Participants:

Eli, Vicente, Kostas, Adam, Peter

Notes

1) Kostas showed the statisitcal interface of the back-end.

• 6+1 repositories are harvested using both RSS and OAI-PMH protocols. Public iTunesU targets are also harvested via RSS.
• Documentation for content providers are available. More explanation to them is needed on how and where resources are not harvested or filtered out.
• All together about 22k resources are harvested of which 12k are filtered in (i.e. shown in the portal).
• 4 languages are available: English, Spanish, Hungarian and Greek (Protuguese is coming)

2) Vicente showed the front-endportal.

• Categories based on subject field, Most viewed and Recenty added lists on the front page.
• Both full text Google search and PuMuKit-based faceted searches are available.
• Embeded player is not always possible (depends on what the repository owner provides)
• Videotorium subject fields need to be translated
• Video duration is not available everywhere
• Some glitches here and there but good for a demonstration

Adam explained the vocabulary that Videotorim use for the subject element: http://videotorium.hu/en/categories

• Translation between this vocabular and the UNESCO vocabulary used by the GÉANT OER aggregator can be done. Adam looks after this.
• In general, we have two options: a) ask the content providers to comply with UNESCO, b) provide translation. TBC.

3) Peter elaborated on the next steps

• Pilot is considered to be done. KPIs all met. Will be reported to TTC by Peter.
• Final documentation will be compiled and distributed for comments by Peter. (Deadline: end of February)
• Portal will be demoed at the GÉANT Symposium and possibly at TNC'15
• Until the beginning of GN4 (April 2015) the team is off
• Anyhow, we should keep the momentum and discuss on the mailing list (on a volunatry basis until April)
• GN4 SA8 Task 3 will pick the results up and take the OER service to the next level.

Everyones' efforts and hard work are very much appreciated!

Recording:

Participating:

Peter, Kostas,Vicente, Eduardo, Giannis, Eli

Agenda:

1. Summary/Update - Current Status

2. Focus on the Content, Functionality

3. Update on the back-end engine

4. Front and back end interaction

5. Timeline

- - -

1. Current Status

Vicente: working mainly on data structure, adapting the PUMUKIT structure to the application profile

working on the import scripts - not as straightforward as expected; modifying the scripts all the time - related to the structure and the vocabulary

[demonstrates JSON file example: issues with specific fields, supposed values, file formats do not match - need a translation at an aggregation level, media format doesn’t appear, strange language codes - or appear to be English, but isn’t - language codes should be translated, lack of numeric codes, etc.] - issued needed to be solved in order to get good data

Peter: problems related to the metadata translation - should be translated into one format or schema

Vicente: some issued should be fixed at the repository level

Peter: proper translation needed, metadata not exposed by local repositories - a) ask them to change that, b) try to translate it automatically

will have to tackle that later on

Vicente: our own repositories - improving the data exposed in order to make it easy to harvest, but data coming from iTunesu - cannot count on cooperation with the data provider; translation should be done at the repository level

we have all the tools, just need to focus on improving the harvesting process

Peter: can compare the local repository and the one harvested - enough for us to prove that it will work

Kostas: the phase of transformation is problematic, we don’t know what are the elements used from others’ perspective, might have problems with mapping the local elements with the elements of TERENA OER

Peter: thumbnail gets lost for example; need to look for the basic fields we agreed on

Kostas: last time we were harvesting there were no thumbnails

Vicente: part of the collection, not of the item, but we are not working with collections now

Kostas: could harvest information where thumbnail is a part of the item

Vicente: need to interact more to solve minor issues

Kostas: send me the list of issues

Vicente: regarding the portal - some objects have been harvested, currently the URL exposed is not the direct URL to the media, but the player page (can be changed)

categories, filters

search - first implementation

information available at provider level, possible to harvest it

2. Focus on Functionality

Peter: functions need to work, else the end-users will leave, if something doesn’t work, should not be on the pilot version; ok to put new features in as they become functional

Vicente: this is work in progress, users wont be exposed to anything that won’t be working, functionalities there for demonstration purposes only, will be removed

- - -

Peter: Kostas, once the translation is done, others will work or are there differences?

