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There is a large interest around the world in establishing and maintaining national (as well as multi-national) learning object repositories as exemplified by the number of existing repositories, organizations building and sustaining them, contributors integrating learning objects in repositories, and users of these learning objects. The fundamental reasons are: the growing educational demands in all countries, the limited capacity of face to face education to fulfill the demand in a timely manner, the effort and cost involved to build multimedia learning materials, and the new possibilities offered by the Internet.
While While it is a fact that millions of documents materials can be found on the Internet using search engines like Google, there is no guarantee that a query will lead to trustable material on which high quality education can be built. Not to mention copyright and licensing issues. Well managed learning object repositories that aggregate high quality content offer a solution to this problem. TERENA TF-Media group focuses on multimedia learning object repositories only.
Credit: Based on http://www.globe-info.org/
Objectives
Connecting the World and Unlocking the Deep Web - Create a one-stop-shop (broker) for national learning resource organizations, each of them managing and/or federating one or more learning object repositories within the country. TERENA OER portal initiative addresses the gap between the national repositories and the emerging global repositories (e.g., GLOBE) by establishing an European level metadata repository (i.e. aggregation point) for the national repositories acting in the R&E community. The primarily focus of the pilot is on audio-visual content repositoriesEuropean level repository will be a metadata repository only, the content remains in its original content repository.
TERENA is willing to make a suite of online services and tools available to its members for the exchange of learning resources' metadata, and facilitates the access to the worldwide Open Community (i.e. GLOBE) guided by the following principles:
- Keep the barrier of entry to TLRR TERENA OER low and participation high.
- Provide open specifications and community source code as much as possible, openly shared among and beyond community members.
- Use open standards, where appropriate, and contribute back to the development of these standards based on experiences and best practices.
- Respect and build on European values.
- NRENs' common face to global repositories (i.e. GLOBE)
- Operate as a community of peers.
Based on Credit: http://www.globe-info.org/
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The expected benefits for the end-users (students and teachers) are as follows:
- More effective and motivating learning scenarios (learners & trainees).
- Better productivity and new philosophy of collaboration (authors of pedagogical material).
- Better communication and co-working schemes (researchers).
- Possible factor for harmonizing education & training policies throughout Europe.
- Spare public money by re-using open learning resources.
- NRENs' common face to global repositories (i.e. GLOBE)
The Pilot Project
1) TERENA creates a European level, open source, metadata aggregation broker/portal (TLRR) that leaves the content (i.e. the objects) in its source domain and harvest the metadata from the national level up to the pan-European level. The portal might be hosted and operated by one or more TERENA member organizations.
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3) Start collecting metadata from the national repositories (primarily from NRENs participating in the pilot) and make them available via the TERENA portal.
4) TLRR TERENA OER applies for the GLOBE membership.
5) Potential service enhancements (e.g., Creative Common licensing), and value added components (e.g., integrated player, better user interface, representation of search targets).
MilestonesDetailed milestones, timing, etc. to be defined.
List of Potential Participantsinterested participants
- SWITCH (with SWITCHcast)
- FCCN (with Banco do Video)
- ISEP (with MELOR)
- RedIRIS (with ARCA)
- University of Vigo (with DSpace)
- IUCC (with MAOR)
- NIIF (with Videotorium)
- GRENT (with Ariadne)
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