates a robust system that can sustain itself. Challenge #3: Sustaining adequate funding OOPS has been successful functioning with a limited budget. Yet, OOPS requires ongoing funding. The effort of making freely available materials is by all means “free.” But OOPS needs more full-time staffs such as a project manager, a system engineer, and administrative assistants, to provide stable support to the growing volunteer efforts. Possibility #1: Create a mentoring system A group of volunteers recently proposed an idea to create a special taskforce whereby experienced volunteers could serve as mentors to newcomers. The experienced volunteers could “adopt” newcomers and guide them through their initial questions. This idea offers many implications for OOPS’ effectiveness and sustainability. Experienced volunteers now have reasons to not only stay within the community, but also continue to contribute and give back to the community what they have learned. The knowledge sharing and value creation through the realization of this volunteer adoption idea will be exciting to watch in the OOPS future development. Possibility #2: Build a relay-based workflow Currently OOPS functions as a relay system in that volunteers have two months to finish all HTML-page translations after their initial course adoption. After two months, if a volunteer fails to finish the work, the course is then reopened for a new adoption. This mechanism eliminates laggards, encourages a flow of new volunteers, and facilitates project progression. We are evaluating the possibility to further break down the “unit of adoption” into smaller subsections to facilitate even more fluid progression. 94

Possibility #3: Foster a knowledge community OOPS encourages volunteers to pair up for translations. Collaborating with others might help sustain volunteers, and in turn increase project production. The volunteer mentoring taskforce might also help sustain the experienced membership. Online forum moderators, led by volunteers, can also help encourage and maintain lively discussion and provide timely responses to members. The key to sustaining the community centers on both maintaining membership and maintaining the workﬂow within the system. Fostering a knowledge community enables the value individual volunteer gained through participation to become a commodity of the community. Summary Two thousand years ago, Confucius said that, “They hate not to make use of their abilities, yet they do not necessarily work out of self-interest.” In a Confucian ideal commonwealth state, everyone devotes his or her ability toward the communal good. OOPS capitalizes on human generosity and channels this social capital into a facilitation of knowledge sharing. OOPS models a three-way winning scenario: the volunteers, the future learners and our society are all beneﬁciaries. Volunteer-based models have inherent challenges as well as possibilities. We have offered a short list of them here in this proposal. While still other challenges (such as intra-cultural issues, access to materials, and quality control) lurk behind OOPS’ promising possibilities, OOPS is nevertheless a testimony to the power of volunteers in the current movement of OCW.

Can Higher Education Repository Projects Learn from Flickr? Cyprien Lomas, University of British Columbia Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 1:15-2:00 pm 203 Eccles Conference Center Repositories have been part of the academic landscape for many years. Stores of information collected by individuals or groups have been used for research and academic purposes. While the library has often been the location for repositories, they are also created by research groups, teaching groups or just about anybody wishing to store and organize information. Unfortunately, little communication by creators of repositories often results in â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;silosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of information that evolve with little attention paid to standards, interoperability or thoughts of preservation. Repositories may be as simple as ďŹ les stored on a computer or as complicated as custom applications residing on networked computers. Sharing of resources may or may not be part of the design of the repository, and consequently, intellectual property issues are seldom in dispute. In recent years, renewed (continued) interest in repositories has resulted in new cadres of individuals (or groups) proposing, designing, creating and implementing data stores for use within their particular disciplines. While the creators of the new databases are building them with standards and reuse in mind, the challenge of promoting reuse by anyone other than the owners and creators of the resources still remains. Inadequate promotion of databases combined with general lack of knowledge of them results in their under use. While older databases are left to wither and die, they are duplicated and ultimately superceded by newer initiatives. Meanwhile, outside of the institution, photo sharing applications like Flickr and BuzzNet are enjoying great popularity and success with the general public. While Flickr is primarily a website to share pictures, it has many features in common with repositories. Photos are stored online and are available in several resolutions. They can be categorized for easier retrieval. Photo creators can restrict access to their content by setting permissions; subsets can be shared with trusted friends and peers. Metadata and usage data is collected and stored along with the photos. In addition to repository-like features, Flickr incorporates a number 96

of other features that may contribute to its success. All pictures have an absolute URL and can be easily included in other webpages. In addition, tools for easy incorporation into weblogs have been built for most of the existing weblog packages. Publishing an open API has resulted in the creation of several plug-ins that extend the functionality of Flickr. Friends and colleagues can collect and view photos without sharing them with the general public. Pictures can be ‘tagged’ to allow their discovery by parties with similar interests and groups can self discover and self organize using the ‘friend of a friend’, recommender/referrer and other social software features of Flickr. One additional significant feature of Flickr is its embrace of standards including RSS and Atom. All of these features go far to ensure that Flickr is versatile, works with almost every other system out there, can be ‘hacked’ by those who wish to do so and promotes a ‘social’, fun type of engagement. The University of British Columbia created several image repositories as part of a campus wide Learning Objects pilot. These projects were part of a larger pilot project looking at institutional repositories and their utility as campus wide learning object repositories. Of the pilot projects undertaken, image repositories were amongst the most successful having the largest number of loyal users and greatest number of records. While these projects included some of the features seen in Flickr, an analysis of the successful features of Flickr and a comparison with UBC projects may help to enhance the success of the institutional projects. A Biological image repository that was discipline specific, locally ‘owned’, and sensitive to the requirements of its users was created. Its intended purpose was to store research data for use by fellow scientists as well as instructors and students. The repository managed to fit the needs of researchers, instructors and students resulting in records serving as research objects, teaching objects and learning objects. In addition to serving as a repository, some of the additional features of this repository promote community, flexibility and sharing. In a second UBC project, a community site related to a Botanical Garden serves as the place for amateur botanists and gardening enthusiasts to meet and discuss a wide variety of botanical topics. The site consists of a weblog, moderated discussion boards, and links to 97

the scientiďŹ c image repositories of plant scientists. Volunteers from the general public are enlisted to ensure that the site runs well. Enthusiasts have helped to make this site one of the more vibrant amateur botanical communities on the web and a potential outreach point to make scientiďŹ c research accessible to the general public. This paper attempts to explore those design features that help to make a repository useful to its users. By examining the goals of institutional projects and ďŹ tting them to some of the features that have been successful outside the academy, we hope to identify design principles that contribute to the success of open, useful research object / learning object repositories.

Why do Schools Have Walls? Another Look at Barriers to Paradigm Shift in Educational Infrastructure Liza Loop, LO*OP Center, Inc. Thursday, September 29, 2005, 1:15-2:00 pm 201 Eccles Conference Center If we didn’t have a school system and we had to invent something to encourage learning, what would we design? This question has been with me all of my adult life. In 1983, after working with kids and computers for 8 years, I wrote out a brief description of the Open Portal School and published several versions of it in magazines and newsletters for educators. Although positively received, no one offered a further developed blueprint of how to migrate from a 1980s style “little red schoolhouse” to a school of the future. Many educators of the time became deeply involved in building and marketing educational hardware and software. These inventors promised that their technologies would revolutionize the processes of teaching and learning. Marketing these products required that they be either “entertainment,” and therefore compete with educational activities, or easily adapted to the traditional classroom. Much progress was made in delivering traditional curriculum to distributed locations via radio, video and teleconferencing. The Internet made many types of mediated courseware available to students of all ages any time, anywhere. However, in spite of all this progress, the basic concept of school has not evolved signiﬁcantly. Why not? I think the answer to this question lies in our collective global mindset. Even in developing countries parents, government ofﬁcials and community leaders view building schools and providing trained classroom teachers as essential to the growth of self-sustaining economies. We expect to educate people in “teaching factories” even though the nineteenth century industrial model may never again be viable in many parts of the world. We need a mindset appropriate to the information age. It’s time for envisioning, inventing, interlinking and, eventually, implementing a set of organizational structures to promote “open” learning environments for all people. To facilitate this process I pose the six “formative questions” listed below. 99

1. What do schools do? What functions does a school perform today? If we are inventing educative systems to replace or exist along side today’s schools we would be wise to know what they already do. We wouldn’t want to lose functionality we already have. However, cataloging current functions may help us identify additional outcomes to incorporate into schools of the future. We may also ﬁnd activities that no longer need to be coupled with formal education. We might ask what other social institutions can do this better? 2. What kinds of educational programs currently exist worldwide? People all over the world learn in formal and informal ways. Let’s look around before we launch our educative revolution and compile an inventory of different kinds of learning institutions already invented. Every city in the world has examples of private and governmentsponsored, formal educational institutions. But learning also takes place in nonformal venues such as museums, theatres and libraries. Homebased tutoring and schooling used to be the rule for most children before the industrial revolution. Now it is experiencing a revival across the United States. Can parents now take more responsibility for “education”? What about workplace education, coaching, and the school of hard knocks? We must look beyond the traditional school and college campuses for models of how people really acquire the skills and information needed to thrive in the 21st century. 3. What counts as educational and why? What characteristics differentiate “educational” activities from other kinds of activities? We judge activities—our own and others’—against a standard that is often unspoken and unexamined. We value some experiences more than others. The term “learning” is usually applied by teachers to changes they have mapped out for others designated as “students”. But as information and skills training becomes more mediated the learner gains control while the teacher transforms into a coach or facilitator. How do we draw a line between teacher and entertainer? 4. Who grants degrees and certiﬁcates? From whom or from where do degree-granting organizations get their formal authority? Who says Tom can have a high school diploma and Harry can’t, Mele can practice medicine or Nga can represent you in court? The local school board, the State of California? The Educational Testing Service? The Minister of Education of India? An important modern-day function of many 100

schools and universities is the granting of degrees. Changes in the structure of education must address the question of certification. 5. Who is responsible for the care and safety of those who cannot fend for themselves? Today many schools function as glorified babysitting services. Hospitals, senior centers and rehabilitation centers teach older people how to manage medications and infirmities. Families and nursing homes may not offer any learning opportunities to their elderly or handicapped. Our modern infrastructure often intermixes the functions of caregiver, social skills developer and intellectual coach to such a degree that none of these roles is well done. There may be better ways to care for people then sending them to “school”. 6. Who gets to learn? What formal and informal conditions control access to various educational experiences today? How should we arrange access for tomorrow’s learners? We agree that the learner needs to come to the educative experience with the skills needed to benefit from it. We wouldn’t send a person who had never been on skis to the top of the expert slope. Aside from lack of prerequisite physical or intellectual skills what other barriers are there to learning opportunities? Money? Time? Motivation? Social class? Cultural capital? Educational infrastructure? Participants will be invited to refine these six questions during this presentation and then contribute their comments and answers to an ongoing wiki web site on these topics. Original paper http://tango.rahul.net/loopcntr/LLinhtml/opsch98. htmat, updated paper in process.

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A Sustainable Model for Collaborative Development, Access, and Interoperability of High-quality Online OER Courses Gary Lopez and Ruth Rominger, Monterey Institute Friday, September 30, 2005, 11:00-11:45 am 207 Eccles Conference Center Monterey Institute for Technology and Education is an educational non-profit organization committed to improving access to education. MITE (pronounced “mighty”) sponsors a range of projects from establishing development standards and specifications for online courses, to educational research and multimodal content development and distribution. Two of MITE’s cornerstone projects are the National Repository of Online Courses and the Online Course Evaluation Project. The National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) project supports the development and distribution of high-quality online courses to a worldwide audience. The goal of this project is to facilitate collaboration among a community of developers to create a library of online courses that are available to everyone. Supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the library launched this summer offering courses for high school, Advanced Placement©, and higher education. The goal of the Online Course Evaluation Project (OCEP) is to provide the education community a criteria-based evaluation of online courses as a tool to access and compare the quality of online courses in high school, Advanced Placement©, and higher education. A comprehensive assessment process and set of criteria have been developed and reviewed. Currently, OCEP is scanning the US and Canadian education landscape and networking with education leaders to identify courses for inclusion in the evaluation database. Sustainable Business Model. NROC is being built upon an innovative business model that is prototyping a complete online learning “value chain,” from editorial and technical guidelines, to a collaborative development network, to flexible delivery and use. The model consists of pedagogical and technical guidelines for course development, a collaborative development model, flexible delivery, barter, and licensing options, integrated to improve the quality of learning, leverage resources, and open up access to online education. 102

Sustainable Value Chain

MITE has signed development partnership and licensing agreements with international, state, and regional education institutions its ďŹ rst year of operation. The NROC library is launching with course titles in US History, American Government, Introductory and Advanced Physics, Calculus and Environmental Science. Next in the pipeline are Algebra, Spanish Language and World Religion. NROC Guidelines. Our guidelines provide a comprehensive framework and set of principles that encompass what is known about effective online education, that have the ďŹ&#x201A;exibility to evolve as the marketplace of technologies, collaboration, investment, and learner and teacher experiences shift. The Guidelines are designed to help bridge the gap between what research tells us about learning, and the current state of the online learning marketplace. The long-term goal of the National Repository of Online Courses is to create a robust digital library of online course content, providing the best learning experiences possible for any institution, instructor or student who wants to use online courses to enhance learning and teaching. Our short-term goal is to disseminate the NROC guidelines to facilitate collaboration in the course development community, in order to navigate down a pathway of continual improvement in the quality, interoperability and availability of complete online courses. Integrated Learning Theory and Development Guidelines

