1. Flying Under the Radarlessons learned from a fun ‘faux-pository’ project SHEEN Sharing CETIS-ROW: Repositories and the Open Web 19 April 2010, Birkbeck College Sarah Currier Sarah Currier Consultancy Ltd.

4. What’s the difference? Formal repositories meet a certain set of use cases, requiring things like: A long-term view of, and expertise in, resource curation and management; Good quality metadata for high precision and recall in resource discovery; In some use cases, resource preservation; Solid support for rights protection; ... and so on ... BUT! All this is expensive and requires a high degree of strategic buy-in from funders. Not all educational communities (a) have the requisite resource or support, or (b) operate with those types of use cases.

5. What’s the difference? Formal repositories meet a certain set of use cases, requiring things like: A long-term view of, and expertise in, resource curation and management; Good quality metadata for high precision and recall in resource discovery; In some use cases, resource preservation; Solid support for rights protection; ... and so on ... BUT! All this is expensive and requires a high degree of strategic buy-in from funders. Not all educational communities (a) have the requisite resource or support, or (b) operate with those types of use cases.

6. Educational communities of practice? CoPs and resource sharing in UK HE: PROWE, CD-LOR, SPIRE (JISC DRP 2005-2007) JISC Emerge, Pathfinder DMU Learning Exchanges Interviewed key people. “[...] the pedagogical, social, and organisational aspects of these communities have not been at the forefront in the design and development [...]. Research has consistently demonstrated that the most substantial barriers in uptake of technology are rooted in these factors” Margaryan, Milligan and Douglas, 2007. CD-LOR Project

7. Inclusion and identity JISC Emerge (2009) found that “[t]he effective use of Web2.0 applications depends essentially on human networks. This raises questions of inclusion, exclusion and identity”. We’ve had to stay very aware of the different levels of engagement/confidence and utilise the CoP and peer stories to help people along.

8. An educational communitywithout a repository Scottish Employability Coordinators’ Network (ECN). Made up of those in Scottish Funding Council’s funded posts supporting employability in Scottish HE. Tossed a small amount of money to spend on small projects to meet their pressing needs.

9. An educational communitywithout a repository The ECN’s original idea was that “someone” should provide them with a Website, perhaps powered by a “repository”, and populate it for them. Given the project’s resourcing, timescale and intended outcomes, they were advised by JISC CETIS to look at Web2.0 / social media resource sharing instead. The HEA was keen to use the forthcoming EvidenceNet repository as a more formal home for resources that required this further down the line. JorumOpen was also still in development at the time.

11. Project lead: Cherie Woolmer, Employability Coordinator, University of Strathclyde (voluntary)

12. Project consultant, 2.5 days / week for 9 months: Sarah Currier (now extended for 4 months )

13. Project Development Group: enthusiasts in the Employability Coordinators’ Network (voluntary)

14. Admin and advisory support from HEA

15. Travel and events budget

17. Project lead: Cherie Woolmer, Employability Coordinator, University of Strathclyde (voluntary)

18. Project consultant, 2.5 days / week for 9 months: Sarah Currier (now extended for 4 months )

19. Project Development Group: enthusiasts in the Employability Coordinators’ Network (voluntary)

20. Admin and advisory support from HEA

21. Travel and events budget

24. Flexible: change track quickly if something isn’t working

25. Safe communication spaces + open dissemination spaces

26. Must not be driven by traditional project reporting outputs

27. CoP = sharing of knowledge, experience and peer teaching within community

28. CoP = room for mistakes, learning from trial and error, reporting what doesn’t work as well as what does, supporting each other

29. Piloting use of freely available Web toolsValidated 100% by Project Review!

30. Getting to know the community (1) Ca. 20-22 members at any given time. National, across all Scotland’s HE institutions Geographically distributed, with some members, particularly in the north of Scotland, less able to attend centrally based meetings; Mostly female (76% female / 24% male); A mix of part-time and full-time (59% full-time / 41% part-time) ...

31. Getting to know the community (2) A mix of professional backgrounds: Lecturers; Researchers; Careers advisers; Policy developers and implementers; Staff developers; Educational developers; Librarians ... ?

33. 41% careers service;

35. working on curriculum and course development;

36. working directly with academics and students.3. university type, from red brick to the ancients, including the Open University and the federated UHI Millennium Institute.

37. Getting to know the community (4) Temporary: funding for their work will not continue beyond the next couple of years (a few have permanent posts). A small number of institutions did not employ designated “employability coordinators”, but most did.

39. There are a range of professional and institutional cultures, priorities and communication styles coming to bear on their ability to participate;

40. There are institutional cultures with different levels of support for use of technology;

42. There are a range of professional and institutional cultures, priorities and communication styles coming to bear on their ability to participate;

43. There are institutional cultures with different levels of support for use of technology;

45. Diigo + Netvibes = 1 free repository? Where we are now

46. So, is this a repository? http://groups.diigo.com/group/employability (... maybe, kind of ... but it didn’t meet all this community’s requirements ...)

47. What about this? http://www.netvibes.com/Employability According to that formal repository definitions, definitely not! But to this community, it completes the meeting of their requirements. They are delighted with their Web-based resource, their one-stop-shop for employability resources for Scottish higher education, and they will call it a repository, or a portal, whether we like it or not!

51. Third priority: “save/share this resource”.. Especially to email, Twitter, Facebook, social bookmarking / recommendation sites.Again, include ratings/recommendations/commentary.

52. What I would share with repository people IMO: Don’t waste time creating your own version of Facebook or MySpace or Twitter or Ning or other Web 2.0 tools as part of your repository. Instead, make sure you work well with existing tools your users use. Let a million flowers bloom. You are not and never will be a one-stop-shop.

53. References Currier, S. (2009) SHEEN Sharing Benchmarking and Final Requirements Report. Final Public Draft. Higher Education Academy. Available: http://www.scribd.com/doc/16529191/SHEEN-Sharing-Benchmarking-and-Requirements-Report-Final-Public-Draft Currier, S. (2009) SHEEN Sharing Review. Final Public Draft. Higher Education Academy. Available: http://www.scribd.com/doc/16529201/SHEEN-Sharing-Review-Report-Final-Public-Draft Hughes, A. (2009) Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World: Report of an independent Committee of Inquiry into the impact on higher education of students’ widespread use of Web 2.0 technologies. JISC. Available: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/heweb2.aspx IMS (2003) IMS Digital Repositories Interoperability - Core Functions Information Model. Version 1.0 Final Specification Available: http://www.imsglobal.org/digitalrepositories/index.html JISC Emerge (2009) JISC Emerge: A User-Centred Social Learning Media Hub: Supporting the Users and Innovation R&D Community Network. JISC. Available: http://reports.jiscemerge.org.uk/Publications/ Margaryan, A., Milligan, C. And Douglas, P. (2007) CD-LOR Deliverable 9: Structured Guidelines for Setting up Learning Object Repositories. Available: http://www.academy.gcal.ac.uk/cd-lor/documents/CD-LOR_Structured_Guidelines_v1p0_000.pdf

54. Credits Image on 1st slide by ycc2106: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ycc2106/103383461/ available under Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en_GB Slides by Sarah Currier, Consultant, SHEEN Sharing Project http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ sarah.currier@gmail.com Slides © 2010 Higher Education Academy.