Let me fling away my muddled thinking and 'get with the programme'. No more resources 'locked-in' to e-learning environments, tools, or multimedia applications. I want my educational applications populated from a 'proper' learning object repository … don't I? That was the mission, but here's the findings and thinking so far. We've been involved in a number of e-learning/multimedia projects over the years whose design invariably included resources stored in some type of virtual 'library', archive, or repository. The repository was invariably hard-wired to the application and its virtual status arose simply from the fact it was delivered via a computer.
Now we know better and we really don't want to embark on 'locking in' learning material/resources/objects within monolithic, custom, or proprietary architectures. We want to embrace the world of specifications, standards, open source, and learning object repositories. All well and good but the problem is that the need is now but we're finding that developments are mostly works-in-progress and 'jam tomorrow'.
So let's start off by articulating the need.
We want the material which is utilized by a learning tool, environment or application to be separate from the container(s) in which it can be presented. We want easy authoring, updating, archiving, retrieval and overall management of such material. We also want it to be finding and retrievable by software clients and even software agents/robots as well as humans. Why the latter?
Basically, we don't want to be trapped by the application interface provided by any one vendor and can therefore integrate the material, or at least links to it, within whatever software clients and containers we care to use.
So step forward the brave world of learning object repositories.
We've found some interesting work for example the JISC JORUM project which describes itself as:
“… a repository service for all Further and Higher Education Institutions in the United Kingdom (UK), providing access to materials and encouraging the sharing, re-use and re-purposing of them between teaching staff.”
Interesting although JORUM is, the underlying repository engine appears to be Intrallect's IntraLibrary learning object management system, which, in its public form at least, is an application (although it's architecture makes services feasible). IntraLibrary is described in Digital Repositories: e-Learning for Everyone (PDF file) (Duncan C, 2003) as a “commercial successor” to SESDL the Scottish Staff Development Library.
Also, the JORUM team are well grounded in the political realities of the heterogenous UK Higher Education sector meaning that JORUM will be interacting in an environment in which institutional learning object repositories will also exist. It's unclear currently how JORUM will communicate with such local, regional, and national repositories; and indeed repositories already on the international stage such as MERLOT.
So let's take a look at what digital library systems (as opposed to learning object repositories) such as DSpace and EPrints have to offer.
The DSpace site offers the following description:
“… a groundbreaking digital library system to capture, store, index, preserve, and redistribute the intellectual output of a university’s research faculty in digital formats.”
EPrints offers the more muted:
“… dedicated to opening access to the refereed research literature online through author/institution self-archiving”.
The difficulty for us is that these two initiatives are what they say on the tin. We find it kind of difficult, currently, to visualize how they could be massaged into delivering what we want of a smaller grained, learning materials/resources focused service which is not dependent on interaction with a fixed digital library application interface.
So let's look at what's coming down the slipway. What about the cross-platform LionShare project? LionShare will:
“facilitate legitimate file-sharing among institutions around the world through the use of authenticated Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networking. LionShare technology (which is currently under development) will provide tools for the exchange of academic, personal and work-related materials on an officially sanctioned and secure P2P network among participating groups and institutions around the world.”
LionShare is certainly interesting with betas due for release in Fall 2004 and release candidates in Fall 2005. I've included this project in Auricle's syndicated sites menu.
More peer-to-peer options. After reading the CETIS article Splashing in Ponds and Pools I hot-footed over to the EduSplash site.
The EduSplash site confuses me. On the one hand it describes itself as a:
“… consortium of several educational, private and public, sector organizations to develop an infrastructure for learning object repositories.”
But pop into the news section and we find the last entry was apparently 30 June 2002!
I thought I had entered a 'Marie Celeste' site but perhaps not! … in the download section the latest build of the Splash Java client 🙁 is 28 June 2004?. Now I like the idea of Splash empowering the individual whilst contributing to a community via peer to peer networks of Splash personal repositories (a pond) and to a more general resource network (a pool). But could I find any information about the pond and pool parts of the architecture … no I couldn't. So either its a secret or I'm looking at the wrong site.
I did try out the Splash client and found it a bit slow and flaky but it has some promise. Conceptually, it's seem to me a bit like the JISC Reload tool but one which is aware of the learning objects created by others and which can make available to a community the learning objects it describes … a potentially powerful approach to resource description and sharing … are you listening Reload:)
No learning object repository excursion, no matter how brief, can ignore Fedora. By the way the url is http://www.fedora.info and don't forget that .info at the end of the url or you'll be treated to a totally unrelated assault on your senses.
It seems to me that Fedora is where the big boys and girls go to play.
“The Fedora project was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to build an open-source digital object repository management system based on the Flexible Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture (Fedora). The new system demonstrates how distributed digital library architecture can be deployed using web-based technologies, including XML and Web services.”
Now that last sentence is actually critical … this system is apparently being built on a service model and is intended to be:
“a general-purpose digital object repository system that can be used in whole or part to support a variety of use cases including: institutional repositories, digital libraries, content management, digital asset management, scholarly publishing, and digital preservation.”
So it is going beyond the DSpace and EPrints model. Fedora is breaking the mould in another direction in its adoption of the METS XML schema, i.e. the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (just when you thought you'd grasped IMS, SCORM et al 🙂
Fedora is undoubtedly powerful enough to keep sofware architects and engineers happy for years, and infrastructuralists will undoubtedly love it. Perhaps its service-oriented architecture is what matters, however, since most normal mortals will only need to be concerned with how they can get the data and information they need from a Fedora engine and leave the high priests and priestesses to administer to the needs of the underlying system. At the time of writing IMS hasn't influenced the design of Fedora but it's likely that both initiatives will need to talk to each other … urgently!
This seems a good point to bring part 1 of this article to a conclusion but first where did the title 'Learning Material Repositories - Rafts or Battleships?' come from?
Well here's an extract from a recent Stephen Downes recent polemic
“In the world of e-learning, meanwhile, the systems and protocols look more and more like jibberish each passing day as every possible requirement from every possible system - whether it makes sense or not - is piled into that tangle of 24-character variable names called Java (none of which will work at all unless you have exactly the right configuration … But the last time I looked people weren't using learning objects in any great number, either in the classroom or (even more so) to support home learning. Gosh, make sure you can float before building a battleship.” (OLDaily 12 July 2004)
What part 2 will explore is how we can float.
