Project Document Cover Sheet
Project Information
Project Acronym
Project Title
Start Date
Lead Institution
Project Director
Project Manager &
contact details
OpenStaffs
Extending access to educational resources created in Staffordshire
University
1 May 2009
End Date
30 April 2010
Staffordshire University
Professor Mark Stiles
Sarah Hall s.d.hall@staffs.ac.uk
Tel. 01785 353353 Fax. 01785 353600
Nelson Library, Staffordshire University
Beaconside, Stafford ST18 0DP
Partner Institutions
Project Web URL
Programme Name (and
number)
Programme Manager
www.staffs.ac.uk/openstaffs
Open Educational Resources Programme
Heather Williamson
Document Name
Document Title
Reporting Period
Author(s) & project role
Date
Final Report
End of project
Mark Stiles, Project Director and Sarah Hall, Project Manager
30 April 2010
Filename
OpenStaffs_final_April.docx
URL
Access
 Project and JISC internal
Document History
Version
Date
1.0
30 April 2010
 General dissemination
Comments
Submitted to JISC at the end of the project
Project Acronym: OpenStaffs
Version: 1.0
Contact: Sarah Hall
Date: 26 April 2010
OpenStaffs
Extending access to educational
resources created in Staffordshire
University
Final Report
Professor Mark Stiles and Sarah Hall
April 2010
Project Co-Director
Professor Mark Stiles
Learning Development and Innovation
Staffordshire University
Beaconside
Stafford
e-mail: m.j.stiles@staffs.ac.uk
Project Co-Director
Dave Parkes
Information Services
Staffordshire University
College Road
Stoke-on-Trent
e-mail: d.j.parkes@staffs.ac.uk
Project Manager
Sarah Hall
Information Services
Staffordshire University
Beaconside
Stafford
e-mail: s.d.hall@staffs.ac.uk
Project Technical Manager
Sam Rowley
Learning Development and Innovation
Staffordshire University
College Road
Stoke-on-Trent
e-mail: c.s.rowley@staffs.ac.uk
OpenStaffs
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Project Acronym: OpenStaffs
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Table of Contents
1
2
3
4
5
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................... 4
Executive Summary ......................................................................................................................... 5
Background ...................................................................................................................................... 6
Aims and Objectives ........................................................................................................................ 6
General approach ............................................................................................................................ 7
5.1
Implementation ........................................................................................................................ 9
5.2
Mandate ................................................................................................................................ 10
5.3
Technical Challenges ............................................................................................................ 11
5.4
Quality ................................................................................................................................... 12
5.5
Metadata ............................................................................................................................... 12
5.6
Staff Surveys ......................................................................................................................... 13
6 Outputs and Results ...................................................................................................................... 14
6.1
Complete modules ................................................................................................................ 16
6.2
Packaging for JorumOpen .................................................................................................... 16
6.3
Institutional Policies for OER................................................................................................. 18
6.4
Guides for depositors ............................................................................................................ 18
6.5
Outstanding Project Objectives ............................................................................................. 19
6.6
Events and workshops .......................................................................................................... 20
6.7
Web Site, Social Networking Site and Project Blog .............................................................. 20
6.8
External dissemination of OpenStaffs and OER ................................................................... 21
6.9
Internal dissemination of OpenStaffs and OER .................................................................... 21
6.10 Outputs from the evaluation process .................................................................................... 21
6.11 Lessons learned .................................................................................................................... 22
7 Outcomes and Impact .................................................................................................................... 23
8 Conclusions and Recommendations ............................................................................................. 24
9 Implications for the future .............................................................................................................. 25
10
Appendices................................................................................................................................ 26
Appendix 1: Strategic Plan for Technology Supported Learning ...................................................... 27
Appendix 2: OER Questionnaire for the Focus Group ...................................................................... 31
Appendix 3: Focus Group Report ...................................................................................................... 33
Appendix 4: OER All staff survey ...................................................................................................... 38
Appendix 5: Report on a Copyright Quiz and Summary of Results .................................................. 43
Appendix 6: Blackboard Quality Checklist ......................................................................................... 46
Appendix 7: Open Educational Resources at Staffordshire University (Mandate Rationale) ........... 47
Appendix 8: Institutional OER Repository Policies ............................................................................ 48
Appendix 9: Notes from the Repository Management Day ............................................................... 50
Appendix 10: Notes from the Metadata and Repositories worksho ................................................. 54
OpenStaffs
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1 Acknowledgements
The OpenStaffs Open Educational Resources (OER) project is an Institutional pilot
project sponsored by JISC and the Higher Education Academy; running from May
2009 to April 2010.