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Collaborative Development. As the online education ďŹ eld takes off, tens millions of dollars are being spent on developing courses at the instructor and class level. It is safe to say that tens of thousands of courses are being made throughout the world. Yet when we survey the courses that are in use and in development, a tiny number of the courses employ innovative learning theory, high production value, or interoperable technical speciďŹ cations. With this as our landscape, NROC has built a collaborative development model that allows course developers to share guidelines and expertise, advise on design and implementation, seek joint funding for collaborative development, and match-make institutions with the same needs to leverage existing resources into sharing curriculum development. Collaborative Developer Network

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Global Distribution. NROC partners with academic institutions, publishers, teaching organizations, state and federal agencies, international distributors, social beneﬁt programs and others to create a global distribution network to provide courses to student, teacher, and the general public at little or no cost. There are a number of ways in which courses may be licensed for use, including barter (trading for contributing resources to the library), low-cost library licenses and open access licenses. Flexible barter and licensing model

Interoperability. Our technical guidelines and execution have been designed to provide as much technical interoperability as is reasonably possible in the current digital environment. We (re)develop courses and learning objects to fit into a flexible schema that keeps file hierarchies, content, activities and assessments organized, to be most 105

easily ported into various environments. NROC courses operate within most commonly used CMS tools and therefore require no new training. With a bit more effort and technical assistance, NROC course ďŹ les can be loaded into proprietary and open source learning systems, or may be simply served as content without a CMS in an open, web-based environment. To support a wide variety of delivery options, NROC provides resources, training and consulting services to aid course library implementation. Interoperable Delivery Options

Customization. To address some of the cultural and technical barriers to instructors and institutions adopting courses from other organizations, we have designed our courses and processes to make it as easy as possible for customization. Our content and technical guidelines create a fairly uniform presentation and organization of course learning objects so that it is transparent for instructors or development partners to customize the courses within learning management systems by turning off or hiding any ďŹ les not wanted, and augmenting the content presentations and activities by importing new ďŹ les into the course. This schema also allows for taking objects out of the course sequence to build new modules or lessons around or enhance a course that has already been developed. We are also researching the cultural issues in the way of more substantial course exchanges between instructors and institutions. We will be providing training seminars and an online learning community to assist in learning about using third party online content, strategies for evaluating materials, and practical, hands-on techniques for integrating all of these resources to make courses more engaging and effective. 106

Customizable Courses

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The Role of the Library in Open Education Christine Madsen and Megan Hurst, Harvard University Library Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 2:15-3:00 pm 203 Eccles Conference Center In 1931, when S. R. Ranganathan presented his Five Laws of Library Science, he envisioned libraries playing a vital role in education.6 Yet, as these principles have confronted modern technologies and the tendency of libraries to distance and isolate themselves from the larger educational environment, they have been significantly weakened.7 Libraries must be involved in the effort to advance and sustain open education. They should be at the forefront of providing open content to educators and students. But because they often believe this responsibility falls outside the scope of their profession, many librarians avoid it, leaving a noticeable gap between educators and students and the resources they need. The Open Collections Program (OCP) of the Harvard University Library interprets Ranganathan more boldly. For the past three years, OCP has been an active participant in the creation of open educational content and in exploring and expanding the roles digital library collections can play in education. Through its marketing, outreach, and evaluation efforts, OCP works directly with educators and students at all levels. In this presentation, we will discuss and demonstrate our recent work in these critically important areas. Ranganathan’s five laws: 1. Books are for use. 2. Every reader, his book. 3. Every book, its reader. 4. Save the time of the reader. 5. A library is a growing organism.8 One of the founding principles behind OCP was that a collection isn’t really open unless its resources can easily be accessed and navigated. This means, first and foremost, that users must know the collection exists. Many digital collections stop short of connecting their books with their potential readers, holding fast to the principle that if you build it, they will come. But will they? If librarians really believe “books are for use” (and that includes electronic books), they must be more active in promoting their collections. Marketing seems to be 108

unspeakable these days in libraries, as if librarians think self-promotion implies lower standards. But Ranganathan’s laws demand marketing, or outreach, or public services—call it whatever you like, but libraries must be more aggressive in connecting their digital materials with their users. The fourth law, “Save the time of the reader,” requires librarians to organize their online content and provide context and navigation tools. Librarians often resist adding such features to their web sites, but these tools parallel the topical pathfinders they have been creating for years—the medium has changed, but the underlying idea has not. The more creative and prolific librarians become in designing materials to help users navigate their online collections, the more successfully they will bridge the gap between the library and education worlds. Like all students, library users learn as they make sense of the texts, images, and objects they encounter and as they find relationships and create connections among them.9 Ranganathan called for librarians to make their collections known and available, and to help readers find relevant materials within them, even and especially when patrons “do not know enough about available resources to know what to request.”10 “The majority of readers do not know their requirements, and their interests take a definite shape only after seeing and handling a wellarranged collection of books,” he wrote.11 He charged librarians to bring related books together—to arrange books in ways that would support the development of the reader’s interests and questions. We will demonstrate several new web pages through which OCP is responding to the needs of learners and offering theme-based access to its collections. As with the pathfinders librarians traditionally have created, themes are chosen based on the budding interests audiences bring to the collections. Items representing various genres are selected for their potential to help raise questions and start conversations when they are placed near one another. Additional selections, listed next to each featured item, draw the reader further into the collections. Links to individual items and to parts of the collections and embedded browse and search functions offer multiple paths into a broadening range of materials set in an increasingly complex web of relationships. The design of these new pathfinders is shaped by this belief: the more entryways librarians can provide to their collections, and the denser the networks of pathways they can suggest within them, the 109

richer visitorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; experiences of the collections will be, and the richer the understandings each reader can develop from her interaction with them. One of the greatest potential barriers to open education in the coming years may be the continued reluctance of libraries, particularly academic libraries, to share their resources more fully with all educators and students. Certain policies help to sustain this reluctance and this roadblock. Library administrators often argue that creating digital collections for use outside their own institutions, and providing navigation tools or reference support for outside users, is beyond their purview. But libraries are growing organisms. The Open Collections Program has set out to open Harvardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s library collections to the world. Our intention is to create a model for the creation of digital library collectionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a model that demonstrates the potential power in bringing once closed and hidden materials to educators and students around the world. When we envision how educators and students beyond Harvard might navigate these collections, for example, we are able to improve access for all visitors, creating collections that are more usable and more open to people both inside and outside the Harvard community. Librarians have the potential to be important players in the world of open education, but they must expand the way they think about their collections, their users, and their profession.

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Introductory Statistics Online: The Journey from Classroom to Open Courseware Tom Malloy and Jake Jensen, University of Utah Friday, September 30, 2005, 11:00-11:45 am 201 Eccles Conference Center Gary “Jake “ ” Jensen is the Java programmer, database designer, and systems administrator for all of these online projects. Tom Malloy, who is responsible for pedagogical software design, has taught statistics, graduate and undergraduate, since 1968 winning numerous teaching awards along the way. Tom began developing electronic materials for an Introductory Statistics classroom course in 1994 and Jake joined the team in 1997 when we began posting them online. By the summer of 2000 we launched a highly automated, database driven online course including video-game like learning environments that has successfully served thousands of students. Psychology 3000 Online was originally funded by the Utah Higher Education Technology Initiative (HETI) as StatCenter, a comprehensive and integrated suite of software programs providing online resources for learning and teaching statistics meant to add value to online educational resources through interactive new media such as the Utah Virtual Lab. The Utah Virtual Lab (Malloy & Jensen, 2001) allows instructors to build virtual realities based on statistical relations among research variables that their students can then explore and, by discovery processes, ﬁnd its principles. We make the argument that such new media interactivity which can teach deductive and inductive logic as well as statistical reasoning (Malloy, 2001) actually delivers value added educational experiences that classroom and even one-on-one teaching cannot provide. In this paper we will provide a brief tour of this course in its OCW form. In 2001 Tom joined the original Merlot editorial board as chief editor for the Psychology collection to develop standards and peer review processes for shared learning materials (Malloy & Hanley, 2001). In 2003 we proposed a Shared Course Center at the University of Michigan Open Courseware Workshop. The idea was (and is with COSL) that a shared course center would include all that is implied in the textbook metaphor along all the possibilities implied by computer enhanced learning objects and database interactivity. With a fully open, shared course and resources from communities such as MERLOT and SMETE, even teachers with minimal computer literacy and minimal technical support would be able to use their substantial array of 111

teaching skills to do what they now do in the classroom - create a customized online learning context in service of their personal teaching vision. This is a value-added alternative to textbooks as the central organizing principle for courses: computer-based, new media online materials that go well beyond what can be taught with the classic printed textbook. The Introductory Statistics course required that we build, de facto, a full Learning Management System; moreover other teachers frustrated by the costs and limitations of commercial LMSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s asked to have their course resources served through out system. As a result we built the open source Open Learning Management System (OLMS) and posted it on SourceForge. Malloy, Jensen, Regan, and Reddick, 2002 summarize the advantages of an LMS that has no licensing fees, is responsive to the design needs of local teachers, and is not constrained by the business plan of a large corporation. In many ways higher education, while it deeply values open and shared knowledge generated by its research mission, has not valued, in the same way, open and shared knowledge generated by its teaching mission. We have experienced little enthusiasm for supporting the shared knowledge proposals that we have put forth over the years, at least until we met with the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning. Currently, in the summer of 2005, we are negotiating with a Mexican University to share the Introductory Statistics course and possibly produce a Spanish language version. We are also working with the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning to realize, ďŹ nally, the dream of shared courseware that we began developing for the HETI grant in 1997. It is a genuine pleasure to participate in this effort with people who are enthusiastic for what we think is the future in higher education. References Malloy, T. E. (2001). Difference to Inference: Teaching logical and statistical reasoning through online interactivity. Behavior Research Methods Instruments & Computers, 33, 270-273. Malloy, T. E. & Hanley, G. L. (2001). MERLOT: A faculty-focused website of educational resources. Behavior Research Methods Instruments & Computers, 33, 274-276. Malloy, T. E. & Jensen, G. C. (2001). Utah Virtual Lab: JAVA interactivity for teaching science and statistics online. Behavior Research 112

Methods Instruments & Computers, 33, 282-286. Malloy, T. E., Jensen, G. C., Regan, A., & Reddick, M. (2002). Open courseware and shared knowledge in higher education. Behavior Research Methods Instruments & Computers, 34, 200-203. Gordon, E. O. & Malloy, T. E. (2002). Online Homework/Quiz/Exam Applet: Freely available Java software for evaluating performance online. Behavior Research Methods Instruments & Computers, 34, 241-244.

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OCW Experiences Moderator: Anne Margulies, MIT Panel: Yoshimi Fukuhara, Keio University, Mary Lee, Tufts University, Yoshimi Fukuhara, Keio University, Joaquim Nasser, ENSTA/ParisTech, Jared Stein, Utah Valley State College, James Yager, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 10:30-11:45 am 216 Eccles Conference Center This session explores the experiences of early adopters of opencourseware sharing at a variety of institutions, focusing on unique challenges encountered by each. Panelists include Mary Lee (Tufts University), Joaquim Nassar (ENSTA/ParisTech), Jared Stein (Utah Valley State College), James Yager (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health), and others. Each panel member will provide a brief description of their institutionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s motivations in undertaking an opencourseware project, provide the status of the project at present, and discuss one challenge their organization has faced in realizing their goals. These presentations will be followed by a discussion of implementation experiences moderated by Anne Margulies, Executive Director of MIT OpenCourseWare.

