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Presentation by Dr Viv Rolfe at OER11 (Manchester, May 2011). Thoughts on setting up social networks to boost web traffic to your teaching resources.
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SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open
education practices
Dr Vivien Rolfe & Dr Simon Griffin*
De Montfort University, Leicester, UK*Griffin Internet Marketing
OER11 Conference,Manchester,
May 11th 2011
•SCOOTER - OERs for Sickle Cell andThalassaemia education
•JISC/HEA OER Phase 2
•Website launch November 2010
Introduction
• Driving forces for the future of OERs and open education practices are discoverability and sustainability – how can individuals and institutions ensure that their resources thrive and not gather dust?
Importance of Community
• Central to sustainability is growth of a critical mass of interested individuals, and it adopting technologies and approaches to create networks (Dholakia 2006).
• Need to facilitate productive sharing whether as one-off transactions, or within on-going collaboration (Chris Pegler OER2010).
• Identify emergent champions who serve as informal leaders in inspiring new OER communities (Cynthia Jimes OER2010).
How to Build a Community?
• HumBox Project supporting humanities subjects – repository launched Feb 2010.
• Project has produced new registered users and deposits beyond duration of initial project.
• HumBox uses a comment box for each resource to build dialogue - championed by HumBox project team (Borthwick & Dicken 2010).
Other Online Strategies?
• Use of social networking tools (YouTube, Twitter) promoted OERs on web and was linked to increased in course intake (Russell Stannard, OER2010).
• Their website has grown to 15,000 visitors per month!!
SCOOTER Project Aims
• Building a community of online users using social networking tools.
• Understand which networks are effective tools?
• What is their impact in terms of discoverability and sustainability of OERs and OEP?
Methodology
• Establish social networks e.g. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Posterous.
• SCOOTER has produced 26 “new user” registrations in total!!
Methodology
• Track web traffic using Google Analytics, and using additional indices from social network tools.
• Evaluate REACH (visitor demographics) and IMPACT (return visits, reuse, change in behaviour, loyalty) (Rolfe EDULEARN 2010).
• Evaluate type of community engagement - PASSIVE or ACTIVE (comments, dialogue, evidence of collaboration).
SCOOTER Online Presence
Results – REACH and IMPACT
From launch to 18th April 2011 (5 months)
•Visits from 66 countries•1,153 unique visitors•30% returned 2 times or more (reuse)
People searching for“sickle cell”, “sicklecell anaemia” (Google, Yahoo,Bing, AOL)
Sites, socialnetworks containingSCOOTER URL(back link)
People who KNOWthe URL already
Social Network Referrals No. Visitorsen.wikipedia.org / referral 174
sicklecellanaemia.posterous.com / referral 52
hlsweb.dmu.ac.uk / referral 39
heacademy.ac.uk / referral 24
facebook.com / referral 20
ezinearticles.com / referral 17
righthealth.com / referral 12
dmu.ac.uk / referral 11
localhost / referral 11
dmuscooter.wikispaces.com / referral 10
prod.cetis.ac.uk / referral 9
bit.ly/forexmarket / referral 5
en.m.wikipedia.org / referral 5
groups.medbiq.org / referral 5
learnex.dmu.ac.uk / referral 5
twitter.com / referral 5
sicklecellanaemia.tumblr.com / referral 4
sicklecellanaemiaorg.blogspot.com / referral 3
stumbleupon.com / referral 2
others 34
CategoryUnique Visitors Activity
Backlink I have submitted 262 One off
Posterous network 96 5 minutes per week
Ezine 17 1 article per month
Others grown organically 80 Nothing
Results – COMMUNITY data
From launch to 18th April 2011 (5 months)
Follower / Subscriber
Comments / Posts
Resource Views
SCOOTER Website Forum 39 7
Posterous (37 posts) 4 0 3789
YouTube Channel (1 video) 1 0 342
Twitter #DMUViv 29
Facebook 26 3
Blogger 1 0
Ezine (3 articles) NA 0 163
TOTAL 100 10 4294
Jan 1st = 27
Who is using, why and what purpose?
• Facebook - general public• Twitter – academic, professional• Forum - healthcare professionals, students
• Comments include general positive feedback and requests for resources and suggestions for weblinks.
Summary• Social networks are effective in “referring traffic” to
SCOOTER, producing 30% of the 1500+ visits in the first 5 months.
• Social networks (Posterous, Youtube) are useful repositories for OERs, with a recorded 4000+ views of our OERs on these sites.
• Posterous is very quick and highly effective social networking tool.
Summary• SCOOTER community presently is largely PASSIVE –
OER users, viewers, readers.
• ACTIVE users are few and this can be enhanced for a truly sustainable approach.
• But, conferences and off-line networking is also essential for building the SCOOTER community and will sustain interest beyond the project (including universities, hospitals, charities and commerce).
Conclusion• Creating a community using social networking tools is
relatively simple and makes OERs DISCOVERABLE on a global level to a wide range of audiences.
• Creating a vibrant ACTIVE community as a means to drive SUSTAINABILITY takes effort, and building off-line communities is also important.
• We need to evaluate community dynamics - who is using, and for what purpose? Also who is NOT using the resources and why?
• Borthwick K 2010. HumBox Tracking Reports 1 and 2. http://www.llas.ac.uk/resourcedownloads/3233/humbox_tracking_report1.pdf
• Dholakia UM, King WJ & Baraniuk R (2006) What makes an open education programme sustainable? The case of Connexions. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/3/6/36781781.pdf
• Jimes C (2010) Building Communities to Support Teacher Use, Localization and Sharing of OER. OER10, Cambridge.
• Pegler C (2010) Reuse: the other side of sharing OERs. OER10, Cambridge.• Rolfe V (2010) How to monitor the use and reuse of open educational resources using Google
Analytics. EDULEARN10, Barcelona, p2320. http://library.iated.org/view/ROLFE2010HOW• Stannard R (2010) OER and Marketing Opportunities. OER10, Cambridge.
• SCOOTER Project Website http://www.sicklecellanaemia.org (Including OER Training, and HOW TO SET UP POSTEROUS)
• Online Marketing Services and Advice http://www.griffininternetmarketing.co.uk/
References and Useful Resources