About the Conference | Conference Sessions | Presenters
About the Conference | Conference Sessions | Presenters
Digital Repositories for Learning: moving from why to how, sponsored by the FIPSE-funded OnCoRe Blueprint Project*, was held August 11, 2009. The full-day session, offered in conjunction with the Open Ed 2009 Conference, will focused on addressing and overcoming challenges faced in creating and sustaining educational repositories.
The goals of the conference were:
*The Online Content Repository (OnCoRe) Blueprint Project is an initiative to create a sustainable national model for the creation of statewide digital repositories. Funded by a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), the OnCoRe Blueprint Project provides state entities with a “how to” manual, resources, and research for developing a standards-based educational repository
Below are descriptions of the conference sessions. Links to PowerPoint presentations are included.
Welcome: Susie Henderson, Director, The Orange Grove (click for bio)
Opening Session
Open Education Repositories: A Dynamic And Interrelated Future
Presented by Katherine Fletcher, Project Manager, Connexions (click for bio)
Click here to view presentation slides
Punch cards and magnetic tape have met the magazine and the result is the digital repository. We are headed toward a future where optical drives and petabyte storage devices meet Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hopefully this future will not leave us all adrift in space. J This talk frames the discussion for the conference activities around access, standards and interoperability from legal and technological perspectives; strategies for social change within the academy; and sustainability strategies. These topics provide the framework for the repository community of practice, including future of educational repositories as well as transitioning from current repository structures to repository structures of the future.
Session 1: Access, Standards, and Interoperability
Presented by Ahrash Bissell, Executive Director, ccLearn (click for bio)
Click here to view presentation slides
In a digital world, objects can be shared easily at a global scale with no loss of fidelity or increased cost. Indeed, a typical institutional repository is likely to garner far greater impact and value by making the repository content as accessible and reusable as possible. In this session, participants discussed some of the key characteristics that should inform the design of open digital repositories, including legal, technical, and usability issues. Particular attention was paid to the types of standards that are likely to be necessary to facilitate interoperability (recombination) of content among different repositories, including perceived challenges and possible solutions to building and sustaining open repositories for learning.
Session 2: Open Source Options for Digital Repositories for Learning
Presented by William E. Moen, University of North Texas, (click for bio)
Click here to view presentation slides
A project team at the Texas Center for Digital Knowledge, University of North Texas, with funding by the Florida Distance Learning Consortium’ OnCoRe Blueprint Project, undertook a review of seven open source software (OSS) platforms and applications that can be used in the context of a learning object repository (LOR). The project focused primarily on the technical specifications, features, and functions of the underlying software. The review also examined implementation-specific LORs’ use of the OSS platforms, which included discussions with the LOR implementors. This presentation presents results and findings as well as discussing the opportunities and challenges of using OSS.
Session 3: Strategies for Change
Panel discussion with: Susie Henderson; Marie Lasseter , USG Share (click for bio); and Miko Pattie, Kentucky Learning Depot
Click here to view presentation slides
Strategies for Change is an important topic that encompasses faculty, leadership and students. Recent studies show that digital content can improve student performance. The primary targeted users of many digital content repositories are faculty. If you build a repository, faculty will not necessarily use it to teach in new ways or to share content with their colleagues. It’s not a natural behavior! This panel shares their strategies to encourage faculty use of the repository, including lessons learned.
Session 4: Repository Sustainability Strategies
Panel discussion featuring KatherineFletcher, Connexions; Al Lind, Kentucky Learning Depot; and Susie Henderson, The Orange Grove (Florida).
Click here to view presentation slides
Repositories are sustained in many ways. Money is critical, but there are many other issues to consider. The approach to sustainability varies greatly among states and institutions. Learn successful sustainability strategies from the panel and contribute your own approaches and tactics for solving this ongoing challenge.
Dr. Ahrash Bissell is the Executive Director of ccLearn, the education division of Creative Commons, which focuses on removing the legal, technical, and cultural barriers to open education, digital scholarship, and the growth of the global commons. Prior to his current position, Ahrash was at Duke University, where he was Assistant Director of the Academic Resource Center and a Research Associate in Biology. He has a Ph.D. in Biology (Evolutionary Genetics) from the University of Oregon and a BS in Biology from the University of California, San Diego. While he has continued an active research and teaching program in biology, the bulk of his time in recent years has been focused on educational research and technology, pedagogical and curriculum development, assessment (with a focus on critical-thinking skills and metacognition), and facilitating interdisciplinary research, especially via open dissemination, data sharing, and web-based “communities of expertise.”
