Workshop on
14th November
Purpose
To demonstrate – via tools and materials already assembled for a
pre-existing practical research project - how digital resources can be tagged
according to agreed classification systems, stored in a repository, combined
with materials from other sources and exported to a suitable player or
learning management system for educational use.
The Project
The practical research project in question has been established to
evaluate the application of re-usable learning objects to support
curriculum development within a group of schools who have formed themselves
into a virtual Education Action Zone in the SE of England. The aim of the
project is to enhance support for the teaching and learning of Key Skills by
making interoperable resources available from a range of different
sources. The project seeks to assess both the practical
benefits and the policy implications that might be expected to flow from more
widespread adoption of this type of approach via an independent study
commissioned by the DfES, supervised by BECTa's Evidence & Practice
Division and undertaken by Demos.
The project has implemented a
learning objects repository using IMS metadata – enabling teachers and others
to load metadata/catalogue records of website and educational materials from a
variety of sources – including education software providers, public bodies and
practitioners. The cataloguing scheme used for this project has been developed
based on the QCA’s specifications. Materials tagged and stored in the
repository can be used as they are and/or re-combined with other resources and
exported to other systems such as resource players (e.g. Microsoft’s LRN) or
interoperable learning management systems such as Blackboard, Freedom2Learn
etc.
For workshop participants, this would
be a good chance to see how such resources work in practice. Museums, archives
and libraries could tag their resources, load the metadata records into the repository and
then see their resources used in
the schools. The repository would read IMS metadata from NOF projects, or DC
metadata on individual items. In the process, new Key Skills metadata would be
generated for Curriculum Online. The ‘pool’ generated could be used by
any teacher/pupil using the system. Since it is built to open standards this
would mean anyone with access to compliant learning management systems or
players.
Proposed Workshop
Programme
Hosted at DfES Basic Skills Strategy
Unit (who are watching the project with interest) and also attended by BECTa’s
FE and Community Learning Programme who are going to implement an FE and
community-oriented project using the same
resources:
- introduction – what is
the project for, how does a learning object repository work, how can it be
used by learners?
- demo of project repository and content management tools
(including tagging tools)
- opportunities to
tag, assemble and export materials
– using project metadata and re-packaging
tools
- export of tagged content packages to 1)project portal 2)a
3rd party learning management system 3) the Microsoft LRN
player
- discussion about user-interface issues and mapping to
different user profiles