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Targeted Users of Open Educational Resources: Serving K-12 Teachers and Kicking the Tires of OER Gary Matkin and Jia Frydenberg, University of California, Irvine Thursday, September 29, 2005, 2:15-3:00 pm 203 Eccles Conference Center Introduction The University of California Irvine (UCI), through its Distance Learning and University Extension units, and with seed funding from the Hewlett Foundation and the Boeing Corporation, will create and offer 13 university-level (30 hour) online courses designed to help current and prospective K-12 science and mathematics teachers pass the science and math related California Subject Examination for Teachers (CSET). The instructor-led courses will be offered through UCI for those teachers seeking credit and the discipline of a formal course, but the full material of the courses will also be available to self-learners through an Open Educational Resource Exchange (OERE) infrastructure. This project will serve as an early test of the OERE infrastructure. Background Recent data show that 26 percent of science and math teachers in California public schools and up to 56 percent of the teachers in highneed schools are under prepared (teaching without the appropriate credential) and lack subject-matter competency as mandated by state and federal education policy. In California, the primary determinant of subject-matter competency in mathematics and the sciences (Life Sciences, Geosciences, Chemistry, and Physics) are passing scores on the California Subject Examination of Teachers (CSET) subtests in these areas. Many unqualified teachers delay taking or never take the examinations because they lack confidence in the subject matter. Of those who take the test, about forty percent do not pass these examinations on their first attempts. Current test preparation programs do not meet the content requirements and/or do not include the appropriate test-taking strategies to support learners. Process To accomplish the objectives outlined above, UCI will: 1.

Acquire Course Content. Content for the online preparation courses will be developed from pre-existing advance placement (AP) courses available through UCCP and relevant 115

materials from other open content sources. 2. Conduct Gap Analysis. With the assistance of content area experts in science and mathematics and professionals in testing familiar with the CSET, UCI will conduct a gap analysis to identify elements of the AP courses and other materials that can be transferred to test preparation materials. Where elements are missing, we will look to acquire them from other academic sources. 3. Build Courses. Once sufďŹ cient content is acquired, the preparation courses will be developed collaboratively by content experts and UCI. UCI will develop content that can be placed online for use as instructor-facilitated courses or as a freely accessible course for self learners. UCI will gain input from its partners in Teacher Preparation programs and partnering school districts as the courses are built. 4. Disseminate Courses to Pilot Audiences. When the preparation courses are fully developed, they will be piloted in two ways. a. Instructor-Facilitated Courses. UCI will offer all instructor-facilitated test preparation courses online to selected partnering Teacher Education Programs (TEPs) and school districts. As part of the pilot, enrollment in any or all of the instructor-facilitated courses will be free of charge. One fully developed and tested, these courses will be offered on a fee basis to individuals and districts. b. Courses for Self-Learners. Understanding the need for materials to prepare self learners, UCI will provide access to course content online that can be accessed by students in TEPs and current teachers across the nation. As an early example and test of the evolving OERE infrastructure, this project has some interesting characteristics that will be useful in testing OERE as a concept (proof of concept). The audiences for this educational treatment are well-deďŹ ned and 116

easily reached. Members of these audiences have a clearly defined need (qualification as teachers) and high incentives for meeting the need. The educational objectives are also clearly defined and easily measured (passing the CSET) and the measurement is by an independent agency (the State of California). These audiences and the clear goals of this project will be a good test of the efficacy of OERE. This project will also test the feasibility of using already created highquality educational resources in both instructor-led courses and as open educational resources for self-learners. What issues present themselves in repurposing content from existing resources—technical, intellectual property, pedagogical, financial? Our project will document these issues. We will also be able to determine if there is a relationship between self-learners and formal learners. For instance, we will be able to track the conversion of self-learners in the audience to formal learners of the instructor-led courses and may be able to determine how many in each group take and pass the CSET examinations. This project will also test the efficiency and effectiveness of two new elements of the OERE infrastructure, the “portal” being developed to inform people about OER and the “eduCommons in a box” technology being produced by Utah State. Again, we will document our experience with these and other aspects of OERE. This project not only fills a compelling need in California (and, potentially, many other states and countries) but also will provide rich data about the evolving OERE movement. This presentation will present more information and provide a structure for discussing a number of current issues facing all of us.

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Only Connect: James Burke’s Knowledge Web Patrick McKercher, University of California, Santa Cruz Thursday, September 29, 2005, 1:15-2:00 pm 203 Eccles Conference Center While a great deal of excellent foundational work has been done to create digital repositories, and some metadata standards are emerging, much less work has been done to investigate how to access these rich sources in compelling ways. James Burke has designed and implemented an Open Knowledge exploration system, the Knowledge Web (K-Web), as a result of his alarm that the current educational regime is not preparing students to think in the systemic ways demanded of workers and citizens in the Twenty-first century, much less offering such training to those who have already graduated. The K-Web is the digital incarnation of James Burke’s award-winning books and PBS/Discovery programs on the nature and the history of innovation (his breakthrough Connections series garnered the highest PBS viewership for a documentary and was used in hundreds of high schools and universities in fifty countries). Burke’s work, which anticipated network theory, hyperlinks and even hypermedia, is perfect for the World Wide Web. Unfortunately, much of the initial premise and promise of the Internet—a community of people contributing to a common body of knowledge for free—has been somewhat lost. The K-Web is a return to this initial potential, a sort of open source 3D Encyclopedia Galactica. The K-Web is being built by a virtual team of hundreds of volunteers from all over the world, and thus we’ve encountered, solved or avoided many of the barriers to Open Knowledge initiatives. Much of our success is due to Hewlett Foundation support, and to a brilliant advisory board including John Seely Brown, Doug Engelbart, Jaron Lanier and Howard Rheingold, among others. The K-Web is significant in that can serve as an umbrella for any educational object or content from text, to applets to video, to simulations, even to Virtual Reality. As Harvard’s Chris Dede observes, to make education truly universally available, we must learn how to deliver high quality educational content on low cost ubiquitous entertainment hardware such as i-Pods and portable game platforms, the latter of which are becoming powerful and networked VR displays, as well as DVD players. Dede also points out that educational 118

technology needs a powerful exemplar to help it break out of the “islands of innovation” trap; the K-Web certainly has the potential to do this, in part by its umbrella function referenced above. The K-Web is a powerful and intuitive exploratory digital library—a learning and teaching device involving multiple intelligences and thinking in more complex systemic ways; it is also an interactive tool for understanding knowledge in context and for generating new ideas. Flying through content, K-Web users can explore a universe of data to discover how seemingly unrelated people, events and ideas are connected across time and space. Actually, the K-Web goes beyond interactivity to immersion: the K-Web not only allows students to fly through human knowledge in a compelling way, and to follow Burke on his unique guided tours of history, but allows them to create their own journeys, as well as visit historical immersive interactive environments (e.g., talk to Galileo and experiment with his inventions). This seems like the Holodeck, the stuff of science fiction, but we are already building these virtual worlds with free user-friendly software; thus we have the opportunity to move inquiry based learning to immersive experiential exploration of simulations. This means an absolutely new kind of education is now possible, one tailored to the interests and abilities of the learner. Digital technology not only makes this possible but essential: the traditional school system, adapted to the industrial age, often offers only a lockstep text- and memory-based , one-sizefits-all curriculum; the information age demands different skills: critical thinking, teamwork, communication skills, and the ability to work with diverse (sometimes geographically distributed) groups. Though the K-Web is a powerful tool to visualize information, it’s important not to overlook that not only is it a community effort, but is also a community building tool (a bridge between learners, mentors, teachers, libraries and museums, two- and four-year schools, and even public and private sectors). Technology in schools is not like fire: proximity alone is not effective. Teachers need powerful examples of how technology can be integrated into the curriculum, and they need Communities of Practice to share and refine best practices; the KWeb provides both. For example, teachers will have access to content experts in universities, NGO’s and the private sector, but they can also use emergent intelligence to generate their own expertise, sharing lesson plans in a searchable standards-based database. 119

The K-Web has complex information, but it is in no way exclusive. Because of its design, users can enter through fun and familiar things such as ice cream and follow paths to the steam engine, Einstein or Frankenstein. Or students can go into free-flight mode, flying through the time-space construct of nested globes (present time on the outside, ancient past in the center) to wherever—and whenever—their curiosity takes them. Thus the user can find and investigate (even compare) hotspots of activity, whether they be geographical (Florence or Shanghai), temporal (Bronze Age or Renaissance) or disciplinary (embryology or poetry). These journeys can be saved, annotated, emailed or posted for others to take. The K-Web also provides powerful ways to search and filter content: for example, the system will show how any two entities are connected, or the user can search for nineteenth century chemists who were women, self-educated, French or any/all of the above. Multiple intelligence are accommodated because every node will have text, multimedia, and some will have animations, simulations and even immersive virtual reality recreations of historical places and people, in which students can interact with intelligent agents, manipulate objects and solve problems in real time with other students from around the world. These virtual reality worlds can be built by students as young as fifth grade, enabling the constructivist ideal of students creating learning experiences for other students. As I hope this brief overview demonstrates, because of the scope of the project, we can be both contribute to and benefit from conversations with other Open Knowledge projects. Basic info http://k-web.org Video overview: see link at bottom of http://k-web.org/details/index. html#works

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The eGranary Digital Library: A New Tool for Information Equity Clifford Missen, University of Iowa Thursday, September 29, 2005, 11:00-11:45 am 205 Eccles Conference Center The Great Internet Bandwidth Conundrum Advocates of open information and education have thrived on the World Wide Web, where millions of individuals and organizations have made billions of digital documents freely available to Internauts. While this same information is desperately needed in the developing world, Internet access is relatively rare and expensive in the world’s poorest countries, meaning only an elite few have ready access to the world’s largest library. The bulk of sub-Saharan African institutions that currently have Internet connectivity have depended on large contributions from outside agencies and they face considerable challenges developing self-sustaining programs once the external funding is ﬁnished. Sadly, even in those schools in developing countries that have an Internet connection, users generally experience slow and unreliable bandwidth. This makes it nearly impossible for an educator to plan curriculum around World Wide Web resources, especially around bandwidth-intensive resources like audio, video, books, and journals. Finally, even as a minority of sub-Saharan universities has managed, sometimes heroically, to develop Internet connectivity in the last few years, it remains that the bulk of secondary schools, hospitals, clinics, libraries are years, possibly decades, away from having adequate Internet connectivity. Unusual Solution for Unusual Situations The eGranary Digital Library, developed by the University of Iowa’s WiderNet Project, provides millions of digital educational resources to institutions lacking adequate Internet access. Through a process of garnering permissions, copying Web sites, and delivering them to intranet Web servers INSIDE our partner institutions in developing countries, the eGranary Digital Library delivers millions of multimedia documents that can be instantly accessed by patrons over their local area networks at no cost. 121

For institutions in the developing world struggling to establish an Internet link—or straining to ﬁnd a sustainable way to maintain or increase their current Internet bandwidth—the eGranary Digital Library can play a critical role in any bandwidth management strategy. For those without an Internet connection, this library is a phenomenon. Those who already have an Internet connection experience the resources opening 5,000 times faster from the eGranary Digital Library and can save tens of thousands of dollars in bandwidth costs ever year. With installations in more than 50 educational institutions, clinics, and hospitals in Africa, Bangladesh and Haiti, the eGranary Digital Library provides lightning-fast access to educational materials including video, audio, books, journals, and Web sites, even where no Internet access exists. Some of the many authors and publishers who have granted permission to distribute their works via the eGranary include: U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Columbia University, Cornell University, MIT Press, the Gutenberg Project, UNESCO, World Bank and WHO. The latest eGranary Digital Library development is an eGranary Appliance; a plug-and-play server that ﬁts effortlessly into any local area network. With a built-in custom proxy, the eGranary Appliance creates a patron experience that makes the eGranary look and act just like the real Internet, with fast and comprehensive search capabilities, 2.2+ million documents, and a content update service that makes it possible for a subscriber to receive new and updated resources via any transport mechanism (Internet, CD-ROM, satellite radio...) at any time. New Delivery Solution, the Usual Issues More than a technical solution for information delivery to developing countries, the eGranary Digital Library is, like the World Wide Web itself, a collaboration of information champions around the world. The eGranary Digital Library represents the collective efforts of hundreds of authors, publishers, programmers, librarians, instructors and students around the globe. The WiderNet Project continues to recruit more authors and publishers to help grow its collection to 10 million documents, volunteers to help collect and categorize new materials and librarians and teachers to help get the library installed in thousands of schools. 122

Yet many questions about the choice of content, content quality, localization of content, the inclusion of local content, and copyrights remain to be explored within the context of this new information distribution scheme. Then there are issues about how to utilize the eGranary Digital Library (or the Internet, for that matter) to play a signiďŹ cant role in the strategic mission of subscriber institutions. There is no law that says that an Internet connection must necessarily lead to improved teaching or research. As most American institutions have learned, it takes years (sometimes decades) to change the habits of librarians and educators. Students tend to adapt to the technology readily once exposed, but providing students with practical opportunities to use digital collections and develop information literacy poses a host of additional challenges. As organizations look to the eGranary Digital Library to deliver their curriculum to partners in developing countries, they are faced with the same complexities that they face delivering distance education to those in the Internet-connected world, with a few added twists stemming from the general lack of synchronous communication. As subscribers in the developing world deploy the eGranary Digital Library, they enter into another realm of information delivery that will shake their foundations and challenge their assumptions. So, whether the tool employed is the eGranary Digital Library or the Internet, the question remains for all of those interested in this ďŹ eld: what can be done to hasten the appropriate adoption of digital information technologies to improve the core missions of our partners in developing countries?

