I'll be updating this post throughout the day ... I am at the IMS Global Learning Consortium Meeting being held at Penn State University today. Agenda is available online.
Opening Remarks
John Harwood - Senior Director of TLT at PSU
Penn State has 16,000 sections delivered to 93,000 students across 20+ locations 70% will use our CMS, ANGEL, but that is about all they have in common. Each teacher will be creating their own content, and those that want to share will have a terrible time with version control. What is the way forward? How do we create an environment that overcomes this issues and addresses the notions of sharing and reuse? These are some of the questions that will be addressed today.
The preview of the day looks as if it will be an excellent opportunity to learn more about practical applications and solutions of repositories, portfolios, and authoring tools.
Update on the IMS Global Learning Consortium
Rob Abel - CEO IMS Global Learning Consortium
IMS has been around since 1999. It was incubated and came out of Educause. There mission is to creates standards for the development and adoption of technologies that enable high quality, accessible, and affordable learning experiences. Learn more about IMS Global at their site.
The rest of Rob's presentation focused on the various projects and approaches being explored by IMS Global. An excellent overview of the Common Cartridge in the Digital Learning Services area ... this is something I've read about, but now have a greater appreciation for. One thing that I am taking away from that conversation is that the content does not have to be embedded in the cartridge at all -- this is critical to me as I am a firm believer in the utilization of open content that exists beyond the walls of the publisher. It allows us to point to and seamlessly provide access to content in iTunes U, youtube, OCW repositories, etc.
Content as a Platform - an Infrastructure for Sharing
Peter Van Tienen, EQUELLA
Essentially a presentation about digital repositories ... primarily a product overview and discussion. It is still an interesting view on repositories and I am very interested in their notion of content as a platform ... interesting claim. I am waiting to see if it makes sense in a more universally way or if it is a catchy marketing phrase. Mostly a presentation of Equella.
Collections -> Items (Metadata, Attachments such as documents, links, etc) = Content
As a user, once I create my content how do I get credit for it, keep track of it, share with the institution, specific people outside the institution, and so on? From their system, they stack a search engine on top of that, and then allow for what they call Equella Agents (essentially plugins for the entire system) to allow for easy sharing among other digital repositories, authoring tools, CRM, Library, ePortfolio, CMS, etc.
Distributed Content Sharing
They use Contribution Wizards that help apply meta data. Sounds like a smart idea -- faculty goes into the system and guides them through not only content creation but describing it ... the description forms the basis for the meta data acquisition. Another part of this is helping them make decisions with sharing -- generates CC license if the faculty so chooses. Once it has a CC license it is open for harvesting by other services or repositories. This is now part of an environment where the reuse of content being tracked in a more social sense.
His big claim is that their system just sits behind the existing CMS, so faculty can use tools that already know. I like this idea, because their tools do some interesting step by step integration tools. He showed how a faculty member could simply check a box that said link to audio/video and it then asked where that content was -- youtube, iTunes U, and other sources. It then allowed a search of the chosen environment to return the content one would be looking for.
Scaling Repositories to Meet Instructional Needs: Are We Thinking Too Big?
Brian Nielson, Northwestern University
I know Brian from my work with the CIC LTI group, so I am looking forward to seeing what his work is really all about. In the context of the CIC LTI, I get such a limited view of what my colleagues think about on a day to day basis.
Xythos will play a key role in this presentation as will the notions of technology, design, and context. File Bridge is a custom application they have developed that talks between BlackBoard and Xythos. Xythos is a collaboration software environment built around the sharing of files. Core characteristic is for individuals to have very granular level of permissions at the file level.
His big challenging question is not how to develop the technology, it is how to integrate it into the teaching/research culture of the Institution? He says that "technology adoption is a process of "fitting" a tool into a social context ... I find that to be very true. If I can't work it into my personal/social workflow I can't adopt. He has a bullet I love ... "A technology may be limited not by its characteristics, but by lack of vision on how it may be used in particular contexts." To me that is what my career is all about -- discovering those new contexts.
The Power of Technology to Better Serve Students - A Case Study on the applications of Web Based Content and Process Management technologies to Automate the Transfer Credit Evaluation Process at University of Maryland University College (UMUC).
Mike Knaeble, Senior Vice President, Hershey Systems
Patrick, University of Maryland University College
The thrust of this session is that the focus is on standard data transfer in information systems -- mostly for student services. Their main point is that more and more students are doing work at multiple Universities and need to be able to quickly move grades and standing around.
Sales pitch top to bottom. Also, someone needs to ask them to rethink the logo on their lead slide.
The Exquisite Librarian!
Louis E. King, Managing Producer, Digital Asset Management Systems University of Michigan
BlueStream is an implementation of a streaming environment. Still in a limited pilot -- not open to all 50,000 people. About 50 projects year. Start with digital asset and then add some stuff to it -- permissions, access, workflow.
People do not want to deal with conversion processes -- DVD, Real, QT, Flash ... we don't care, formats change. Everything happens on the server, people cannot and should not deal with this on their desktops. The server should do it.
What I like is his assertion that digital discourse is a major part of the conversation in the 20th century ... we need access to digital resources. Another thing he just said is that you never hear people say, I am going online to learn differently ... it is the same water we swim in when learning face to face. Finally.
Keys:
- Rapid Acquisition -- includes streamlined upload and managed storage.
- Flexible metadata -- Look up or user generated
- Organization and Control -- Ability to look into storage and change structure and manage access control
- Media Processing -- Image conversion that happens on the fly with granular control
- Transcripts and Annotation -- Ability to download and transcribe for annotation and then do a simple upload and sync automatically
- Media Analysis -- Voice to text to get 80% of keywords to help with search returns. Also should do facial recognition.
I missed a lot from this session, but the best for my dollar by far today. A great idea is the ability to move all of the backchannel activity into one environment for capture -- that is something we need to explore more. We can not have open resources in higher education without closed ... great comment!
ePortfolios and Employability
Darren Cambridge, George Mason University
This session is really about student portfolio efforts as they relate to employability. Interesting model to consider ... looks very much like what a career services, not a learning environment, would care about:
- Choose competency frameworks defined by employers
- Determine and document competency profile
- Compare with career goals
- Connect to learning to fill gaps
- Match with jobs
He makes the point that there is a growing alignment of the personal and professional self that will require us to keep closer track of our skills and lives. Given how scattered and non-linear our lives have become, the notion of the life-long portfolio may provide an opportunity to create a narrative or story that brings the events of my life together. Something that brings some systematic identity across my civic, academic, personal, and other phases of our lives. His assertion is to help find a "thread" in one's life.
The eFolio Minnesota initiative is open to all citizens in the state. It is used by more than 60,000 people. People who use it find it as a place where they can eave personal, professional, and civic together to connect with audiences.
He has shown about a half dozen of other examples -- some from education and some that are more civic offerings. All share the message of allowing people to reflect and assemble a more holistic view of themselves.
Network Self v Symphonic Self ... first is about building connections while the second is about achieving integrity of the whole. Interesting.