The OpenStaffs project team would like to acknowledge all the supporters and
contributors to the project especially:The Staffordshire University Learning Development and Innovation Team
The Staffordshire University Learning Technology and Information Services Team
Colleagues from University Faculties, Schools and Services who contributed time
and resources
The contributions of Nancy Graham from Birmingham University and Dominic Tate
from the Repository Support Project who gave their time and shared their expertise
at project events
We also wish to thank Heather Williamson, JISC Programme Manager, for her
assistance and support throughout the project
OpenStaffs
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2 Executive Summary
Since April 2009, the Higher Education Academy and JISC have been collaborating on the Open
Educational Resources (OER) pilot programme, helping universities to share educational materials
freely online. OpenStaffs is one of the seven projects in the Institutional strand of the OER
programme.
The intention of the project was to put the University in the position of being able to create and use
OERs. This would be done by building on the creation of an internal repository of learning material
that could be reused and repurposed, achieved by integrating BlackBoard, the University's VLE with
Hive, the University's repository. Sharing and repurposing materials was expected to save academic
staff time and effort allowing more time to work on other aspects of their work such as research and
student support.
Material from the repository that is considered suitable to be made 'open' and shared externally is
made available as OER. The aim of OpenStaffs was to release the equivalent of 500 credits worth of
material through JorumOpen, a JISC funded service that facilitates the sharing of teaching resources.
Material is released using Creative Commons licences setting out the terms for sharing and reusing
each resource.
The OpenStaffs project worked mainly on existing material offered by University faculties to support
the project bid, but during the course of the project a substantial amount of other material was made
available by faculties. Material was provided by each Faculty in varying amounts, including complete
modules, videos, images and podcasts. This material was used by the project team to inform the
development of sustainable business processes for the release of resources as open access
materials.
During the course of the project issues around quality, Intellectual Property Rights and copyright were
examined. Material deposited in BlackBoard is covered by University quality guidelines for internal
use, but further checks were required before material was ready for external release.
Faculties in the University are exploring new business models and looking to encourage recruitment
and enhance the University's reputation. One of the faculties contributing to the project is interested
in the 'shop window' model, showcasing examples of learning material and another is investigating
the 'Self Learn' model where study materials are offered free of charge, but students pay for
assessment and accreditation.
OpenStaffs has exceeded content release targets set at the outset of the project. The collection of
over 4,000 images from the Betty Smithers Design Studies Collection has already created interest in
the HE/FE sector.
The project encountered a number of technical challenges and did not achieve some of its internal
objectives before the formal completion date of the project. There were delays to the upgrades of
BlackBoard and Hive and consequently a delay in the integration of Blackboard with Hive. As a
consequence the creation of workflows for deposits of learning material into the repository, the
implementation of metadata schema and the creation of bespoke interfaces to the repository have all
been rescheduled.
From the outset it was intended to develop an approach to open access that is sustainable. People
involved in the project - learning technologists, librarians, e-learning facilitators and academic staff
have started to absorb processes for managing OER into their roles. Training and guidance material
to support OER have and are being developed and revised to support the technical developments
linked to the repository, and support good practice in creating new learning material.
The experience of checking and preparing existing course material for open access has proved time
consuming, including the packaging of course content for JorumOpen. Work on copyright, as
expected, has required considerable work. It is a recommendation of the project that material
intended for open access is identified at the creation stage so that the principles of reuse,
ownership and licences can be addressed at the outset.
OpenStaffs
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3 Background
The OpenStaffs project is one of the seven projects in the institutional strand of the OER programme.
The goal throughout the project has been to leave the University in a position at the end of the project
to take forward the use of OER in a sustainable manner. The project set out to address the
institutional policy aspects of OER, the rationale, including the business rationale, for OER and the
establishment of a sustainable support and technical infrastructure to maintain OER in the future.
The University’s position in terms of OER release and resource sharing at the start of the project was
at zero, although the University Technology Supported Learning (TSL) Strategic Plan did address the
establishment of internal resource sharing and reuse. Staffordshire University had been working for
some time on setting up a repository for learning content using Giunti Labs HarvestRoad Hive, and
was planning to migrate its extensive store of educational resources held in Blackboard to the Hive
repository with the view to enabling both resource reuse and the diversification of the delivery of TSL.