Katherine Fletcher is the Project Manager at Connexions (cnx.org), a global open education repository and set of tools for authors to create and collaborate around building textbooks and other learning materials. She is a seasoned manager, business woman, teacher, and software researcher and developer, with a Masters Degree in Computer Science. Prior to joining Connexions she managed a small software company; developing the advisory board, managing marketing, acquiring research funding, and directly working on client projects. Katherine joined Connexions as a result of a National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovation grant awarded to develop a collaboratively created science web site for K-8th grade teachers and their students. Ms. Fletcher maintains a joint appointment as Lecturer in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University, having taught Computer Architecture and Fundamentals of Computer Engineering.
Susie Henderson As Associate Executive Director of the Florida Distance Learning Consortium, Ms. Henderson works with the 39 postsecondary institutions in Florida to leverage resources, facilitate statewide communication and cooperation, and develop beneficial statewide initiatives such as The Orange Grove, a K-20 learning object repository. She serves on and chairs regional and national committees in the USA such as the Academic ADL co-Lab in Madison, Wisconsin, OCLC e-learning committee, SREB’s Distance Learning Policy Laboratory and SCO-RE Project and also MiCTA’s e-Learning RFP committee.
Ms. Henderson has served as a technology and e-learning consultant with other states and the government of Malaysia. Within Florida, she directed the statewide 2000 SACS Distance Learning Substantive Change visit and worked as a consultant to the Florida Department of Education’s Alternative Certification Program.
Ms. Henderson holds an Master of Science from Florida State University in Instructional Systems and a B.A. in Psychology and Asian Studies from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota.
Dr. Marie Lasseter is a Project Manager for Learning Resource Management with Advanced Learning Technologies (ALT), a unit within the University System of Georgia. She has worked in higher education and technology for 16 years. In her role with ALT she is involved in evaluating and developing tools and models that support the strategic use of technology for instruction. She has been responsible for managing statewide collaborative online course development projects and providing instructional design and development for online courses and digital resources. Over the past few years she has led efforts to design and develop a centralized repository of instructional resources for the University System of Georgia, USG SHARE.
She has served on several committees related to sharing digital resources including the Southern Regional Educational Board’s SCORE Project (Shareable
Content Object Repositories for Education). She also works closely with developers of other statewide learning object repository projects in the US.
Allen Lind is the Vice President of Information and Technology for the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and the Chief Executive Officer of the Kentucky Virtual Campus and the Kentucky Virtual Library. He has served in education and information technology positions at system and state level postsecondary offices in Illinois and Mississippi including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Board of Governors of State Colleges and Universities. He also worked for IBM as a representative to postsecondary education institutions. Allen has served as the President of netIllinois, an early Internet Service Provider for education and government. He has served as President of EDNET, a Mississippi not-for-profit providing educational content on a wireless statewide network and he has served as Chairman of Mississippi Public Broadcasting, a state agency with public television, radio and interactive videoconferencing networks. He currently serves on the Southern Region Education Board’s Education Technology Cooperative and the ConnectKentucky Advisory Board.
Dr. William E. Moen received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University and has been a faculty member at the University of North Texas since 1996. He an associate professor in the Department of Library and Information Sciences, College of Information. He is also Director of Research for the College and Director of the Texas Center for Digital Knowledge http://www.txcdk.unt.edu. He conducts research and teaches courses on metadata, digital repositories, and networked information discovery. His current research includes the development of a learning object repository funded by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and a collaborative research project with the Botanical Research Institute of Texas funded a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. He was awarded the 2005 Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology.
Ling-yuh W. (Miko) Pattie serves as Senior Advisor, Information & Technology, Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. She holds a Master of Science in Library Science, University of Kentucky. She was the Founding Director for Kentucky Virtual Library, 1999-2002 as well as the Chief Information Officer, Kentucky Virtual Campus, 2001 – 2007. She is currently managing the Kentucky Internet2 Initiative and the Kentucky Learning Depot.
In addition, Miko served as a member of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Standards Committee AV for developing a U.S. national Z39.50 profile for library applications in 2001. She was also a delegate of the OCLC Users Council and a member of the Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET) Board of Directors.
Miko has been a librarian for over 30 years and considers herself as a librarian by nature. A librarian’s core value is to level a playing field by sharing resources using open standards.