Kostas: main issue is translation, has to be done together with Vicente and his team

Peter: scalability of this process in the future - tedious manual approach for now for every repository; next repository will have to be treated the same? doesn’t seem scalable

Kostas: difficult to create a transformation file for every provider, will take time

Giannis: the first version is for the internal consumption, but later it will be important to communicate to the data providers willing to join

Vicente: maybe institutions willing to do what is needed, but might not; or we can learn to harvest the apple feeds properly

Peter: would not fixate too much on the apple one, we want to connect different sources

Giannis: need to have some educational metadata, else we will just replicate the iTunes harvesting mechanism; need to understand the semantics of the metadata - main problem, else can be corrected

ACTION: Vicente to send a detailed list of issues to Kostas

Eli: need to see how many hours Kostas will need for every repository 5-10 hours - worth it, else need to consider

Giannis: either remove the subject from the front end, or not use metadata that has no subject element - will apply to many elements

Eli: if we will see that we need more go arounds to fix something, maybe we can discuss the technology aspects in the next phase

Peter: we will have development time in the next phase (GN4, April next year) - Kostas will be spending a lot of time working on it

- - -

Timeline

Peter: one more meeting before holidays or better in January? Can also follow up individually  - (will be back on 5 January)

Giannis: specific collections from the iTunes site - who is responsible for those collections?

Peter: iTunesU was identified as an escape for now, but need to focus on the local repositories - everyone in their own countries should look for it, happy to do that in the Netherlands (also need to address the language question later)

Giannis: i will look for Greek collections

Peter: next meeting in January

Software fixes by Kostas

1. Improved the mappings from native RSS Itunes U metadata and DC to the LOM based OER Application Profile.
2. Extended the RSS Harvester to gather information from RSS Channel element and inject it to each and every element where the specific info is missing for example the itunes:image.
3. Extended the seach API to offer duration, format and contributors name.
4. The elements' possible detected languages are limited to en and es.
5. The dates issue is not addressed(and it will be very difficult to be addressed since there is a great diversity in the way dates are defined)
6. A new repository(Standford) is added.Peter sent it to me before sometime ago.It is RSS Itunes U based.Check the dashboards for more info.

Attendees:

Vicente, Eli, Giannis, Kostas, Nelson, Adam, Tibor, Antonio, Jean-Francois, Sigita, Peter

Notes by Sigita

Presentations

• OER Pilot: Value proposal, Concept, Focus by Peter
• OER Pilot: Components, Features, Project Phases by Eli

Links and Attachments

Image Added

*AGREEMENTS*

0) Project phases:
- Phase 1 (Version 1.0) - until December 2014 (TERENA pilot funding)
- Phase 2 (Version 1.1) - Jan 2015 - April 2015 (no extra funding)
- Phase 3 (Version 2.0) - April 2015 - May 2016 (GN4 T3 Phase 1 funding)

2) The primary focus is on higher education and research (HEI&R) content repositories managed by an NREN or connected institutes.

3) The media type is "multimedia" (lecture recordings, conference recordings, learning objects) that includes video, audio, animation and recorded content stream but excludes still pictures and/or documents in Phase 1.

4) Two usage scenarios:

a) User starts searching globally using Google search service.
- GÉANT OER web portal indexes meta-data so Google finds it.
- User goes to GÉANT OER portal from Google and continue/refine searching there. *ADDED VALUE*
- When the users finds the content, goes off to the local repository or use the embeded player if available (learning process starts).

b) User starts searching in the local/institutional repository.
- Unsatisfied by the results but there is a GÉANT OER search widget made available by the local portal (?) *ADDED VALUE*
- User searches in the widget that directs to the GÉANT OER portal.
- As soon as the content is found and the learning process starts, user goes off to the content repository or use the embeded player if available.

5) Portal features and functionalities in Phase 1:

- Display thumbnails of multimedia objects (i.e. video, audio, animations, but no still pictures or images)

- Include direct URL to the object where available. Use embedded player or naked player provided by the source repository where possible.

- Display metadata based on the application profile (mandatory/recommended/optional) agreed by the pilot group.

- Handle Creative Common licensing.

- Facilitate browsing and faceted search (i.e. organised in predefined categories based on closed vocabulary e.g., UNESCO subjects)

- Implement simple and advanced search; either based on the back-end engine search functions or the Google search engine restricted to the portal. Develop a roadmap for the advanced search functions and the pilot service evolves.

- Implement sharing, primarily via e-mail and social media platforms.

- Apply responsive web design for proper scaling and rendering on mobile devices.

- Deal with user registration; only LDAP-based local registration in the first phase but be ready for Single Sign On (e.g., social media login) and access federations with eduGAIN.

- The portal interface language shall be English; the metadata language should be English if available or the original language of the content.

- Include information pages such as: About us, Help, Contact, Terms & Policies, Disclaimer.

6) Portal features and functionalities in later phases (TBD):

- Federated access and membership management.

- Multi-lingual user interface and customization option.

- Web access for disabled.

- Paradata collection and handling including: rating, commenting, popular items, suggested items, dynamic tag cloud, usage information, quality issues.

