OER Curation and Search

The Issues at Hand

Conference WorkshopInaugural International Conference on

Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2014)

17th January 2014

Ishan Abeywardena MSc, MSc (Brunel), BSc (Bangalore), MIEEE, MBCS, MIET, MTA

Deputy Dean and Senior Lecturer School of Science and Technology

Wawasan Open UniversityPenang, Malaysia

Outline

• The Current OER Search Dilemma

• The Concept of Metadata

• Existing Search Methods

• Useful OER Sources

The Current OER Search Dilemma

Content repositoriesPortal repositories

Content and portal repositoriesMcGreal, R. (2010). Open Educational Resource Repositories: An Analysis. Proceedings: The 3rd Annual Forum on e-Learning Excellence, 1-3 February 2010, Dubai, UAE.

Curation

So…how do I find the material I need for my teaching?

Goo

gle

“Adv

ance

d Se

arch

” re

sults

for O

ER o

n Ch

emis

try

(24t

h M

ay 2

012)

Literature• ...The problem is in finding the resources, and more correctly finding the “right”

resources. Using a regular search engine like Google to find content is not always a viable option as it will generate too many answers. There is, hence, a need to easily find relevant content...” (Hatakka, 2009)

• “searching this way (using existing search engines such as Google) might be a long and painful process as most of the results are not usable for educational purposes” (Pirkkalainen & Pawlowski, 2010)

• No single search engine is still able to locate resources from all the OER repositories (West & Victor, 2011)

• One of the major barriers to the use and re-use of OER is the difficulty of finding quality OER matching a specific context (Dichev & Dicheva, 2012)

• “…the problem with open content is not the lack of available resources on the Internet but the inability to locate suitable resources for academic use” (Unwin, 2005).

Native search mechanisms perhaps?

Identify which material to look for (e.g. integration, C++ programming)

Identify the search queries (e.g. “undergraduate mathematics”)

Locate repository (word of mouth, some link somewhere, go to the more popular repositories)

Run multiple queries to find resources

Read each resource to identify the usefulness (openness, access, relevance)

Identify useful resources

Repeat steps 3-6 on multiple repositories (hundreds to thousands…..)

Native Search in Repositories

Locate repository (word of mouth, some link somewhere, go to the more popular repositories)

Run multiple queries to find resources

Read each resource to identify the usefulness (openness, access, relevance)

Identify useful resources

Frustrated??

i. Facilitate finding, retrieving and sharing of OER.

Encourage the development of user-

friendly tools to locate and retrieve OER that are

specific and relevant to particular needs.

(UNESCO Paris OER Declaration, 2012)

The Declaration

UNESCO. (2012). Paris OER Declaration, Retrieved September18, 2012 from http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/Events/Paris%20OER%20Declaration_01.pdf

How useful is a resource really?

Measures of usefulness

Openness

Accessibility

Relevance

Desirability

Less useful resources are less desirable for teaching and learning needs….

What is Desirability?

Concept of Metadata

Metadata

IEEE-LOMDCMI

Casali, A., Deco, C., Romano, A. and Tomé, G. (2013) 'An Assistant for Loading Learning Object Metadata: An Ontology Based Approach', Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects (IJELLO), vol. 9, p. 11.

LOM

DCMI

the DCMI resource model

Source: http://dublincore.org/documents/abstract-model/ (29/08/2013)

http://creativecommons.org/tag/learning-resource-metadata-initiative

LRMI

However…the issue is

Existing Search Methods

Some Existing Solutions

• Federated Search: BRENHET2; OpeScout; Global Learning Object Brokered Exchange (GLOBE); and Pearson’s Project Blue Sky.

• Semantic Search: OER-CC ontology; the “Assistant” prototype; the “Folksemantic” project; and “Agrotags”.

Federated Search

Institution

Repos

Institution Institution

Repos Repos Repos Repos Repos

Organisation Consortium

Federation

User

Metadata

Apples

Processed Products

Nutrition

Varieties

Juice

Sauce Cider

McIntosh

Pink Lady

Honeycrisp

Disease Prevention

Fiber

Vitamins

Semantic Search

Yeah…but which one do I choose?

http://www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com/pearson-bluesky/

http://www.globe-info.org/

Faceted Search

OERScout

Useful OER Sources

Questions?

I will also be happy to answer your queries if you e-mail me via ishansa@wou.edu.my

Thanks!

I acknowledge the support provided by

Dr K S Yuen, Chair of the conference organising committee; Dr K C Li, Vice-chair of the conference organising committee; and Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK)

by extending full sponsorship for may participation at the Inaugural International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2014).

Acknowledgements

About…

Ishan AbeywardenaDeputy Dean and Senior Lecturer, School of Science and Technology, Wawasan Open University, Penang, Malaysia

• MSc in Wireless Enterprise Business Systems, Brunel University, UK.• MSc in Engineering Management, Brunel University, UK.• BSc in Computer Science, Bangalore University, India.• PhD Candidate in Computer Science, University Malaya, Malaysia. Areas of specialisation: text mining,

metadata, faceted search

Professional Member of– Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (MIEEE)– British Computer Society (MBCS)– Institution of Engineering and Technology (MIET)– Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA)

Official Profile: http://www.wou.edu.my/IshanAbeywardena.htmlProfessional Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ishansaResearch Profile: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ishan_Abeywardena/Tech Blog: http://www.ishantalks.comE-mail: ishansa@wou.edu.my

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