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The Global Education & Learning Community (GELC) Vision: World Class Content... Developed by the Community... Just a Click Away Larry Nelson, Global Education & Learning Community Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 2:15-3:00 pm 205 Eccles Conference Center This discussion will follow this agenda: • Introduction • Overview of GELC • “State of the Union” of the GELC • Demonstration of Web Site • Discussion of Partnerships in development • Open feedback/discussion For purposes of this abstract, a more in depth discussion of the GELC follows: Core Issues Addressed by GELC 1. Schools lack the resources to identify, select and purchase world-class digital content. 2. There are many exemplars of effective uses of educational technology throughout the world that are effectively one-off examples...this doesn’t scale and doesn’t effectively foster best practices on a global basis. 3. Where open source and other resources are provided in education there is often a disconnect between the “developers” of these resources and the educators using them. There is a need for feedback and community to improve, provide input, share and disseminate these resources globally. GELC addresses these issues by creating a framework for fostering the global education community, bringing together these exemplars combined with a method for feedback and interaction between the developers/partners contributing to open source tools, and the educators that are using open source tools ensuring that they are useful. Near Term Objectives In support of this mission and vision, GELC’s objectives for 2005 are as follows: 124

• • • • • • • • • •

Establish GELC as an independent non-proﬁt entity; Drive Membership; Improve aesthetics of site and its ability to foster community for educators; Clearly articulate the value proposition of GELC for external and internal audiences; Evangelize vision and understanding to Sun Edu Sales Force & articulate how to leverage revenue Synchronize with appropriate Edu Initiatives (e.g. Academic Developer program) Identify the appropriate web site approach for providing access to content and tools developed within & contributed to GELC; Simplify the access of projects, content and assessment objects delivered; Focus on higher education developer community and targeted MOE’s as partners to develop and contribute to the community; and Populate the web site with a focused set of learning objects and assessment objects targeted at use within Primary/ Secondary Education (such as Math curriculum for 3rd grade).

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Open Education Resources Portal: Building Community and Stimulating Use Lisa Petrides, Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 1:15-2:00 pm 201 Eccles Conference Center This session will present the Open Education Resources (OER) Portal Project funded by the Hewlett Foundation. This work- in-progress is a user-driven open education resource portal, whose purpose is to stimulate the adoption, sharing, and learning about open education resources. As the supply and demand of open education content continues to grow, innovation and development will lead to an increasingly complex and diversified content landscape. Therefore, two ultimate outcomes of this project are to build community knowledge and awareness around the development and use of open education resources, and to stimulate use of high quality open education resources through the development of user-driven submissions and reviews. The purpose of this session will be to present the general conceptual framework for the portal as well as an early beta version of the portal, and to solicit user feedback. The two primary components of the OER Portal are a clearinghouse of materials related to the use of open content, as well as a registry of open education content course materials that will allow instructors, students, and unaffiliated learners to search, find and review content across existing collections and repositories. Users will be able to participate in discussions relating to open content, including pedagogical concerns, student learning, instructional effectiveness, etc. As such, the OER Portal also intends to support the open education community by allowing open content creators and users to actively engage with one another, and to support the growing OER community of content creators, tool developers, and distribution networks. Rather than being a static repository, the OER Portal intends to serve as open education content “home-base” where users can interact with one another. Through this process, we hope to create a sustainable infrastructure, whereby continuous feedback will help lead to ongoing advancements and innovation in open education. The OER Portal clearinghouse will also contain resources for open education such as research articles, related news, discussion forums, FAQs, etc. 126

Because the OER Portal Project is still in the design and development stages, we are currently interested in soliciting input from the open education community. We are interested in how the OER Portal can help members of the open education community meet their current needs. We would also like to better understand other issues and concerns open education practitioners may have, and what features might be most helpful. From this, we will be better able to develop a set of features, functional components, and strategies that open education practitioners feel would be vital to their engagement with the OER Portal.

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Reusability of University Digital Archives: Meeting the Needs of K-12 Teachers Felicia Poe, California Digital Library and Isaac Mankita, University of California at Berkeley Thursday, September 29, 2005, 3:15-4:00 pm 203 Eccles Conference Center How can digital libraries organize and structure freely available digital primary resources to facilitate use and reuse by multiple user communities in formal and informal environments? How does one transform collections built for university-level research and teaching to share them with non-university audiences? This paper describes activities in process at the California Digital Library (CDL) to fulfill the University of California’s public service mission by making digital content on its public site more usable for (primarily) K-12 teachers and students. It explains preliminary research that informed project design and the process of investigating how to best structure collections for increased usability. Initial project development was guided by two CDL commissioned studies and a literature review; as the work progressed, CDL formed an advisory board of high school teachers and librarians, which continues in a consulting role. The studies—one on user assessment, the other on teacher practice—revealed that teachers want easily accessible, wellorganized, high-quality resources to create supplementary learning materials for classroom use. The studies also showed that to find resources, teachers begin with a specific question and search the Internet with purpose; only when they locate a trusted site do they browse to find appropriate materials. Once high-quality materials are found, teachers prefer to create their own teaching materials rather than rely upon a pre-defined set of activities often associated with a traditional “lesson plan.” Teachers also reiterated the importance of a site providing some attribution and context for its presented resources, e.g., Who created the collection? For what purpose? What kinds of materials does it contain? Attribution and context allow a searching teacher to quickly assess relevance, trustworthiness and potential use. Teachers further suggested that guiding questions be used to organize and cluster materials that might be used to investigate parts of a theme. These findings suggested the creation of theme-based, small collections to organize and better 128

expose rich digital resources and facilitate their use in teaching and learning.12 Guided by these findings, a multidisciplinary team developed a strategy to open the large CDL collection to more users by creating “themed collections” organized around themes in California’s K-12 content standards. Each Themed Collection is comprised of 40-120 digital objects accompanied by descriptive information sufficient to contextualize the object and make it available to search engines. The advisory board confirmed the need for an intermediate-level collection organized around themes and the need to provide printerfriendly versions of these objects. Board members also clarified two distinct patterns of work for teachers: the “night before” approach, and the “plan-ahead” approach. Themed collections support both approaches by providing “digital gems,” a few, compelling visual resources with sufficient context to allow teachers to quickly determine ways to use them in learning activities. The themed collection also supports teachers, who have additional time to further explore the contents of specific collections and select documents they may deem most appropriate. Based on these findings and recommendations, CDL created a multidisciplinary team comprised of user assessment specialists, technologists, curatorial professionals, teacher curriculum specialist, and writers. The team set out to develop an understanding of what an intermediate-level collection—neither a complete archive nor an objectlevel result one might get from searching within a site—might look like. The team set out to answer several questions: • •

• •

How many images or digital documents might form a sufficiently useful themed collection to adequately illustrate a specific theme? Where is the “context threshold” in a themed collection that provides sufficient information to loosely tie objects in the collection together, but does not over-structure it and limit alternative interpretations and reusability?13 What expertise is needed to create themed collections designed for reuse by multiple user communities? How can themed collections be created in a scalable, costeffective model? 129

The current framework is composed of clusters, which are divided into four-six themed collections. Each collection contains 15-20 objects with text that describes the logic and meaning of images grouped together. Choosing to align collections to the History-Social Science Standards for California created trade-offs between the strengths and limits of CDL collections versus responding to the needs of the target audience. Teachers and librarians have strong feelings about California content standards, and they have proposed that standards be viewed as a ““guiding light” for organizing materials. Further, they suggested CDL use language presented in the standards to describe object- and collectionlevel materials. Standards, then, have become a “controlled vocabulary” for describing collections and writing contextual information used for ﬁnding them. The development team continues to address the following ﬁndings and challenges: • • • •

•

Themed collections drawn exclusively from an existing digital library collection will necessarily be constrained by the nature, contents and size of the originating collection. Using educational content standards to deﬁne themes can result in a choice of topics that are not necessarily strengths of the collection. Themed collections are not a source for so called “one-stop shopping,” but rather a source of high quality, well organized and often hard to ﬁnd resources that complement textbooks. The contextual content that ties together images in themed collections consists of brief historical background information and a summary describing unifying themes behind chosen images. Questions remain regarding the scope and amount of required contextual content; this question will be explored in future assessment. Long-term sustainability requires that technologies evolve that can be used to facilitate the creation of themed collections— either by specialists within libraries and museums, or by members of the public such as K-12 teachers or others.

The team will carry out usability testing with teachers across the state to further inform the architecture and design of the site; and investigate how teachers and other non-library or non-museum 130

individuals can create themed collections for their use, and the reusability of these collections. We also expect to document our experiences in handcrafting themed collections and deďŹ ne components of a scalable, technology-enhanced, and cost-efďŹ cient model for creating additional themed collections.

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Using Learning Objects to Produce Learning Materials for In-Service Teacher Education Mike Quickfall, University of Edinburgh Friday, September 30, 2005, 10:00-10:45 am 307 Eccles Conference Center For more than twenty-five years, the UK has invested in ICT in the expectation that it will improve the quality of learning and teaching. However, the introduction of ICT requires significant change in the way that both learners and teachers interact and by the teaching and learning methods they employ. Despite several national initiatives to stimulate change, there has been a slow rate of adoption of ICT for learning, by teachers in schools. Even the government’s New Opportunities Fund, ICT training program which specifically set out to train teachers had little impact, being criticized by official evaluations and other observers who maintain that the program generally did not achieve its aims. Bringing about successful educational change has for many years been the subject of intense debate and writers have highlighted the possibility of bringing about change in education through a deliberate process. (Fullan, 1991) The University of Edinburgh led a consortium of Universities and a local authority to produce a course to train teachers in the use of ICT using a combination of e-learning materials (CD-Rom and online) combined with appropriate support mechanisms. The initiative which trained 650 teachers demonstrated through a rigorous process of evaluation that it had met its aims and changed the way that most of the learners perceived the use of ICT. Comparison with the typology of outcomes developed by Harland and Kinder also revealed that the program met the nine outcomes needed to be met if a CPD initiative is to be successful in bringing about planned change, giving further evidence of the program’s effectiveness. Whilst the initiative itself was deemed successful it was not sustainable, due to the expense of the provision and the unwillingness of external agencies to create similar funding opportunities. Setup costs were high and the materials quickly became dated. However, a great deal was learnt from the experience and highlighted possible ways forward that could utilize current materials, reduce the costs of production with relatively easy updating of the materials. A second project funded by government to make available an extensive 132

library of multimedia resources is currently being created and organized by the University. By using the online database of multimedia assets and by developing easy to use techniques for creating learning scenarios and by building upon the knowledge and skills of the earlier project we are now beginning to create alternative learning environments that are more cost effective to produce, easy to modify and which can be used in a variety of different learning contexts. Whist the database of assets is very large and now in its third year, the use of the resources to create specific learning scenarios is relatively new. Preliminary informal evaluation leads us to be confident about the efficacy of the technique but systematic evaluation has not yet begun. The paper will describe in detail the first project showing how it set out to provide a learning environment for the teachers but also to highlight some of its failings and adjustments that were needed as the project progressed. The design team had not foreseen some of the difficulties it faced or some of the design and usage issues that became potentially very critical to the success or failure of the project. The project was concerned primarily with learning to use ICT to support learning. One of the major difficulties faced by the project was the inexperience of the learners with ICT, a fact not surprising as they were undertaking the course because they were not experienced with ICT. However this raises a fundamental question about the levels of competence required by learners if they are to make full use of interactive e-learning based materials. If indeed our course participants were initially intimidated by the technology they were to use, then it would seem reasonable to suppose that other learners in other learning contexts would likewise be adversely affected. The experience of designing and implementing the training program provided a valuable insight into the experience of learners with technology. The learning modules now being implemented have been informed by that experience and will be described in the paper along with a description of the database of learning objects that it draws upon. The team members are hopeful that the techniques will be capable of expansion into other learning contexts and are exploring its use in environments where English is not a first language.