- Peer review functionality.

7) List of good quality repositories to start with:

http://tv.uvigo.es/
http://tv.campusdomar.es/
https://educast.fccn.pt/
https://cast.switch.ch/
University of Manchester
iTunesU RSS targets...
YouTube channels...

8) Metadata application profile need to be finalised and provided to the connected repositories to comply with. This could be a mix of IEEE LOM and DublinCore. Keywords are not mandatory. We need help from the providers to translate their metadata schema/vocabulary properly.


*ACTIONS*

I) On Giannis to finalize the metadata application profile. This should be a clear recommendation to the connected repositories.

II) On Kostas to investigate iTunesU RSS harvesting as well as YouTube channel harvesting.

III) On Vicente to start developing the web front-end portal based on the agreed feature set above.

IV) On Nelson to work out a provocative promotion campaign for institutional repositories saying: "Are you ready for Open Education?", "Are you ready to publish your content with open licences?", "Are you ready to connect to the GÉANT OER?"

V) On Peter to finalise and administrative and contractual details.

VI) On ALL to contact your friendly institutes and ask for the iTunesU RSS feeds (if not the OAI-PMH target to their repository). At least, one university per country represented in the OER pilot   Pass it on to Kostas.


*NEXT MEETING*

I think, we need an on-line meeting in two weeks to speed up the process as now we have a good understanding and consensus. I'll circulate a Doodle poll soon.

Notes from Giannis (GRNET)

Attendees:

Adam, Vicente, Eli, Peter, Sigita, Kostas, Giannis, Nelson

Recordings:

http://emeeting.campusdomar.es/recording/a18776711ec9a1ba563a68ecde656eef

Minutes:

1) Status of the initial study, comments by GRNET, Wiki content, etc.

V: the two documents are mainly definition of the service - lacks info what the system will look like and what features will it provide

P: you don’t font the info needed for development? - clear concrete feature list to be determined during the face-to-face meeting

E: the players of the project will be clearly explained in the next version of the document (to be produced in a few days) - looking for input, comments

V: used to working on user driven basis - need to understand what the users are expecting; need to check user specifications (not to be fulfilled at first, but need to make sure that the architecture is ready to be updated for the later versions)

K: […?]

P: Kostas already working on aggregation of the metadata, had a look at the status and statistics - must be part of the document (screenshots, etc.) - to understand what features can be/cannot be implemented; architecture has to be flexible for when we are ready to implement more

P: metadata - a must, paradata - might be left for a later stage

K: issues with getting repositories to expose their paradata

G: the only source of paradata - OER portal - maybe more in the future

(if we want paradata, this has to be collected through the portal)

V: the system currently only collects statistics, but ratings are easy to add

G: better to have the users express this kind of requirement

G:should professors be the primary persona? maybe would be good to have one primary focus.

P: two groups - end users and system admins, would not split those groups further

E: risky to use interviews with professors - can focus on very narrow solutions, need large scale interviews, need to understand what is the state of the art in the world, find more common, most relevant features

V: in any case, need to be connected to the prospective end-users - maybe a more complete survey is needed?

P: continuous feedback necessary

G: 20-30 interviews needed, but due to time limitations a prototype is needed - create the first version and then ask the users for feedback

G: made a new version of the study, no major changes only improvements and small additions

E: integrated most of the comments, got comments from more professionals (mainly professors) - new version will be circulated within 10 days from now

ACTION: Giannis will send his updated version, Elis will prepare a draft for the face-to-face meeting

2) Web front-end development

P: work for Vicente’s team will be defined during the face-to-face meeting

V: need a definition asap - features and structure; also need a contract asap to define man power

P: will start an e-mail dialogue with Giannis and others to give you more clarity before the face-to-face meeting and also start working on the paper work (contracts) now

E: study document contains quite some information about the features etc. that can be used

P: the first version of this application profile should come from Giannis and Kostas

G: we can provide first proposal for that, but its an exercise based on the real needs of the users

V: use the user stories for the exercise

P: plus personas described on the wiki

3) Face to face meeting preparation

P: will prepare an agenda, full day meeting (9:00-17:00), send your arrival times, dinner possible the day before; will need to make decisions during this meeting, so good agenda and good preparation is crucial; booking hotels might be difficult - will prepare some recommendations

4) GN4 Task 3 update

5) Position paper of NRENs on Open Education

6) Priorities, deadlines, AoB

G: Application profile deadline - before the face-to-face meeting?

P: definitely - need to have the new versions of the study from everyone, will try to incorporate work from the wiki, and the application profile; will come up with a draft agenda as well and send it out for comments

V: comments for the user stories are welcome - can be found on google.docs