Which approach? EcosystemTower

The Tower Aggregating content from everywhere; Huge centralised metadata: – Authoritative; – Always up to date; – Complete metadata; – Owned.

The Tower Control (over usage, not necessarily users); Orthodoxy; ×Big up-front development; ×High maintenance; ×Suppliers lose branding, incentive to share; ×Meta-aggregation; ×Can others aggregate you?; ×Must constantly evolve search interface; ×Vast majority of similar systems have failed; ×Brittle – succeeds or fails as a whole.

Ecosystem Central brand; A kite mark; Maintain central site, but functionality appears embedded everywhere – eg. Facebook “Like” button; Distributed implementation; Add tools and services whenever; Allow others to build with it.

Ecosystem ×Less initial control; ×New model for eLearning; New but wildly popular model for rest of the web; Less initial development; Less ongoing cost; Lower barrier of entry for suppliers; Encourages market – maintains brands; User engagement – crowd sourcing.

Services Registry of sources; Metadata; Single-sign on; Review/QA/Moderation; Collections; Purchase; Reporting; Foundry.

Metadata – Mandatory core (persistent res ID, source ID, curriculum node); – Optional extras: License (CC, public domain, paid); Accessibility; Learning styles; Other curricula/syllabus; Technical requirements.

Single sign-on Lightweight (cookies) or high strength authentication? Probably optional for users But provides foundation for: – Content access negotiation; – Personalisation; – Awards; – Collections; – Owned resources; – Intra-organisational sharing; – Reporting.

Review Embeddable box next to each resource on a source site with: – Like button – Problem buttons: Badly described; Inappropriate content; Copyright infringement; Technical fault. Allow anonymous?

Collection Collections encompass: – Baskets – Learning pathways – Saved searches – Content subsets – Lesson plans Collections held in their own repository site, but publishable anywhere, in any format Shareable with peers and learners Used to find other resources

Rights access Allows range of licensing and access restrictions from: – Public domain; – Creative Commons; – Copyright (the default); – Organisational restrictions; – National restrictions; – Paid subscriptions.

Payment platform System can be added later; Centralised institutional account for subscription (like Paypal); Platform independent - no vendor lock-in; Discounts through bulk purchasing; If government buying, access rights system already in place; Allows publishers to e.g. Give free access in one jurisdiction, but charge in others; Low/no cost of entry to monetisation of resources for small suppliers.

Reporting/moderation/QA Backend view of: – Number of times resource is viewed; – Number of times resource is used; – Learner views; – Learner feedback; – Educator feedback (on resources and collections). Benefits of access to all that data: – QA; – Analysis of subject popularity/gaps; – Moderation – removing inappropriate content; – Huge value to publishers – can be sold! Central metadata index is constantly, automatically being built, for free!

VLE Collections can be integrated into VLEs; Or used on CDs, websites etc.; The platform becomes a simple VLE.

Foundry: A “safe area” – pre-publication, just constructive criticism; Collaboration (translation, visual designers/animators, SME, pedagogic design); Test bed for commercial suppliers.

Who are the suppliers? A supplier is any of: – A lone teacher; – An innovative college or provider; – The British Museum; – A commercial vendor; – JISC resources; – Other Gateway repositories; – An awarding body; All keep their websites and brands.

Wider web System also allows any resource from the web to be collected by users and rated – even if not from a recognised supplier: – Wikipedia; – user’s own file; – BBC; Done by simple click of a browser button.

Demo NLN; XtLearn.net; Show microformat.