The EdReNe – Network: Current state of European educational repositories Leo Højsholt-Poulsen UNIC The Danish IT Centre for Education and Research Denmark

2 The expert workshops series - Issues that topped the agenda WS 3.1 Repositories and resources, strategies general level Quality assurance strategies (editorial policies, technical quality assurance) Connecting and cooperating with existing repositories Educational repositories in a Google world Identifying successful policy actions (government support, public-private partnerships) Brussels, Belgium, 4 – 5 December 2007 WS 3.2 Repositories and resources, strategies general level II Quality assurance strategies (editorial policies; technical quality assurance) Identifying the decisive benefits that trigger repository use by important target groups: professional publishers, public institutions, teachers… Connecting and cooperating with existing repositories The cost of building and maintaining a repository Strategies for involving key actors in development process Tallinn, Estonia, 16 – 17 September 2008

3 WS 4.2 Standards and interoperability II Authentication / Identity management Statistics on repository use (dealt with in workshops on engagement of users) Mapping the landscape of standards (identifying current use; which standards help provide which functional requirements of educators/learners; best practise examples) A&A, to share knowledge and best practices on the topic Successful/less successful use of OpenID and other SSO standards Oegstgeest, The Netherlands, 25 – 27 February 2009 WS 4.1 Standards and interoperability Metadata standards (application profiles, strategies for vocabularies, curriculum mapping) Providing best practice examples of the use of standards with proven benefits - and examples not to follow Facilitating exchange of metadata across repositories and between repositories and VLE/LMS Management Systems (LMS) London, UK, 8 – 9 January 2008 The expert workshops series - Issues that topped the agenda

4 WS 5.2 Engagement of producers and users, operational level II My repository - the need for personalization (profiles; reviews; collections; automatic recommendations…) Building your own content from repository resources (allowing teachers to combine content from different producers) Analyzing repository use (statistics; identifying popular functions; interpreting search strings and results; user surveys; characterization of user types) Implementation of user generated metadata (evaluations; reviews; tagging; collaborative filtering; information on actual usage...) Ensuring ease of use (identifying/ developing design patterns; usability; wizards...) Alsace, France, 20 – 22 October 2008 WS 5.1 Engagement of producers and users, operational level Ensuring ease of use (usability, wizards, help and support…) Web 2.0 and repositories? (shared queries, social book marking, tagging…) My repository - the need for personalization (profiles, reviews, collections…) Aarhus, Denmark, 2 – 3 October 2007 The expert workshops series - Issues that topped the agenda

5 WS 6.2 Rights issues II Licensing schemes (consequences for remixing; Creative Commons; presenting usage rights; cross border concerns...) Relevant policies and initiatives (open educational resources; education of content creators; free access to content produced for public money; incentives for commercial producers...) Rights clearance practices (guidance to educators; strategies for providing copyright cleared material for education...) Warwick, UK, 23 – 25 March 2009 WS 6.1 Rights issues Providing guidelines for users/teachers/producers Rights management (Digital Rights Management, Creative Commons, Protection of rights, Identity management…) Rights clearance practices Strategies for providing copyright cleared material for education Ljubljana, Slovenia March 2008 The expert workshops series - Issues that topped the agenda

6 EdReNe - second year New version of the State of the Art report on educational repositories December 2008State of the Art report on educational repositories –Looking for trends, evidence of success and impact (quantity and/or quality) –Current status of European educational repositories Templates for agreements and guidelines for repositories and content owners/providers … January 2009Templates for agreements and guidelines Parallel to this work, the members –Continue to address how to establish and operate a successful repository with many titles and many users –Find best practice examples, transferable to other European settings –Collaborate outside of events and on other issues than repositories

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8 SoA - “Huge variety of repositories across Europe” Catalogues of descriptions (metadata, links) Catalogues and Containers of content (metadata & data) Networks of repositories Digital resources - All types of resources Free content – Commercial content For everybody – Membership based (login) Validated/screened (quality assurance, rights management) Some facilitate feedback Target: schools, further/higher ed., homes

9 SoA – obvious trends Public money in one way or the other –Central or regional initiatives –to encourage teachers’ uptake of innovative materials and learning styles (traditional textbooks are still preferred by a majority of the teachers) –But also examples of successful commercial or user driven repositories Digital resources –web resource (a collection of web sites) somewhere in cyberspace Catalogues and containers of content (metadata & data) For everybody (no membership requested) Target: schools (further/higher ed. separately)

10 Success indicators –A successful repository is a platform that many use to find learning resources of high quality. –Use should be regular and frequent. –Quality not quantity –Expected Usage pattern

11 Danish national repository use statistics

12 SoA - some success stories Education Highway in Austria. By far the biggest educational repository, offering –36 subject oriented portals –over 800 thematic collections –more than titles Educasources in France. A Digital Educational Resources Metadata Repository containing about online references GOLD database in Italy. About users per day

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14 EduHi.at – Page views per month

15 Since February 1994 online Repository started with a database in 1996 Subject oriented repositories since 1996/1997 First subject: Chemistry adapted to this concept in 2000www.schule.at Today still the most successful portals in Austria /

16 Eduhi.at – Why are we successful? “As our editors are teachers they know what their colleagues need and try to provide this content and links on the subject oriented platforms. The teachers like that they can access relevant content and helpful links.” “Students like that they find relevant content for presentations and reports, because the work of filtering the content has already been done by teachers.”

17 SoA - some success stories KlasCement in Belgium, an initiative of a non-profit organization. Maintained by five teachers funded by the government, and everything is submitted by teachers Lektion.se in Sweden, a private initiative founded by teachers. It is the most popular service currently with more than users, and is a rapidly expanding base of shared lesson plans Often user based repositories appear to impact better than traditional top-down approaches

18 No quality control Community based

19 Very successful commercial repository

20 SoA – some general observations Content is linked to the curriculum –e.g. in France, Ireland, Denmark, Hungary, Iceland, Austria, Norway and the UK (the now closed Curriculum Online service) Quality assurance and rights issues play a big role –Summary of findings from the EdReNe Quality Assurance sessionsSummary of findings from the EdReNe Quality Assurance sessions New developments Users meet the repository or a collection of repositories at their local school web portal or in their own virtual learning environment –e.g. Sweden (The Spider), The Netherlands (Edurep), Denmark (Materialeplatformen) Initiatives combine central repositories with school learning platforms –e.g. England, Scotland, Spain, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Italy, Finland and Austrian regions The National Digital Resource Bank in England will provide a national repository to house content created by schools and local authorities

21 EDUREP value chain and communities Model for Succes - 3 tier solution. Specialisation is the key

22 SoA – new players on the pitch Cultural heritage (educational) repositories have emerged –e.g. Denmark, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, The Netherlands and the UK –Europeana – cultural collections of EuropeEuropeana Broadcasting companies have established popular services by which schools can subscribe to TV and radio productions –e.g. in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, France, Ireland and the UK.