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Growing a Reusable Repository: Keeping the Content Meaningful Ross Reedstrom, Brent Hendricks and Richard Baraniuk, Rice University Thursday, September 29, 2005, 3:15-4:00 pm 207 Eccles Conference Center Connexions is an open-access, web-based repository of free scholarly materials and an open-source software toolkit to help authors collaborate and publish materials, instructors rapidly build and share custom courses, and learners explore the links among concepts, courses, and disciplines. Now in it’s sixth year, Connexions goal is to be a global resource, delivering a large amount of core content in many disciplines, through a system that encourages communities to continuously improve, update that content. An important aspect of Open Education is that a priori the creator of a piece of content cannot know what uses that material will have. The core idea of a shared repository such as Connexions is the repurposing, that is the reuse, of its content. Reusability of content means recontexualizing the material. This requires two things: fine granularity, and semantic labeling. Granularity is important to enable the correct mixing/merge points between existing and new content. Semantic labeling, or markup, is needed to ease transformation of content between representations: different notations, style or medium of presentation (e.g. web vs. print vs. spoken), as well as “future proofing” the content for alternate uses, and media not yet invented. Static or proprietary formats, such as PDF or Microsoft Word documents, do not allow this level of flexibility, nor provide continuous updates as authors improve their own work. Even so, reuse is not free. For the instructor, significant energy is spent on finding, understanding, and incorporating another’s work, in any context and system. To encourage reuse, the level of effort needs to be less than that to just “do it yourself”. For the author, the costs of providing fine-grained content, with heavy semantic markup, involves learning a new system and set of tools. The more significant the advantages participating gives the user, the more effort they are willing to expend. The biggest benefits we can provide is a large audience of learners, a wealth of content to reuse, and a large community of peer users. 134

Catch-22. This is what we call the bootstrapping problem. How can we generate the critical mass of materials, and attract large enough communities of learners, instructors, and authors? The cost of bulk retrofitting semantics to presentational material is prohibitive. One answer might be to “grandfather “ ” legacy formats of content directly into the repository. However, repositories grow like crystals: you get more of what you use as a seed. If we allow legacy content to be stored directly in the repository, that’s all we would get. Specialized importers are needed for legacy content, to overcome these barriers to authoring. And coincidentally, provide a path for authors to use their existing tools to create new content, as well. Now that the Connexions repository has a significant body of content in several subject areas, allowing some imported/converted legacy content is less likely to be harmful. Given the existing communities using Connexions, we have targeted two formats for automated importers: Microsoft Word, for largely textual materials, and LaTeX, for mathematical works. The approaches in these two cases are somewhat divergent. Most word processor documents use presentational markup. A string may be bold or italics, with no indication as to why it is that way. However, modern word processor programs actually allow for a kind of semantic markup. In Microsoft Word, it is possible to use custom Styles in this way, and this is, in fact, our approach. We provide a Word document template file (.dot) that defines a set of custom styles which we map to semantic tags when importing the document. In addition to custom styles, structural markup—sections, figures, tables, lists, etc. is transformed as directly as possible. The combination of structural and custom styles provides a simple mechanism to import fairly complex documents. Currently, presentational markup (bold, italics, font size and face, etc.) is ignored. Our experience with selected authors has been that this is sufficient to capture the bulk of the content, lowering the barrier to contributing to Connexions significantly. Our current tool for this conversion uses OpenOffice to convert the Word document into an XML representation, and then applies custom filters and XSLT transforms to alter that document into a CNXML 135

document. By leveraging the work of the leading open source word processing program in this way, we automatically gain future advances in office document processing, as they are released. A ‘wizard’ style tool that attempts some ad hoc mappings between Word styles, or even repeated patterns of applied presentational markup, and semantic tags might be possible in the future, given sufficient demand. The LaTeX importer is a work in progress. LaTeX is actually a procedural markup language, rather than purely presentational. Since mathematical notations are more rigorously defined than natural language, we have some hope extracting semantic content from formally presentational materials. This project is in collaboration with Bruce Miller, of NIST, and Michael Kohlhase, of International University of Bremen. The current approach in this case is also a two-step process. Conversion of raw LaTeX to a LaTeX-like XML, denoted LaTeXML, followed by transformation of that LaTeXML to CNXML. The relationship of LaTeXML to LaTeX is similar to the CNXML custom templates to Microsoft Word. Eventually, predefined macro-packages will allow fine-tuning of the LaTex to LaTeXML transformation. With these projects, as well as new, domain specific XML editors, we hope to keep semantically rich, well modularized materials flowing into the Connexions repository, for use by all.

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Reusable Design Workshop Robby Robson, Eduworks Tuesday, September 27, 2005, 8:00 am-12:00 pm 271 Education Building This workshop explores guidelines and practices intended to increase the value and impact of digital learning resources by making them easier to reuse in multiple contexts and in multiple learning environments. The arget audience is those who design, develop and create learning resources and organizations that aggregate and disseminate these resources. The entire workshop is hands-on and interactive in nature. Participants will become familiar with reusable design guidelines and techniques by exploring a rich set of examples. Presentation materials available to workshop participants.

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Games, Signs and Texts: Exploring Sustainable, Creative Learning Environments Through Cultural Analysis and Localization Brett Shelton, Ryan Moeller and Cheryl Ball, Utah State University Thursday, September 29, 2005, 10:00-10:45 am 205 Eccles Conference Center This presentation explicates a common research strand being pursued by the three presenters within the Creative Learning Environments Laboratory at USU. The research strand centers on the cultural impact of technological texts and investigates how technological texts change cultural formations. The three speakers will focus on the production and analysis of a variety of open texts within and across their particular fields of study: rhetorics, emerging media and graphic representations. The Creative Learning Environments Laboratory is a collaborative multimedia research space that spans inquiry across the Instructional Technology and English departments. A mission of the lab is in itself an exercise of “openness:” to use textual theories from a variety of methodological fields including rhetoric, computer science, art and design, literary studies, and education to broaden approaches of learning and teaching from single-departmental efforts into ones that include a variety of adaptable learning perspectives. “ your base are belong to us” and other computer game faux pas “All Ryan M. Moeller The Learning Games Initiative (LGI), one project supported by the Creative Lab, seeks to demonstrate that computer games are complex, cultural artifacts that, not unlike movies, need to be considered across multiple cultural mapping points beyond language translation. Subsequently, computer games can be used as sustainable resources to teach and analyze culture. The example of Magnificent Seven’s success is one of localization: a product that has been designed to be adaptable to various linguistic, economic, visual, environmental, and cultural conditions based upon its context and use. This notion of making products usable and sustainable across cultural boundaries is applied to many different disciplines and industries where it is most often used to discuss strategies of globalization—areas such as software development, economics, web design, movie and television production, and education. Popular, Americanized television shows for children such as the Power Rangers or Pokémon from Japan and Hi-5 out of Australia demonstrate the sustainability and reusability of resources 138

from talent to stock video to sets and props to music and sound effects. And, in an example of localization gone wrong, the widely popular Pokémon video game was banned in Saudi Arabia for its use of Zionist imagery. The video game Zero Wing, produced for the Sega Genesis platform, demonstrated a poorly localized product in which a bad translation (“All ““All your base are belong to us”) resulted in hilarious media frenzy for English-speaking gamers. Thayer and Kolko (2004) have recently articulated a protocol for localizing computer games, bringing educational games and simulations into discussions of international media. The LGI builds on this idea, allowing students and researchers to use, analyze, and produce computer games and educational simulations to discover how to effectively communicate in localized and globalized situations. We argue that many times, cultural faux pas like the Pokémon and Zero Wing examples teach us more about culture than even good adaptations might. Investigating the cultural influence for interpreting graphical information Brett E. Shelton Noted educational technology researcher William Winn (1994) posed the following questions over a decade ago: to what extent are the conventions of graphics culture specific, and are the processes that enable detection, discrimination and configuration universal? Based on these questions, we are researching how culture influences the interpretation of familiar signs (e.g., graphic representations used for “restroom” and “stop”), looking primarily at differences in how Koreans and North Americans interpret the meaning of graphical symbols outside of their familiar context. A second phase of research involves investigating the influence of context on the interpretation of meaning by offering certain signs in a variety of familiar and unfamiliar settings. The third phase targets the identification of the graphical components of the signs used in Phase 1 and 2 by studying the features of the signs that held significant meaning for viewers based on their cultural and contextual meanings. We are currently in the first phase of research in this project, but we expect the findings will help inform our understanding of how we interpret meanings from graphical representations and may impact the design of graphics in order to increase understanding in a variety of cultural and contextual instances. 139

Trans-cultural multimedia production in an English classroom Cheryl E. Ball In English studies, the past decade has seen a dramatic shift toward analysis and production of multimedia texts (c.f. Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Wysocki, Selfe, Johnson-Eilola, & Sirc, 2004). This shift is informed by the study of rhetoric, which we deﬁne as reading and composing texts with an understanding of a speciﬁc audience, purpose, and context. In Dr. Ball’s Perspectives on Writing and Rhetoric class, students analyze creative multimodal texts using multiple reading strategies, and then compose their own texts. Although this generation of students is typically well-informed about technology, most of them have never encountered a digital, multimodal text whose purpose is primarily aesthetic. Studying the rhetorical situation in what literary theorists such as Eco and Rosenblatt would call an “open,” readerdriven, adaptable text provides a rich learning experience for students. In this class, students read several examples of open texts including “Murmuring Insects” (Ankerson, 2001), which successfully uses Eastern and Western multimodal elements—including written, aural, visual, animated, and other modes of communication—to juxtapose calm with fear while honoring the events of September 11, 2001. In this presentation, we show this piece in contrast to student-produced multimodal texts that attempt to adopt cultural contexts of other writers, often unsuccessfully. We conclude by suggesting why some students’ attempts at adaptation in these creative and social media are hindered by localized contexts. In addition, we demonstrate how students who don’t attempt to adapt their creative work to other’s contexts often make stronger rhetorical choices in their multimodal texts while still meeting the needs of various audiences. References Ankerson, I. (2001). Murmuring insects [Flash Player text]. Poems That Go. Retrieved September 19, 2003, from <http://www.poemsthatgo. com>. Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.). (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. New York: Routledge. Thayer, A. & Kolko, B. (2004). Localization of digital games: The process of blending for the global games market. Technical Communication 51, 477-88. Wiley, D. (2005). A discussion of cultural texts, adaptation, and 140

openness. Personal communication July 17, 2005 with Brett E. Shelton. Winn, W. (1994). Contributions of perceptual and cognitive processes to the comprehension of graphics. In W. Schnotz & R. W. Kulhavy (Eds.), Comprehension of graphics: Elsevier Science. Wysocki, A., Johnson-Eilola, J., Selfe, C., & Sirc, G. (2004). Writing new media: Theory and applications for expanding the teaching of composition. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.

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Utah’s Electronic High School Richard Siddoway, Utah Electronic High School Friday, September 30, 2005, 11:00-11:45 am 309 Eccles Conference Center The Electronic High School was created in 1994 as a response to a challenge from Utah’s Governor Leavitt. We serve ﬁve major groups of students: (1) students who wish to make up credit, (2) students who wish to take a course not offered at their school, (3) students who wish to take extra credit and graduate early, (4) students who are homeschooled, and (5) students who have dropped out of school and now wish to earn a diploma. The Electronic High School courses are free to Utah students (which covers the $18 course cost). Out-of-state students pay $50 per quarter credit per course. Currently the Electronic High School is serving more than 40,000 students and has recently opened its doors to students and teachers displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The Electronic High School is funded through an on-going line-item appropriation from the legislature.

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Meleteâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Streamlining Open Publishing Vivie Sinou, Foothill College/Sakai Thursday, September 29, 2005, 10:00-10:45 am 203 Eccles Conference Center Melete is an open source tool that runs with the Sakai 2.0 Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE)â&#x20AC;&#x201D;an open platform by and for higher education. Melete is a lesson builder that allows authors to design and publish learning sequences that consist of content that is created online using a built-in editor, uploaded learning objects or links to existing web resources. Instructors can design content that supports instructor facilitated learning or system managed self-study. Melete supports Creative Commons Licenses, which faculty can select for their learning modules up creation. Melete supports IMS Import/ Export Content Packaging.

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State of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement Marshall Smith, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 8:00-8:30 am 216 Eccles Conference Center Marshall “Mike” Smith has been Program Director for the Education Program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, California, since 2001. Prior to that, he was acting deputy secretary and undersecretary for education in the Clinton administration. During the Carter administration, he was chief of staff to the secretary for education and assistant commissioner for policy studies in the Ofﬁce of Education. In this session Mike will provide an overview of the open educational resources movement and provide context for the rest of the conference.