The University plan to 2012 describes a new approach to course and product development and is
reviewing the University’s curriculum and learning and teaching models. The OER programme
supports the University’s strategic objectives around delivery, especially using new media to support
effective e-learning. The OER initiative was viewed positively by University Executive who were
responsible for initiating the University bid to the OER programme, which was seen as an opportunity
to explore new educational and business models. In addition, the proposal was seen as building on
the University’s history of sharing resources through initiatives such as the JISC SURF WBL project
which itself placed significant resources in Jorum. SURF WBL was a JISC sponsored collaborative
project, the main partners being, Burton College, Shrewsbury College of Arts and Technology and
Stoke-on-Trent College. The aim of the project was to make it easier to support and deliver work
based learning to learners in the Staffordshire University Regional Federation (SURF)
http://www.projects.staffs.ac.uk/wblway/ An additional possible benefit was seen as quality and
efficiency enhancements from the internal reuse and repurposing of centrally deposited material
created within the University. At the same time, some sections of the University were investigating the
open exposure of course material as a possible driver for new business models.
OER was also seen as a positive opportunity to raise the profile of the University and individuals
developing course material within the University. It was acknowledged that OER offers students a
range of ‘free’ quality resources to use and evaluate. It was also recognised that OER could be used
as a marketing tool, supporting recruitment and retention objectives with course and module ‘tasters’
for potential students.
From the outset the intention has been to build sustainable business processes for the release of
resources. Policies and procedures to reuse and repurpose educational materials are based around
existing staff and their roles. This project has been built around the roles of staff working for the
University, rather than a dedicated project team employed for the term of the project.
4 Aims and Objectives
The aims and objectives identified at the start of the project were summarised in the project plan as:









Establish a clear University mandate/position on OER
Explore legal issues around OER including the impact on the University and its extended
community
Address policy issues
Develop new business models
Deposit content that is the equivalent of 500 credits into JorumOpen
Offer a range of learning materials from different subject areas and Faculties
Upgrade the Blackboard VLE and Hive repository software
Integrate Blackboard and Hive
Develop an interface between Hive and JorumOpen
OpenStaffs
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





Investigate customer interfaces
Cataloguing and metadata schema for repository content
New roles for support staff
Testing and evaluation
Incorporate a system to collect statistics to quantify the use and reuse of content
Stakeholder feedback
During the course of the project, which has faced a number of barriers and problems described later,
the overall aims and objectives have not changed in terms of what the University intends to achieve.
However it is clear that by the end of the project a number of these objectives will either be only
partially fulfilled or not fulfilled. In particular work on business models for OER has proceeded slowly,
but forms part of ongoing business plans for some faculties. Work on metadata is ongoing, but it may
well be that full search facilities for internal use may not be in place by the end of the project.
5 General approach
From the outset it was intended that all creators of learning material would be depositors to the
internal repository, in support of the University objective of reusing and repurposing learning material
from a store of material held in the repository, making internal savings and efficiencies in course
creation. Thus supporting of the University’s Technology Support Learning Strategic Plan, see
Appendix 1.
It was felt that, with appropriate University Executive support, this could be extended to releasing
material for open access via Creative Commons licences. It was anticipated that by the end of the
project most creators of undergraduate level teaching material would be depositing open access
content via the Blackboard to Hive integration mechanisms, with some exceptions such as students’
work, material created by external lecturers or institutions. Due to the slowness of progress with the
technical upgrades this position is unlikely to be reached until sometime after the formal end to the
project. But as can be seen from the discussion of the findings of the OER Focus Groups in Appendix
3 the situation of staff’s attitudes to open access release is encouraging.
“‘I have thought about the more open nature of resources and have made some changes to
them bearing in mind that it isn’t just a local delivery...” an academic member of staff.
The project has a Senior Management Working Group in place. Throughout the project Faculty
support has been bolstered through the support of the Executive Pro Vice Chancellor via the Deans
Committee and Faculty Management Teams. New University policies are under review and
development for OER. The University Librarian has drawn on advice and recommendations on
repository management available from the Repository Support Project http://www.rsp.ac.uk and
SHERPA http://www.sherpa.ac.uk and has prepared and is presenting new and revised policies to
University management committees for approval.
