SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices Dr Vivien Rolfe & Dr Simon Griffin* De Montfort University, Leicester, UK *Griffin Internet Marketing

OER11 Conference, Manchester, May 11 th 2011

SCOOTER - OERs for Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia educationSickle Cell and Thalassaemia JISC/HEA OER Phase 2 Website launch November 2010

Introduction Driving forces for the future of OERs and open education practices are discoverability and sustainability – how can individuals and institutions ensure that their resources thrive and not gather dust?

Importance of Community Central to sustainability is growth of a critical mass of interested individuals, and it adopting technologies and approaches to create networks (Dholakia 2006). Need to facilitate productive sharing whether as one- off transactions, or within on-going collaboration (Chris Pegler OER2010). Identify emergent champions who serve as informal leaders in inspiring new OER communities (Cynthia Jimes OER2010).

How to Build a Community? HumBox Project supporting humanities subjects – repository launched Feb Project has produced new registered users and deposits beyond duration of initial project. HumBox uses a comment box for each resource to build dialogue - championed by HumBox project team (Borthwick & Dicken 2010).

Other Online Strategies? Use of social networking tools (YouTube, Twitter) promoted OERs on web and was linked to increased in course intake (Russell Stannard, OER2010). Their website has grown to 15,000 visitors per month!!

SCOOTER Project Aims Building a community of online users using social networking tools. Understand which networks are effective tools? What is their impact in terms of discoverability and sustainability of OERs and OEP?

Methodology Establish social networks e.g. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Posterous. SCOOTER has produced 26 “new user” registrations in total!!

Methodology Track web traffic using Google Analytics, and using additional indices from social network tools. Evaluate REACH (visitor demographics) and IMPACT (return visits, reuse, change in behaviour, loyalty) (Rolfe EDULEARN 2010). Evaluate type of community engagement - PASSIVE or ACTIVE (comments, dialogue, evidence of collaboration).

SCOOTER Online Presence

Results – REACH and IMPACT From launch to 18 th April 2011 (5 months)

Visits from 66 countries 1,153 unique visitors 30% returned 2 times or more (reuse)

People searching for “sickle cell”, “sickle cell anaemia” (Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL) Sites, social networks containing SCOOTER URL (back link) People who KNOW the URL already

Social Network ReferralsNo. Visitors en.wikipedia.org / referral174 sicklecellanaemia.posterous.com / referral52 hlsweb.dmu.ac.uk / referral39 heacademy.ac.uk / referral24 facebook.com / referral20 ezinearticles.com / referral17 righthealth.com / referral12 dmu.ac.uk / referral11 localhost / referral11 dmuscooter.wikispaces.com / referral10 prod.cetis.ac.uk / referral9 bit.ly/forexmarket / referral5 en.m.wikipedia.org / referral5 groups.medbiq.org / referral5 learnex.dmu.ac.uk / referral5 twitter.com / referral5 sicklecellanaemia.tumblr.com / referral4 sicklecellanaemiaorg.blogspot.com / referral3 stumbleupon.com / referral2 others34

Category Unique VisitorsActivity Backlink I have submitted262One off Posterous network965 minutes per week Ezine171 article per month Others grown organically80Nothing

Results – COMMUNITY data From launch to 18 th April 2011 (5 months)

Follower / Subscriber Comments / Posts Resource Views SCOOTER Website Forum397 Posterous (37 posts) YouTube Channel (1 video)10342 Twitter #DMUViv29 Facebook263 Blogger10 Ezine (3 articles)NA0163 TOTAL Jan 1st = 27

Who is using, why and what purpose? Facebook - general public Twitter – academic, professional Forum - healthcare professionals, students Comments include general positive feedback and requests for resources and suggestions for weblinks.

Summary Social networks are effective in “referring traffic” to SCOOTER, producing 30% of the visits in the first 5 months. Social networks (Posterous, Youtube) are useful repositories for OERs, with a recorded views of our OERs on these sites. Posterous is very quick and highly effective social networking tool.

Summary SCOOTER community presently is largely PASSIVE – OER users, viewers, readers. ACTIVE users are few and this can be enhanced for a truly sustainable approach. But, conferences and off-line networking is also essential for building the SCOOTER community and will sustain interest beyond the project (including universities, hospitals, charities and commerce).

Conclusion Creating a community using social networking tools is relatively simple and makes OERs DISCOVERABLE on a global level to a wide range of audiences. Creating a vibrant ACTIVE community as a means to drive SUSTAINABILITY takes effort, and building off- line communities is also important. We need to evaluate community dynamics - who is using, and for what purpose? Also who is NOT using the resources and why?

Borthwick K HumBox Tracking Reports 1 and Dholakia UM, King WJ & Baraniuk R (2006) What makes an open education programme sustainable? The case of Connexions. Jimes C (2010) Building Communities to Support Teacher Use, Localization and Sharing of OER. OER10, Cambridge. Pegler C (2010) Reuse: the other side of sharing OERs. OER10, Cambridge. Rolfe V (2010) How to monitor the use and reuse of open educational resources using Google Analytics. EDULEARN10, Barcelona, p Stannard R (2010) OER and Marketing Opportunities. OER10, Cambridge. SCOOTER Project Website (Including OER Training, and HOW TO SET UP POSTEROUS) Online Marketing Services and Advice References and Useful Resources

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