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How to Make Open Education Succeed Robert Stephenson, Wayne State University Thursday, September 29, 2005, 2:15-3:00 pm 216 Eccles Conference Center In the 20 years since Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Movement and the 10 years since the creation of Linux, the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) movement has transformed the software industry. In contrast, although the amount of open content and the number of digital libraries have grown enormously in the 10 years since the creation of the first educational digital library (the NSF-funded Educational Object Economy, or EOE), the impact of open educational resources on mainstream education has, frankly, been slight. What will it take for open education to succeed as well as—or better than— FOSS? What approach to open education, what sort of embryonic open education community would be capable of growing to completely transform higher education? People Not Content An emphasis on educational content alone—however excellent—helps foster the misconception that good content is enough for learning. Like the vacuum cleaner salesman’s boast that “this machine will do most of your work by itself,” it is false advertising. If educational content is to be effective for the mainstream, it needs to be supported by a community of teachers, teacher trainers, developers, technologists and students. Learning is always the result of a conversation, however indirect that conversation may be. When FOSS projects succeed it is because they form a supportive community of practice, not just because they make their source code available. By analogy, what is needed is not just open content but open course, defined as follows: Open Course = Open Content + Community. Another problem with emphasizing content is that it perpetuates the notion that teaching consists of feeding students safe, pre-digested nuggets of knowledge—intellectual pemmican—for their enlightenment. Although such an approach is efficient for building foundation knowledge, stopping learning at that stage creates a crippling dependency. More advanced learning is messy and open-ended. An open course approach is, therefore, not only more likely to spread but also more effective pedagogically. 145

An Open Course Ecosystem It is critical to realize that all open course stakeholders are partners in a knowledge ecosystem. A broad, systemic approach is needed rather than a narrowly focused one, since the system can thrive only if all its parts are healthy. Half an ecosystem is no more sustainable than half a baby, and the smallest viable open course ecosystem is a community of practice around a single academic discipline or sub-discipline, consisting of academic content developers, educators and students. It is discipline-speciďŹ c open content with a community wrapped around it. This closed system has circular ďŹ&#x201A;ows of knowledge, resources, feedback and credit, some of which are shown in the diagram below. If any party is not receiving sufďŹ cient rewards (time-saving, learning, status, recognition, salary, etc.) to justify its efforts, it will become a bottleneck and the whole ecosystem suffers. Transforming the way a subject is taught is possible only when the roles of developer, teacher and student are integrated into a dynamic community based on collaboration, sharing and feedback. Efforts that focus on just one of these groups have fallen short and will continue to do so.

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Evaluation at Every Level Any complex system that is successful is the result of some sort of evolutionary improvement process. Science and software development have well-developed and easily verified standards of quality, so that most experts in the field can evaluate the relative merits of two competing artifacts. This is generally not the case in education, where learning assessment is seldom standardized or related to standard competencies, and where different institutions and teachers are often fiercely independent. Just as software developers are moving to test-based development, so should open course developers. What is required is that a learning object have explicit learning objectives, that each objective have an associated battery of mastery questions, and that aggregated results be made available to the community. This will enable both the selection of mastery questions of appropriate difficulty and discriminability, and the comparison of learning objects with common learning objectives, based on these questions. An important benefit of this will be the development of a large bank of vetted questions classified by learning objective, a valuable open educational asset in its own right. This resource, in turn, will make it possible to compare the effectiveness of, say, teaching a topic with or without using learning objects. I am well aware that the history of standardized testing is full of controversy and problems—most of them because the testing was being imposed from above. The evaluation I am advocating is different because it is open, voluntary, decentralized and constructed completely from the bottom up, The preceding three requirements presume that many participants in an open course ecosystem contribute substantially to the community: not only by developing the content but also by creating mastery questions, administering tests and submitting results, answering questions, helping out faculty colleagues, submitting bugs and 147

suggestions, and in a dozen other ways. These contributions are necessary for the health and growth of the community. They will occur only if contributing is the social norm, and is easy to do. This leads to the last two requirements. An Open Course License Since contribution is vital whereas teachers are generally too overworked and busy to volunteer readily for new assignments, we will introduce a license that includes a new, “giveback “ ” clause that makes helping an obligation. Specifically, for every hour that her class as a whole spends using open course content, the teacher and/or her students collectively owe an hour’s time (or some predetermined fraction of that) spent doing one or more of the activities suggested by the community (such as those enumerated in the preceding paragraph). The open course communities are not in the business of policing compliance, and their only means of enforcing obligations under the license are persuasion and reputation. Some teachers, of course, will find this too demanding and choose to avoid the open course content. Those who do not, however, will help recruit their colleagues and contribute to the improvement of the open content. In the process they will both strengthen the community and benefit from it. Education is chronically under-funded but rich in manpower. Open course education will succeed to the extent that it develops parallel economies based on exchange and reputation. Better Tools The proper role of technology is to facilitate the human interactions that are important for learning and the growth of the community. Open course communities need a technical infrastructure that makes it easy for an educator to collaborate with distant colleagues, to find the content she needs for tomorrow’s class, to incorporate it into her lecture or online module, to create and administer student assessment, and to return anonymous data to the community. Solutions to all these issues exist today (for example OpenCourse.Org and EduCommons), but they need to become more integrated and more transparent for mainstream educators to use.

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The Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative—Internationalization of Cognitively Informed, Web-based Instruction Candace Thille, Carnegie Mellon University Thursday, September 29, 2005, 3:15-4:00 pm 201 Eccles Conference Center The Open Learning Initiative is devoted to developing “cognitively informed,” openly available online courses. Our presentation will describe how we make use of expertise from cognitive and learning sciences to produce high quality online courses and course materials in statistics, economics, causal and statistical reasoning, logic and chemistry, biology, calculus, empirical research methods, French, mechanical engineering, and physics. The presentation will focus on our recent experience in collaborating with faculty from Universities in Qatar and Chile adapt and extend our open educational resources for implementation at their institutions. The cognitive tutor technology used in many OLI courses is an example of combining theory and practice to create effective educational technology. The design of the cognitive tutor is drawn from a strong research base in cognitive psychology and artiﬁcial intelligence while the curriculum content comes from experts in the ﬁeld. The OLI project has generalized the cognitive tutor approach in our course design. We combine the research base from cognitive and educational psychology with content expertise from university professors. A team of faculty content experts, learning scientists, cognitive scientists, specialists in human computer interaction and specialists in evaluation collaborate to develop our online courses. Out of this collaboration, we have developed several courses and formulated principles for effective online course design. We will outline the principles and theory that underlie the course designs and demonstrate portions of the courses that illustrate how those principles have been implemented. In OLI “cognitively informed online education” requires both that the design of the online courses be based on learning principles and informed by studying actual student use. This use-driven design principle is at the heart of our experience in adapting and extending the course materials for use internationally. Students working in digital learning environments open unparalleled opportunities to understand the effectiveness of various teaching strategies and technologies. We will describe how student actions in OLI courses are recorded and how 149

the resulting data is used to inform both the ongoing course design and learning theory. We will describe our experience in very distinct international collaborations adapting and implementing our open educational resources; our collaboration with Universidad Catolica de Chile and our collaboration with Qatar University. We will describe the work with the faculty over the summer to prepare for the implementation and the preliminary results of the implementation at each institution in the fall. The Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon began in 2002 with a generous grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

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Free Knowledge Communities Kim Tucker, CSIR Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 3:15-4:00 pm 201 Eccles Conference Center In Africa, and much of the developing world, access to knowledge is limited on account of lack of ICT infrastructure and connectivity, low levels of literacy and awareness of what is available, how to utilize it, and a lack of localized and locally relevant resources. The Free Knowledge communities initiative strives to lower the barriers by providing basic building blocks to enable communities to empower themselves with knowledge. The initiative augments efforts to provide access to information and communication technologies in developing countries by convening international workshops for targeted collaboration, supporting priority projects addressing gaps in available free knowledge resources, offering pedagogical support and collaboration facilities. Ultimately, it will be possible for anyone, anywhere, to gain or provide the knowledge required for any purpose through access to knowledge on the web, CD or other media. The initiative stimulates, facilitates and catalyses the growth of communities of shared knowledge to feed innovation systems, and enable a wiser global networked society. The initiative promotes a holistic sustainability ethic highlighting social, economic and environmental concerns, and expresses this vision through related initiatives and events. Ultimately, the emergent communities sustain themselves through natural life cycles. A full concept document is available on request, outlining the principles behind the initiative, the project design and approach, and a framework for participation and collaboration.

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What Am I Learning? Performance Feedback in an Open Learning Environment Jody Underwood, ETS Friday, September 30, 2005, 10:00-10:45 am 309 Eccles Conference Center Getting feedback on your progress is certainly a barrier to open education, except in the most informal environments. Home-schoolers, for example, don’t have access to the same kind of feedback that students get in traditional classroom settings. And it’s common to hear people complain that they can’t learn from self-study materials because they need to be ‘in a class’ to learn. What is it that they’re getting from the class, exactly? Partly, it’s structure and external pressure. But partly it’s feedback. In order for people in isolated locations and other non-traditional settings to be able to further their educations, they need effective feedback about their performance. This involves helping them ﬁgure out what they need to work on, and what they’re in a position to learn given what they know already. One way to approach this is captured by the concept of cumulative achievement (‘summit-ive’) testing. The idea here is to continually take variations of the same test until you score 100% on it. Helpful feedback describes the areas students still need to work on and what they are ready to learn, guiding them down paths toward mastering all the material. One of the big changes that open education could bring—if we’re lucky!—is a viable alternative to the (completely insane) idea that everyone should be learning the same material, presented in the same way, at the same pace. One of the things that keeps this idea from being discarded is the current model of assessment, i.e., give everyone the same test at the same time, and then move on, whether the students are ready or not. Once you break away from that assessment model, to one where any individual can get individualized feedback about his progress, open education would be poised to become the normal model for learning, rather than an alternative to the mainstream. 152

If You Build It They Will Not Come: Usage Data from A Recommender System Based On Web Annotations and Their Implications Andy Walker, Utah State University and Jennifer Brill, Virginia Tech Thursday, September 29, 2005, 3:15-4:00 pm 205 Eccles Conference Center Infrastructure improvements continue to bring the accessibility of the Internet to teachers and their students. As early as 2000, almost 98% of full-time public school teachers in the United States had Internet access in one form or another (Cattagni & Farris Westat, 2001). While the availability in classrooms tapered off to 77% in the same study, the availability remains high and continues to grow. In addition, once on the Internet, there are more resources to ďŹ nd. Although it certainly has its detractors (Tennant, 2005) Google has proposed digitizing huge portions of the print collections of several major libraries and placing them online for free. Despite an increase in access, and perhaps because of the steady increase in the volume of information, the Internet is not always used in educationally relevant ways. One study of sixth grade science students noted that Internet usage was often unstructured, spurious and as a result unproductive (Wallace, Kupperman, Krajcik, & Soloway, 2000). There are several possible reasons for this lack of meaningful use. One primary concern is the abundance of poor web-based resources. Misinformation has been documented in several educational domains (Robertson, 1999) making the task of identifying valuable resources more onerous. This creates a very real need for important educational stakeholders like teachers, students, and instructional designers to be able to evaluate online educational resources. Whereas before, with print based materials, selection tasks tended to focus on relevance, information consumers now have to deal with issues like quality, accuracy, and authoritativeness (Reeves & Harmon, 1994; Schrock, 2002). In addition to the poor quality of content, the Internet itself was never designed with education in mind. According to researchers in situated cognition (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Brown & Duguid, 2000) it is artiďŹ cial to separate knowledge from the people or communities that use itâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;yet this is precisely what the Internet encourages. By relegating information exchange to isolated clients asking for knowledge from individual servers a great deal of valuable material is lost. The users 153

of web sites need to be able to define the juxtaposition of and relationships between sets of web based resources, in addition to elaborating on their value to their own communities of practice (CoP). In short, the evaluation of educational resources should not occur in a vacuum but instead should be a part of critically reflective practice among an active group who are pursuing common goals. In partial fulfillment of this need, students at Lehigh University from three different programs (counseling psychology, instructional design, and teacher education) taking a shared core class are asked to annotate web-based educational resources. While the structure for these annotations is based partly on the work of Reeves & Harmon (1994) as well as Schrock (2002) students are encouraged to formulate annotations in line with their own interests and needs. In the past, these annotations were completed and submitted to the Instructor in relative isolation. Students might be asked to share one of their annotations with the class, but this generally results in three problems. First, since the core class is shared across three different programs students often found information irrelevant. This certainly fits with the concept that boundary members between CoPs are a minority group and that forcing that role can be counter-productive. While all of these students are interested in learning in general, they are not necessarily interested in annotating, reviewing, and hearing about such a diverse set of web based resources to inform their practice. The second problem is temporal. Students in subsequent semesters of the class rarely got to benefit from the work of their preceding peers. The third, related problem is that instructors were acting as a censure of information that was of far more interest to the population that produced it. In short, by restricting students to sharing a single annotation, or selecting a set of annotations believed to be of interest to the class as a whole, instructors were operating as an artificial mediator. To address some of these challenges, students in a web-database integration class teamed up with an instructor of the core class to develop an on-line database which allows students to submit, search, and read web site annotations from fellow students. Further, ratings provided as part of those annotations could be used to drive a recommender system (Resnick & Varian, 1997) which can provide website referrals based on the underlying preferences of system users. Thus, the annotations are no longer submitted in quasi-isolation but are 154

housed in a repository from which members of this diverse group can beneﬁt from and add to. Additionally, annotations would no longer be mediated artiﬁcially by an instructor, but would be mediated by users’ own personalized preferences. The presentation will involve a description of the system, its ties to situated cognition, the process and lessons learned in using it, along with data from four semesters of usage. It will conclude with a description of the corresponding recommender system and some major limitations for this particular setting along with directions for future work. References Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18, 32-42. Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2000). The social life of information. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Cattagni, A., & Farris Westat, E. (2001). Internet access in U.S. public schools and classrooms: 1994-2000 (NCES No. 2001-071). Washington DC: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning : legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge England: New York. Reeves, T., & Harmon, S. (1994). Systematic Evaluation Procedures for Interactive Multimedia for Education and Training. In S. Resman (Ed.), Multimedia Computing: Preparing for the 21st Century (pp. 472-505). Harrisburg, London: Idea Group Publishing. Resnick, P., & Varian, H. (1997). Recommender systems. Communications of the ACM, 4(3), 56-58. Robertson, J. S. (1999). The curse of plenty: Mathematics and the Internet. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, 18(1), 3-5. Schrock, K. (2002). The ABCs of Web site evaluation. Retrieved June 19, 2005, from http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/pdf/weval_ 02.pdf Tennant, R. (2005). Google Out of Print. Library Journal, 130(3), 27. Wallace, R., Kupperman, J., Krajcik, J., & Soloway, E. (2000). Science on the Web: Students online in a sixth-grade classroom. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 9(1), 75-104.

