8/14/2019 OLISymposium - dScribe OER publishing model

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dScribeScaling OER Publishing Through a Student-Centric Model

What is dScribe?

dScribe is a model proposing a cost-minimizing system thatleverages the existing faculty-student relationship to

gather, vet, and publish course material on an OERwebsite. dScribe is an opportunity to mobilize studentactivity in the teaching and learning process and generatea powerful new participatory paradigm in higher educa-

tion.

Why differentiate from existing models?Most Open CourseWare initiatives rely upon a dedicatedteam of staff to assemble faculty content for publicationon the web.

While this is a proven method for producing quality OERmaterial, it is expensive to staff and difficult to scaleacross a large university curriculum.

What will the dScribe model bring?The dScribe model reduces OER publishing costs, scales-upthroughout the university, allows for departmental

customization, and increases the refresh rate of material.This is a portable, adaptable process that providesinstitutions worldwide with a set of tools to sustain agrassroots OER initiative.

MOTIVATIONHow does the work begin?

Students and faculty connect over a mutualinterest in participating in the OERinitiative. Each semester, student

volunteers enrolled in a course work withthe instructor to process and publish coursematerial on an OER website. The studentparticipants are called dScribes, which

stands for digital and distributed scribes.

How is material processed?The instructor releases his/her coursematerial under an open license (e.g.Creative Commons, BSD, etc.). Then,utilizing a series of software tools, the

student reviews the content, communicat-ing with more experienced dScribes and

her faculty member to address and resolveintellectual property concerns. The student

makes necessary adjustments to theoriginal materials, and after a facultyreview, the processed course material arepublished on an OER website.

Why participate?Student incentives include increased

interaction with the faculty as well as thepossibility of receiving course credit,tuition reimbursement, or perhaps pay forparticipation. Faculty learn about new,

open resources and benefit from thecreativity of motivated students reviewingtheir course content. And best of all, their

course materials are now available to aglobal audience.

APPROACHWhere is the project now?

Currently, the dScribe model is in a pilot phase at the U-M School of Information to validate the workflow andto assist with software development. The pilot program has trained five student volunteers to assess material

from a course in which each is currently enrolled. Working with dScribe 2s and their instructor, these dScribesare walking through the steps of clearing content using a web-based application to document the process.What are the software tools?The dScribe model relies upon a suite of tools to help manage the process of gathering, vetting, and publishingcourse material. The software is designed to be modular and portable, allowing other institutions to utilize thetools to begin their own OER process. At the moment, the development team is building both a migration tool

for exporting course matarial from the U-M Sakai Collaborative and Learning Environment (CLE) and aweb-based content processing tool for managing content and student-faculty interactions.

EFFORTS

What are the next steps?The dScribe project will extend its pilot

initiative to work with the U-M Medical School,

the School of Public Health, and the School of

Dentistry. The first phase of software develop-

ment will be completed during the spring of

2008. In the summer the team will shift focus

to refine the dScribe workflow and will begin

work with other U-M departments on improving

the model and tools.

FUTURE

The dScribe Tool Suite migrates course material from any Learning Management System (LMS) to the main Content Processing Tool. This

tool syncs with the Content Capture and Editing Tool, (to be built) which allows dScribes to manipulate content and add metadata. The

Content Processing Tool then packages the processed course materials in an IMS Content Package (IMSCP) format for export to a variety

of publishing tools such as eduCommons. This is the last phase of arranging content before it is presented on an OER website.

While the dScribe pilot group is receiving instruction

on IP issues, the software developers code the tool.

The Content Processing Tool allows for easy asynchronous

interaction between the instructor and the dScribe to clear material.

Presenter: Ted HanssDesign: Garin Fons, Pieter Kleymeer

In the dScribe Publishing Process, the faculty and student collaborate to

publish materials cleared for open copying, distribution, and reuse. The dScribe

is never alone in answering the difficult copyright issues; she will always work

together with an experienced dScribe and the instructor to publish materials.

Copyright 2008 The Regents of the University of Michigan

dScribePublishing

Process

roles

dScribe 2

dScribe

instructor

BY:Garin Fons,Pieter Kleymeercharacters byRyan Junell

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