Using DSpace as a LOR
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Transcript of Using DSpace as a LOR
Challenges to Implementing DSpace
as a LOR
Scott Lesliefor COPPUL Distance Education Group
May 30, 2006
Outline
What a ‘classic’ LOR is ‘supposed’ to do
DSpace-specific challenges as a LOR
General challenges and pitfalls for LORs
In general, LORs appear to
Store actual resources, not just metadata
Be part of a CMS/LMS-centric paradigm
Deal with (hopefully) volatile content
Contain diverse stuff (as no one really knows what a Learning Object is anyways.)
Edutools Comparative Framework
Discovery Tools Aggregation Tools Community &
Evaluation Meta-tagging Content Management Digital Rights
Management & Fulfillment
Presentation and Consortia Issues
Integration and Interoperability
Technical Considerations
cf. http://www.edutools.info/lor/
Evaluative Framework: Details
Discovery Tools– Searching– Browsing– Syndication & Notification
Aggregation Tools– Personal Collections– Content Aggregator and Packaging Tool
Community & Evaluation– Evaluation System– Context Usage Illustrators– Wish Lists
Meta-tagging– Metadata Markup Tool– Schema Support– Indexing Workflow Support– Import and Export Tools– Unique Identifier Support
Content Management– Authoring and Publishing Workflow Support– Version Control & Archiving Functions– Authoring tools
Digital Rights Management & Fulfillment– Digital Rights Management– Payment and Fulfillment
Evaluative Framework: Details(2)
Presentation and Consortia Issues– Customized Look and Feel– Internationalization (I18n)– Multiple Collections– Media Transformation and Display
Integration and Interoperability– Federation and Harvesting– Course Management Integration– API and Web Service support
Technical Considerations– Authentication– Authorization & Personalization– Usage reporting – Operating System– Application/Database Server Requirements– Scalability– Support
Evaluative Framework: Details (3)
Challenges for DSpace as a LOR
‘Perceived’ Shortcomings of DSpace
Limited metadata schema support Lack of support for federated searching Lack of useful browseable subject classification No IMS Content Package support Limited Multi-page Website support Multi-contributor workflows Versioning and content management issues Community evaluation, community building DSpace as a service Others?
Metadata Schema Support
Issue: DSpace currently supports Dublin Core with limited qualifications, whilst most other LORs have used IEEE LOM
Possible Mitigations: Implement LOM in DSpace
– http://cwspace.mit.edu/wiki/MetadataIssueThree Crosswalks
– http://wiki.dspace.org/CrosswalkPlugins – http://www.imsproject.org/metadata/mdbestv1p1.html#Dubl
in2 Disregard, as most of LOM not used anyways
– http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue41/godby/
Federated Searching
Issue: Dpsace supports OAI-PMH, a harvesting model, but not a ‘federated search’ mechanism either between DSpace instances or with other repository software
Possible Mitigations: Implement SQI or one of the other federated search interfaces
– http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=11812130
Use SRU/SRW as mechanism to federate search– http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/short-topics.html#fed
erated
OKI OSIDs– http://wiki.dspace.org/SakaiIntegration
Disregard, harvestability is enough/better anyways
Browseable Subject Classification
Issue: Currently DSpace only supports browsing by Title, Author and Date, and the only limited way to structure by subject is through ‘Collections’
Possible Mitigations: use ‘keywords’ field for either constrained or
unconstrained (folksonomic) approach; build interface to ‘browse’ by keywords
disregard problem in favour of ‘search’ as main method to retrieve items
IMS Content Packages
Issue: DSpace currently treats IMS Content Packages as binary ‘blobs.’ They need to be previewable on the server, and any existing metadata consumable
Possible Mitigations: work being done in CWSpace to handle Content
Packages, or promise of system extensibility in v 2.0– see http://wiki.dspace.org/PackagerPlugins – http://wiki.dspace.org/XmlNamespaces_2fCwspaceImscp?
action=highlight&value=IMS
Multi-Page Websites
Issue: Many ‘learning objects’ are actually multi-file websites; these need to be EASILY uploaded ‘en masse’ AND EASILY assessable by potential users
Possible Mitigations: Upload each file of the site individually using
multiple upload controls (ICKK!) ??
Multi-contributor workflows
Issue: Not every object has just one contributor, and not every submitter has all the required info nor will for all time
Possible Mitigations: - Disregard, hold to single submitter-to-single-
resource model and use moderation as mechanism to add more metadata
- ??
Versioning and content management
Issue: DSpace has clunky support for multiple versions of content
Possible Mitigations: currently proposed DSpace solution
(manually link multiple records together, use relation field)– http://wiki.dspace.org/VersioningSupport?
action=highlight&value=version ??
Community Feedback
Issue: DSpace has limited support for the community to express the judgments of value of any piece of content
Possible Mitigations: Add these on through third party tools or
possibly extensions to DSpace
DSpace as a service
Issue: LOR content needs to be consumed in CMS, accessed by authoring tools
Possible Mitigations: “Lightweight Network Interface (for CWSpace)” /
WebDav stuff– http://wiki.dspace.org/LightweightNetworkInterfac
e?action=highlight&value=WebDAV
OKI OSIDs / Sakai Integration– http://wiki.dspace.org/SakaiIntegration
Summary - Specific Challenges
If you deploy DSpace “out of the box” as a LOR, then you may find users have a difficult time assessing
the usefulness of certain types of content you may have some interoperability issues with
other LORs you may have some challenges offering access to
the repository contents as a service to specific LMS or authoring tools
the system may prove cumbersome to working with volatile content or typical learning content authoring workflows
Some Important Projects for Dspace as a LOR
DSpace 2.0 Proposal– http://www.dspace.org/conference/presentations/
architecture.ppt
CWSpace (Using DSpace for OpenCourseWare)– http://cwspace.mit.edu/
d+ (Distributed e-Learning Resources Discovery)– http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=dplus
Using DSpace as a LOR mailing list– http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/dspace-lor
– (seems to have disappeared, contact Alan Wolf, University of Wisconsin; Louse Ratliff, UCLA for more info)
Some existing LORs using DSpace
http://lor.ccconline.cccs.edu/dspace/index.jsp
https://www.dlearn.arizona.edu/index.jsp – http://cwspace.mit.edu/wiki/LorDlearnUnivArizona
https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/handle/1993/122
General Issues for LOR Implementers
The high cost of metadata / Self-service questionable
Intellectual Property/DRM challenges
LOs and increasingly questioned LCMS/LMS paradigm
LO/LORs ignoring innovations from social software
‘Reusability’ Paradox of LOs themselves
If LORs are the answer, what was the problem again?
At the end of the day…What were the original goals behind Learning Object Repositories /
Learning Objects?
– Share learning resources and have them reused to
– increase quality of learning experience
– decrease cost of producing learning content
– Help make resources findable and identifiable that were formerly not being found or well identified
– Make clear what people can do with the resources and give them access to resources they are allowed to use
Are there LORs which are achieving this? Which ones? What’s missing from the ones which aren’t doing this? Time? Training? A different paradigm?