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A Reality Check for Open Education Ed Walker, IMS Global Learning Consortium Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 2:15-3:00 pm 309 Eccles Conference Center Introduction The creators and early adopters of learning technology have created educational content and educational software that reduces the deleterious impact of time, distance, and the material environment on everyday teaching-learning transactions. The scale of the LearnDirect service provided by the University for Industry, the global uptake of MIT’s OpenCourseWare and the long term success of the Open University and community college models in providing non-traditional access to education show that latent demand for open education exists and can be serviced. Learning is becoming easier to obtain and use and cheaper to provide as services and tools evolve to make educational resources available in a diversity of formal and informal environments. Greater efficiency in delivering education is enabling more sophisticated teaching, as well as learning interactions that are better matched to the needs and capabilities of individual learners. However, the deployment of open educational resources is not yet massive enough for education itself to be called “open” in the visionary sense that its comparison to Land Grant Universities or the GI Bill is intended to convey. The Problem This shortfall in deployment exists because the massification of open education requires the commitment of large scale resources. To consolidate and integrate new technology and pedagogical innovation and support broad adoption and general use, the providers of resources must not only believe that the benefit of doing so is worthwhile, but also be able to justify their decision to provide the resources that are required. Projects that demonstrate innovation and show potential in narrow contexts go only part way toward generating such beliefs or justifying decisions to fulfill them. The dimensions on which providers make everyday judgments of the potential return on massive investment can 156

be reduced to the following: • • • •

Convenience: Is the (perceived) effort to access, interact, acquire, etc. acceptable? Effectiveness: Will the outcomes meet the objectives for use? Affordability: Is the immediate cost of use acceptable? Sustainability: Can use be maintained on a long term basis?

The Solution When convenience and effectiveness are apparent and affordability and sustainability can be validated, resources follow. In other words, really open education will come about when the benefits of “real” applications are readily recognizable, and decisions to deploy and support them are supported by “real” results. Real Results Results or, more generally, return on investment tends to be measured in relation to formal or informal economic and policy objectives, not on innovation, per se. Economic measures include reliable estimates of production, installation and maintenance cost/time; anticipated product lifetimes and migration expense; and better profit margins and/ or lower acquisition/delivery cost. Policy measures include increases in quantity (more learners/teachers/courses, more completions, more providers); improvements in quality (improved test scores, better career progression); and changes in mind share (self-initiated life long learning) Significant milestones also serve as markers of progress toward and accomplishment of economic and policy objectives. These include compliance with mandatory norms or requirements—(eGIF, SCORM, SIF, etc.), thresholds for usage (e.g., 15% of potential community of use) and general marketplace and community awareness and acceptance (the existence of community of practice with its associated requirements, acceptance criteria, design templates, implementation guidelines, benchmark tests and so forth). Projects and products do exist and results are accumulating. Collecting and presenting these data contributes support for costing and scheduling decisions. But case data and milestones encourage and justify the belief that benefits can be realized; they do not create it. A different type of application, or perhaps a different presentation of 157

existing applications, is necessary for generating massive belief in the beneﬁts of open education. Real Applications Applications that engender the belief that “it’s been done there, so it can be done anywhere” or “they’ve done it, so we can do it” have several characteristics. • • • • • • •

Their goal is clear and understandable, and reaching it is valued across regional, cultural, and economic differences. Mature, high quality educational content exists that can be localized. The integration of available resources and proven technology, rather than the creation of new technology, is the dominant engineering challenge. The capability that is delivered is for use in day to day ﬁeld conditions. The added value (or necessity) of rapid deployment, adaptability and wide distribution is obvious. Mechanisms for government and private concerns to collaborate to deal with policy, administration, and legal issues are available. Relevant metrics for results and progress are obvious

These characteristics minimize the need for innovation, and they sidestep bureaucratic issues so that attention is focused on the delivery of a highly recognizable beneﬁt in an everyday context. They deal with subject matter that is generally familiar to a broad audience and highlight intrinsic advantages of technology-based education. Suggestion for Discussion Many environments meet the criteria above, but delivery in a selected developing world context starkly highlights them. Several types of subject matter also meet the criteria, but health care has special humanitarian appeal. A project to deliver education in basic health care in a developing region could be the real application that provides the impetus for education to be really open.

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COREOCW and its Challenges Toward Quality and Sustainability Fun-Den Wang, CORE, Meifeng Liu, Beijing Normal University, Zi Mao Zhang, Beijing Jiao Tong University Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 2:15-3:00 pm 201 Eccles Conference Center CORE, China Open Resources for Education, was established in October 2003 and the program initiated in April 2004. It now has a membership of 100 universities and 5 million students. CORE has developed its program based on its mission of quality education, sharing of quality international and Chinese courses globally, and making these accessible to a wide range of users. This presentation describes its approach and challenges for maintaining quality and sustainability by the establishment of the COREOCW model of a Lead University, which believes in the OCW concept and mission of CORE, to jointly lead the CORE program.

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Barriers to the Distribution of Open Content Fun-Den Wang, CORE and Catherine Ngugi, African Virtual University Thursday, September 29, 2005, 11:00-11:45 am 309 Eccles Conference Center Fun-Den Wang of China Open Resources for Education (CORE) and Catherine Ngugi of African Virtual University (AVU) will explore challenges faced by their organizations in localizing and distributing content from MIT OpenCourseWare. MIT OpenCourseWare collects the materials used in MIT classes—including lecture notes, syllabi, homework, exams and more—and publishes them openly on the web for reuse by educators and learners around the globe. Publication on the OCW site, however, is only the first step in making these educational resources available to many audiences. CORE has worked closely with the MIT OCW staff in the past three years to translate OCW content into Simplified Chinese and also to provide local copies of English-language content to overcome technical access constraints. Similarly, AVU has worked in partnership with MIT OCW to provide local access to OCW content in Sub-Saharan Africa. About MIT OpenCourseWare—MIT OCW is a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. OCW supports MIT’s mission to advance knowledge and education, and serve the world in the 21st century. With 1,100 courses published as of June 1, 2005, MIT OCW has published materials from more than half of MIT’s courses and includes materials from approximately 70% of MIT’s faculty. MIT OCW expects to have published materials from all 1,800 of MITs courses by 2007, and will continue to update course content from that point as an ongoing activity of the Institute. About CORE—China Open Resource for Education—is a non-profit organization. Her mission is to promote closer interaction and open sharing of educational resources between Chinese and international universities, which CORE envisions as the future of world education. Together, CORE and MIT have brought OCW to China. CORE has developed partnerships with international organizations and Chinese universities to enhance higher education in China, promote open sharing of educational resources in China, and share Chinese OCW globally. It achieves this through a variety of programs including establishing Lead Universities, translation, quality control, localization, 160

and utilization of open educational resources. CORE most values open sharing and partnership and will assist the Chinese universities to share alike. About AVUâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;The African Virtual University (AVU) is an innovative educational organization established to serve the countries of Africa. The objective of the AVU is to build capacity and support economic development by leveraging the power of modern telecommunications technology to provide world-class quality education and training programs to students and professionals in Africa. After a successful pilot phase, AVU has been transformed from being a project of the World Bank to an independent reputable Inter-governmental organization based in Nairobi, Kenya with over 34 Learning Centers in 19 African countries.

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Basic Education Online: An Open-Content Project in Developmental Education and English for Speakers of Other Languages Cynthia Wilson, League.org Thursday, September 29, 2005, 1:15-2:00 pm 216 Eccles Conference Center The Basic Education Online Project is the planning phase for a later, large-scale project. The primary outcome of this planning phase is the identification of a set of high-quality courses that in the later project would be adapted to or recreated in an open-content, online environment, freely available to anyone in the world who wants to access them. To begin the process of identifying high-quality courses, project staff first set out to define high quality. Practitioner groups were formed for each of the four content areas—developmental reading, developmental writing, developmental mathematics, and English for Speakers of Other Languages. Because project designers seek also to ensure universal access, a fifth group was formed, this one dedicated to defining high quality as it relates to the integration of assistive technologies in the four content areas. The criteria identified by each of the working groups were reviewed by the advisory panel, a group made up of leaders in the various areas. Practitioner working groups then discussed advisory panel feedback and commentary, in many cases integrating it or adaptations of it into the criteria lists. The work of the practitioner groups and advisory group was complemented by a project-funded review of research and literature produced by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education. The literature review was designed to provide context that can be used to frame the discussion of characteristics of highly effective developmental education courses English for Speakers of Other Language courses. The review also covered assistive technologies in the context of developmental education and ESOL courses. The review is organized into sections examining (1) literature that helps to define high quality in the four content areas; (2) the basic demographics of the populations that these courses serve; (3) literature that presents examples and models of existing implementations of developmental education, English as a Second Language, and assistive 162

technologies. After criteria lists had been developed and agreement reached among practitioners and advisors, the criteria were incorporated into an inventory, which was field-tested and piloted with the project participants. The final inventory was distributed to more than 3000 academic leaders in six countries: Australia, Canada, Jamaica, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Respondents overwhelmingly affirmed most of the identified criteria; none of the criteria were summarily rejected by the respondents. Using the criteria, project staff created a request for qualifications, soliciting feedback from practitioners and advisors and incorporating that feedback into revisions. The final RFQ was issued to postsecondary institutions around the world. Identified courses will be announced at the end of September, and representatives from the institutions submitting these courses for consideration will be invited to participate in a work session, to be held in October 2005, to design the project in which the courses will be redesigned for the open-content environment. The presentation will provide an overview of the project’s progress through mid-September 2005, include the criteria used to define high quality, and a preview of the remaining project activities.