Faculties are developing new business models with a focus on marketing and recruitment, using OER
to highlight examples of module content to potential students and to explore the viability of ‘self learn’
approaches. An academic interviewed by Dr Geoff Walton for the Focus Group report, Appendix 3,
talks about the purpose of learning objects
“Once we have delivered lectures like this it’s quite reasonable that those [videoed] lectures
should be able to stay on the web [for free] for three to four years, maybe until they become
old hat – but the assessment should be advertised and sold. “
An early activity was locating and gathering material that had been promised by Faculties to support
the project bid and engaging contributors in discussion about their own content. In early discussions
the focus was on “giving away” material and some reservations were expressed. However, OER also
presented the opportunity to consider the potential of content created by others, internally and
externally, that can be used and integrated into teaching. Some of these discussions were helped by
timely press coverage of OER activities and scenarios including engaging the interest, and
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recruitment, of potential learners to universities. UK press coverage for OER is summarised on the
JISC OER web site - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/oer
At the start of the project, teams in Learning Development and Innovation and Learning Technology
and Information Services were briefed by their Project Directors so that they appreciated the
importance of the project to the University and the contribution individuals and teams would make to
the project. Librarians were tasked with talking about OER at appropriate Faculty meetings; contacts
were generated through networking and attending staff development events within the University.
Networking activities brought more material to the project, for example a collection of images held in
the Design Studies Collection.
The project has involved many University staff with a range of different roles. Librarians have liaised
with faculties, explaining and conveying the opportunities presented to academic staff as users of
OER and as contributors of OER content. In addition they have been advising on copyright and
metadata for OER. Faculty e-learning facilitators have helped in identifying material and preparing
module material for release and have also shared their guidelines for content creators. The
Information Protection and Security Manager has worked on presenting copyright advice to academic
staff, developing a copyright quiz and updating the University web pages on Copyright
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/legal/copyright/index.jsp A summary of the plan of approach, the copyright
quiz
and
an
analysis
of
the
questionnaires
returned
can
be
viewed
at
http://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/openstaffs/2010/02/15/copyright-quiz-summary or Appendix 5.
A detailed early look at some of the material exported from BlackBoard provided an indication of
some issues around resource description, copyright, permissions, quality and content that would have
to be addressed before some educational resources were ready for release. This is explored in more
detail in Section 6: Outputs and Results, but some examples include:





Use of images and cartoon characters
Guest lecturer presentations
Content requiring publishers permission
Spelling errors
Style of PowerPoint presentations
Some examples where material has been copied from Blackboard modules:
 Broken links to web sites and online documents
 Student generated work
 Student discussion groups
 Student names
 Course information and documentation specific to Staffordshire University
It was anticipated that the Blackboard – Hive integration would be in place at a much earlier stage of
the project so that workflows could be established. Delays to the Blackboard - Hive integration
resulted in the Project Directors agreeing with the project team that they would work on the material
and prepare it in readiness for deposit into Hive and JorumOpen. This was seen as vital to
maintaining enthusiasm for the project as it meant that potential contributors, such as individuals and
Faculty teams, were not deterred from contributing by the expectation of extra work caused by
readying material for open access. Once Blackboard and Hive are fully integrated it is expected that
there will be significant automation between the depositor and release to OER.
Learning Development specialists are working on the technical and developmental aspects of the
project, especially the development of the Hive repository and the integration of Hive with Blackboard.
Some key project objectives – in particular the investigation of new interfaces, testing and evaluation,
and the gathering of statistics are still outstanding. This work was delayed due to the time taken to
upgrade the Hive repository, but they remain objectives for the repository development work.
Realistically it is unlikely that these objectives will be completed before the formal end of the project.
Any evaluation/statistics/reports produced after the formal end of the contract will be made available
on the OpenStaffs project website www.staffs.ac.uk/openstaffs
Considerable work on roles has taken place in the context of a complete restructure of the
University’s Information Services and this has progressed much more slowly than had been planned
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and not all roles are yet fully in place. Similarly, the technology infrastructure aspects of the project
have suffered considerable delay, firstly due to considerable slippage in the necessary upgrade to the
Blackboard VLE and secondly to the upgrade of the Hive repository. This combined upgrade was
essential to provide a sustainable infrastructure and has taken far longer than anticipated.
Nevertheless the overwhelming majority of this infrastructure work will be complete by the end of the
project.
5.1 Implementation
The bid was written and submitted to JISC with the University receiving confirmation that the bid had
been successful in April 2009. The project was established as a major University project by its
incorporation into the Executive portfolio of projects, overseen for the Executive by the University
Business Re-Engineering Manager. Throughout the project monthly reports on progress have been
sent to the Executive through the Business Re-Engineering Manager. The high status of the project
has had the advantage of enabling pressure to be brought to bear where barriers or delays have
arisen.
