Event

EdSpace Kick-off

Hugh DavisUniversity Director of Education (eLearning)

ECS, The University of Southampton, UKwww.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~hcd

Event 2

What do people want (1)?

• place where people can put things concerned with education (resources + admin ++)

• place where they can go to find stuff to use in their teaching

• place where they can go to look what others do in their teaching (inc QA)

• place where things survive and might be curated• place where they can share things with chosen subsets

of people • somewhere that stores the definitive copy all the things

people might want (e.g. quality documents, course descriptions, module notes)

Event 3

What do people want (2)?

• place where the outside world can go to see what they want about education at Southampton.

• Someway that people can add value to resources by describing them (Folksonomy/metadata) to improve search effectiveness AND recommendation

• Some people (not many!) want version management so they can look at e.g. the different programme specifications that applied to different cohorts.

Event 4

Why do we care (1)?

• we want teachers to be able to find useful resources – (e.g. how someone else organised a course, how someone else

taught a particular difficult concept, a picture or video that illustrates a point, a case study they could adapt for their purposes)

– NOTE – these are not classical LOs. Maybe we will need to support them too, but there is not yet a shred of evidence that they work in HE)

• we want to be able to have shared workspaces (wiki – like)

• The concept of the Monolithic VLE is running out of credibility.

Event 5

Why do we care (2)?

• The implementation of Blackboard that we have is broken in that no-one can see what’s in a course except those on the course (not DHoS, QA, External examiners, students who took the course last year)

• Also you can’t link within Blackboard (DOI’s change at every re-install!)

• Having one place where people keep things is good – avoids the <multiple versions so which one is correct?> problem

• We are proud of our educational system – we have little to lose by showing it to people (but lots to lose by not doing so)

Event 6

Why do we care (3)?

• We want people to be able to gain esteem for their educational outputs (as with research outputs)

Event 7

So What is the problem (1)?

• technically not all that much (although don’t underestimate this)

• people don’t want to share– too time consuming (cognitive overhead)– frightened of what people might think– worried about their plagiarism/using of other’s materials– worried about other people re-using their materials out of context

incorrectly– worried about protecting their own IPR– Anyway, nothing is ever finished

• Some people are not that competent with IT, and use all the above as a smokescreen

Event 8

So What is the problem (2)?

• The University is frightened of the IPR issues if people did share

• The University is not clear about IPR of teaching materials. (Who owns what when someone leaves?)

• The University is maybe worried about what people might think?

Event 9

The Solution – Technical

• Making this work with Blackboard will be *central* to the technical success

• An easy to use and clear interface will be essential to uptake

• There are other repository initiatives using the same code-base. Keeping the developments in sync will add challenge

Event 10

The Solution – Social and Political

• We need to formulate a plan to engage with people in the university to identify their needs and to understand how to deal with:– Lack of staff competency in information management– University IPR policy– Achieving Network Effects– Persuading people of the benefits of sharing internally– Persuading people of the benefits of sharing externally– Persuading QAE folks throughout of the benefit of making things visible– To show the added value of the “semantic web” to QAE people in

particular

• Initially we will ask for schools keen to participate – work with the willing and wait for dinosaurs to die. Targeting Geography, Nursing, ECS, SOES ….

• (Not allowed to target Languages)

Event 11

The (paid) team

• Debra Morris (80% of 80%) University Engagement and Project Manager

• Jessie Hey (80%) University Engagement• Tim Miles-Board (EPrints Manager) 20% - Technical

Manager• [Existing member of EPrints implementation team] 100%

- shared between ECS and ISS• Feng “Barry” Tao – 3 months - semantic annotation

issues• Sepi Chakaveh (40%) – Usability and interface issues

Event 12

The University Team

• Hugh Davis – ECS – Project Director• Mark Brown – Library - Co-ordinating with other repository initiatives• Les Carr – ECS – Technical Director• Bob Price – ISS – Director for Deployment• Su White – ECS – Advisor on Institutional Change• Andy Gravell – ECS – Administrative/QA demonstrator• Shakeel Khoja - Visiting Academic from Pakistan. Working with

Andy.• Also

– the director of student services (Marion Philips)– the educational representative from the Student Union (recently

currently being re-elected, Cath?)– the Chair of the e-Learning Implementation Group (Rosalynd Jowett)– Plus LATEU (Adam Warren and Fiona Grindey) Plus ELIG Plus L&T co-

ordinators

Event 13

Short – term objectives

• The Project runs for 18 months• We would like to see the platform available for use• Some shared resources from the early adopters• Selected courses using it from Blackboard• A “demonstrator” of the added value that could be achieved

by putting regular educational administrative materials in the repository

• A University IPR policy that is understood and disseminated• Good practice guides and success factors (and what went

wrong)• Increased Esteem for the University• Some Network Effects starting to show • Links with other repository projects• Academic Papers

Event 14

Long –term Objectives

• We will need to demonstrate continued use for 1 year after funding – but would like to see the work fully embedded

• If we get it right JISC will want us to do lots of dissemination, evaluation etc.

• We will wish to seek further funding (JISC? Eduserv? HEFCE? University?) for the next phase of the development.

• We will wish to see EPrints distributing the code to others – and real network effects kicking in

• We want to see user demand for further innovative uses• We want Southampton on the map as the University that

demonstrated what it took to solve the repository deadlock.