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Open Education at UC Merced Jeff Wright, Jeff Yoshimi and German Gavilan, University of California, Merced Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 3:15-4:00 pm 309 Eccles Conference Center The University of California, Merced, the new tenth campus of the UC system, opens Fall 2005 to an inaugural class of 1000 students. The campus has made a commitment to innovative pedagogy using open source and open-content tools. We describe a variety of efforts currently underway at UC Merced, including the following: An introductory course in computer science, which uses UC-Wise (Web-based Instruction for Science & Engineering) a real- time collaborative tool for teaching. UCWISE is a UC Berkeley and CITRISled partnership of four UC schools including Merced. Researchers in the College of Engineering and the School of Education are changing the paradigm of distance education to bring highly-rated courses to community and state schools. UC WISE consists of a customizable learning management system (LMS), collaborative tools for projectbased work, communication and assessment mechanisms, as well as support for connecting technology and teaching practices. Teachers and students access the system through web-based portals, allowing location-independent access to learning materials. The online format allows for the replacement of didactic presentation of topics (lecturing), either wholly or in part, by targeted small-group or oneon-one instruction (tutoring) in a lab setting. UCWISE combines a sophisticated web-based learning environment with a wealth of interactive, collaborative, and assessment materials. UCWISE researchers are also examining new forms of pedagogy that this system affords. A course in psychology and cognitive science in which students build simulated models of the brain using an open-source software package called Simbrain (www.simbrain.net). The software is being developed at UC Merced with the help of local transfer students. Users create the neural networks using a familiar, visually oriented â&#x20AC;&#x153;drawâ&#x20AC;? interface, and use them to control a simulated agent in a virtual environment. The software is easy to use and does not require formal background in mathematics and programming, making otherwise challenging concepts accessible to a broader range of students. The course is being 164

developed using Connexions modules, and plans are underway to interact with local community colleges in incorporating these modules into their psychology, engineering, and biology courses. A course in world history incorporating open-content historical spatial data, and animated maps made with an open source mapping tool called TimeMap (www.timemap.net). The software, developed at the University of Sydney Archaeological Computing Laboratory, is being adapted at UC Merced for use in a Digital Atlas of World History. Spatial resources from the metadata clearinghouse of the UC Berkeley open-content Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) (www.ecai.org), developed in conjunction with TimeMap, are being incorporated into the Digital Atlas of World History. A UC Merced community college transfer student is identifying digital and paper historical maps that can be incorporated into the Digital Atlas of World History as additional resources. Students in Introduction to World History will be able to use the Digital Atlas in two ways: 1) packaged modules that highlight particular course themes will incorporate authored interactive maps that allow panning, zooming, layer control, animation, hyper linking, and access to time-enabled geodatabases. 2) A searchable metadata clearinghouse with links to each of the datasets that comprise the Atlas will allow advanced students, instructors, and researchers to select data and author their own maps. This data can also be exported into ArcGIS or other programs with advance spatial analysis tools. Campus wide deployment of open source tools such as 1) Zope (www. zope.org) an open source web application server primarily written in the Python programming language. It features a transactional object database which can store not only content and custom data, but also dynamic HTML templates, scripts, a search engine, and relational database (RDBMS) connections and code. It features a strong throughthe-web development model, allowing you to update your web site from anywhere in the world. Zopeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s security architecture also allows you to turn control over parts of a web site over to other organizations or individuals. The transactional model applies not only to Zopeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s object database, but to many relational database connectors as well, allowing for strong data integrity. This transaction model happens automatically, ensuring that all data is successfully stored in connected data sources by the time a response is returned to a web browser or other client. 2) Plone (www.plone.org) a user-friendly and powerful open source content management system built on Zope. 165

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Towards Remixing Any Content from Any Source with Any Service: Lowering the Barrier to Use of Content in Open Education Raymond Yee, University of California at Berkeley Friday, September 30, 2005, 10:00-10:45 am 201 Eccles Conference Center As the amount of open educational resources grows, the need for tools that allow users to interact with this content will also grow. What do users want from such tools? In Digital Resource Study: Conclusions and Next Steps14, Diane Harley and her colleagues, drawing from work to date on the “use of digital resources in undergraduate teaching contexts in the H/SS [humanities/social sciences],” write: Many [faculty] want a one-stop shop in which they can find and re-aggregate snippets from available resources into a customized resource for their own use. In other words, they would like to build their own reaggregated resources, using their own materials, mixing them with resources they have collected along the way. How to manage the array of available resources and integrate them into teaching practice is a concern for those involved in tools development. For faculty, there may be an array of tools available to them for collecting, developing, and managing resources, but the efficacy and interoperability of these tools for the immediate tasks faculty need supported are questionable. And yet another challenge, for those directly providing support to faculty, is the integration of learning management systems with library resources and other course content. Current Learning Management Systems (LMS) appear to have limited overall functionality, especially since existing LMS may not allow easy integration with many types of digital resources. This description of how faculty members like to use educational digital resources echoes what members of the so-called “remix culture” are already doing. The remixers gather digital content from a variety of sources, create works derived from this material, and share the new products with others. Catchier coinages abound to encapsulate essentially the same idea: Apple’s “rip, mix, burn” or Yahoo’s new FUSE “find, use, share, expand”. 167

At the Interactive University Project at UC Berkeley, my colleagues and I have been building the Scholar’s Box, a tool that gives users “gather/ “ create/share” functionality, enabling them to gather resources from multiple digital repositories in order to create personal and themed collections and other reusable materials that can be shared with others for teaching and research. The Scholar’s Box can currently perform the following functions: •

• •

Gather: From California Digital Library (CDL), amazon.com, google.com, NSDL, CalPhotos, RSS/Atom feeds, METS (digital library), WWW, CDLs CDL’ metasearch system, and the local ﬁle system. Create: Data and metadata gathered, annotated, and organized into personal collections via drag and drop Share: IMS-CP, OpenOfﬁce.org Presentation or Text document, PDF, HTML, a METS document, a set of Endnote references, Chandler Parcel, or sent to a weblog via the Blogger API

At this point, the Scholar’s Box is primarily a prototype of an extensible general-purpose remix application geared to the educational community. Although there are more practical (but narrower) gather/ create/share tools than the Scholar’s Box, there are unique aspects of the Scholar’s Box that should be of interest to the open education community: • It is the one of few tools that connects domains that are of particular importance to educational users: digital libraries, educational technology, social software tools, and desktop content authoring. • It is a tool that would have a particular affinity for open content, since it allows the manipulation of digital content on a fine grain level and the creation of derivative works in which the sources are explicitly tracked. • It instantiates (if weakly) an architecture for a complete span of gather/create/share functionality The current generation of gather/create/share tools represents only the first steps to enabling the robust re-aggregation of digital resources desired by educators. We predict that users will ultimately be satisfied by nothing less than a scholarly and educational information environment that gives them seamless access to any digital content 168

source, handles any content type, and applies any software service to this content. Consider, for example, what a collection of bloggers expressed as their desires for next generation blogging tools:15 Bloggers want tools that are utterly simple, and allow them to blog everything that they can think, in any format, from any tool, from anywhere. Text is just the beginning: Bloggers want to branch out to multiple media types including rich and intelligent use of audio, photos, and video. With input, having a dialog box is also seen as just a starting place for some bloggers: everything from a visual tool to easy capture of things a blogger sees, hears or reads point to desirable future user interfaces for new generations of blogging tools. Using the Scholarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Box as a primary example, the talk will outline the many possibilities and challenges that face designers of tools for remixing content with services. We will analyze the progress that has been made towards the ubiquitous remixing of any content from any source with any service. In particular, this talk will consider what can be done speciďŹ cally with open content to enable better reuse of open content by remixing applications.

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A New Model for Open Access to Scholarly and Educational Content Edward N. Zalta, Stanford University Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 1:15-2:00 pm 207 Eccles Conference Center In this talk, I outline a set of institutional arrangements that may constitute a new model for funding open access to scholarly and educational content. These arrangements have been implemented in support of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) http://plato. stanford.edu, and so this online publication is serving as a test case for the success of the model. The SEP is a dynamic reference work, created by academics and professional philosophers so as to organize their profession to collaboratively maintain an up-to-date reference work. After building its content from 1995-2005 with support from Stanford, NEH and NSF, the SEP was faced with the question of ﬁnding a long-term funding model. Though it had been approached by Kluwer and other publishers for buyout, the SEP staff approached and worked with a committee of representatives from the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC), the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), and the Southeastern Library Network, Inc. (SOLINET). The funding plan we designed implements a *partnership* between Stanford University and the worldwide library community. On this plan, the partnership builds a “protected operating fund” (see below) for the SEP, with the tasks assigned as follows: Stanford, ICOLC, and SPARC serve as fund-raisers, SOLINET serves as the funds-collector, and Stanford serves as the funds-manager. The basic elements of the plan are as follows: (1) While ICOLC and SPARC promote the SEP to, and raise funds from, their member libraries, Stanford raises funds from private donors. (2) Libraries supporting the SEP contribute funds by paying dues to a membership organization within SOLINET. These dues are eligible for $500,000 in matching funds from the NEH, under the terms of an NEH Challenge Grant awarded to SOLINET in support of this plan. (Note: SOLINET has the mechanism for dealing with contributions from 2000 libraries and consortia worldwide; Stanford does not.) (3) Under a contract that must be vetted by the NEH, SOLINET will transfer library contributions to Stanford and Stanford will place them in a special fund, SEP Library Fund, which is to be managed as part of Stanford’s endowment 170

but kept separate for accounting purposes. The SEP Library Fund however is *protected*, for it is constrained as follows: (a) if the SEP ever moves to another host university, the money (and any unspent interest) will move with it, and (b) if the SEP ever terminates, the money will be returned (with any unspent interest) to SOLINET, and then be redistributed to the contributing libraries in proportion to the amount they paid in. In the meantime, the SEP operates off the interest income from both the SEP Library Fund and the money Stanford raised separately, remaining freely available and open access. There are other perks and pluses to the plan. On this model: (1) Libraries make a one-time payment, which can be spread over 3 years (instead of making ongoing subscription payments that increase each year). (2) Libraries don’t see their money disappear, but rather see the money go into a kind of escrow account and put to work. (3) The library community will have representation on a Governing Board, so that they can participate in oversight of the SEP. (4) Contributing libraries will be given an easy way to download and store (as a single ﬁle) the SEP archives which are created every quarter for scholarly purposes; the right to serve those archives would vest if the project ever terminates. (5) The SEP will stamp pages going out to contributing institutions with a “brand” which acknowledges the support of the institution for the readers at that institution. The Hewlett Foundation has helped to implement this plan by providing a grant to (a) hire a fund-raising consultant, who will develop both library contributions and private contributions to the SEP, and (b) reimburse SOLINET for some of the infrastructure expenses required to collect contributions from the world-wide library community. And the SEP has some contingency strategies if the plan doesn’t immediately reach all the fund-raising projected goals. For example, if large institutional libraries do not contribute to the plan and prefer to remain “free riders”, we may stamp web pages going to those institutions with a “reminder message”. Given how widely the SEP is being used across the entire campus (this will be documented in the talk), this “name and shame” strategy might have some effect. (We have no plans to do this for small colleges, etc.) And there are other, shortterm, income producing strategies that can be implemented until the operating fund is raised. In this talk, I describe the elements of the above plan in further detail 171

and give a progress report on our success to date. I conclude by considering the ways in which the plan will generalize, and so serve as a model for the support of open access to scholarly and educational content in other disciplines. (Footnotes) 1 Jeng, Ling Hwey. 2001. “Improving Electronic Information Seeking in Interdisciplinary Research” a presentation to the National Science Foundation. Also, see the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s “Scholars in Health Policy Research Program” for a funded effort driving the growth in interdisciplinary work. 2 dSpace is emerging as an open source tool universities are considering for interdisciplinary archiving. dSpace is a more robust database but otherwise less nimble software tool than DIVA. Current revisions of DIVA are considering using dSpace as the database backbone to the system. 3 Recent work has emphasized the need for multimethod approaches to understanding broad areas of human experience. Examples of such areas range from ritual (see Knottnerus, David. 2005. “The Need for Theory and the Value of Cooperation.” Sociological Spectrum 25:5) to aging (see Inui, Thomas. 2003. “The Need for an Integrated Biopsychosocial Approach to Research on Successful Aging.” Annals of Internal Medicine 139:391. 4 For an interesting overview of the development of social science data repositories, including the focus on single types of data, see: Tanenbaum, Eric. 1991. “Developing Social Science Archives.” International Social Science Journal 43:225. 5 The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation convened a colloquy in San Diego, California on January 6-8, 2002. Fifty engineering educators, representing a range of institutions and disciplines, attended to determine “What are the fundamental objectives of engineering instructional laboratories?” independent of the method of delivery. 6 S. R. Ranganathan, The Five Laws of Library Science. (Madras: The Madras Library Association, 1931), 146-151, for example. 7 See Michele V. Cloonan and John G. Dove, “Ranganathan Online: Do Digital Libraries Violate the Third Law?” Library Journal, 1 April 2005, <http://www. libraryjournal.com/article.CA512179.html> (cited 25 July 2005), for just one example. Also see Alireza Noruzi, ““Application of Ranganathan’s Laws to the Web,” Webology 1.2 (December 2004), <http://www.webology.ir/2004/v1n2/ a8.html> (cited 28 July 2005). 8 Cloonan and Dove, para 1. 9 Eleanor Duckworth, “The Having of Wonderful Ideas” and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning, 2nd ed. (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996), 135136, for example. 10 Cloonan and Dove, para 4. 172

Ranganathan cited in Cloonan and Dove, para 5. 12 The studies also found that most teachers prefer to print, copy and distribute images and photographs to use in their teaching. This suggested the importance of “print-friendly” view for images, appropriate sizing to ﬁt on 8.5x11 paper, and grayscale tones over full color to facilitate printing and reproduction. Other ﬁndings and implications are described in the report, titled “High School Social Studies Teachers: The Use of Digital Objects in Teaching Practices,” available at: http://interactiveu.berkeley.edu/gems/IU/ AmWestAssessment20050202.pdf.f.f 13 See South and Monson, 2000, in The Instructional Use of Learning Objects, Objects Wiley, David, editor. Accessed on 7/26/2005 at http://reusability.org/read/). 14 http://digitalresourcestudy.berkeley.edu/pdf/digital_resources_y1_report. pdf#page=54 15 http://www.cadence90.com/blogs/2004_03_01_nixon_archives. html#107902918872392913 11

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177

178

179

180

181