At the outset of the project all University Faculties and Schools identified lead contacts for liaison
purposes. The two Project Directors held briefings with staff in their teams, Learning Development
and Innovation and Learning Technology and Information Services. The Director of Learning
Technology and Information Services and the project manager worked with colleagues in Learning
Technology and Information Services to develop a liaison role between Faculties and the project
through subject librarians. The librarians already liaised with Faculty academics and support staff on
service and library issues. Making librarians the focus of liaison between Faculty staff and the project
supported the objective of making OER sustainable. With the exception of the two project managers,
work carried out for the project was conducted by people who could integrate OER into their jobs and
continue with OER work after the conclusion of the project.
Subject librarians started by making contact with Faculties to talk about content for the project. Initially
responses were mixed, and ranged from very positive with the immediate delivery of promised
material, through to others who took a step back and rethought the commitment they had given at the
bidding stage. It became clear that one or two Faculties were nervous about exposing course material
and were re-evaluating the desire to be involved in the project.
Three University Faculties Computing, Engineering and Technology (FCET), Art Media and Design
(AMD) and Sciences presented complete modules and other educational resources immediately. For
a time there was concern that the OER project would lack the resources to make the targets promised
in the bid. These concerns were passed on to the Executive through the Project Sponsor and
Faculties were contacted and reminded of the University’s commitment and their responsibility to
support the project. This generated more interest and material for the project.
New material has continued to be provided to the project throughout its life. It is worth noting that as
staff began to see content that others had deposited this generated further interest. And new content
is still being offered, for example a Professor in the Faculty of Health has offered a large quantity of
videos and presentations this month.
The Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology had begun to create a set of videos of an
entire masters’ course prior to the start of the project and were considering how these might be made
freely available in the context of a new business model such as “Self Learn” – where an individual can
study a course free of charge, but without support, and then register and pay later for assessment and
accreditation. It was agreed that these videos would be released as OER through the OpenStaffs
project. The Faculty has continued with the programme of videos and has already promised more to
OpenStaffs.
Concerns have been expressed about the quality of the recording and presentation of some of the
videos. They were commissioned from an external service and therefore there is no access to the
original recordings for editing. Through the Faculty Director – Resource, Research and Enterprise a
request has been made for more technical input from the OpenStaffs Team during the filming and
OpenStaffs
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editing of the next series of videos. This project has highlighted the need for something of a cultural
change in the management of resource creation and quality assurance.
A second exceptional contribution and commitment to the project has been the exposure of images
from the Design Studies Collection by the Faculty of Arts, Media and Design. As a result of
introducing the OpenStaffs project at a RiT (Research Informed Teaching) Conference, an approach
was made by the Manager of the Betty Smithers Design Collection www.staffs.ac.uk/dsc A collection
of about 4,000 digital images of items in the collection has been offered to the project, all catalogued
using the MODES collection management system http://www.modes.org.uk/ The images were
maintained on a Faculty server and it was agreed that the images would be safer stored in the
University repository and would be transferred to Hive upon completion of the repository upgrade. The
images are mainly of costumes, textiles, and examples of household items and are an extensive and
unusual resource. There are many more images in the Collection, but the 4,000 identified for Open
Access are of artefacts owned by the University and images were taken by the collection Manager so
there are no significant copyright issues to address for these digital images.
The collection supports design students and teachers and is open to the public by arrangement, also
lending items from the collection for displays and educational activities. Inclusion in the project makes
this an unusual and valuable resource for potential users of the collection, raising awareness of the
collection through wider exposure through JorumOpen, at the same time raising the profile of art and
design studies at Staffordshire University.
At the time of writing this report staff at JorumOpen have asked us not to deposit these images
because it will create so many individual records, however the images are ready to export when
Jorum are ready to receive them into the repository.
As the project reaches a conclusion it is heartening to note that in addition to the content described
above from the two major contributors, complete modules have been provided by three University
Faculties. Following the appeal for content through the Project Sponsor, a significant number of
complete and nearly complete modules have been provided by the Faculties of Sciences and Health.
5.2 Mandate
A Mandate was drafted and presented to the Director of Personnel and the University Solicitor. It was
established that OER is covered by existing staff contracts and therefore it was felt there is no need to
impose a Mandate specifically for the purpose of OER release. However a statement of intent was
released and discussed at Academic Board Sub Committees and presented to faculties via meetings,
dissemination and discussion.
In place of a mandate a statement of intent has been adopted which explains how the University will
adopt OER and the benefits it accrues for Staffordshire University. The statement reads:
“Staffordshire University is committed to disseminating its learning and teaching materials as
widely as possible by providing free, online access where possible to these resources.
The University produces, a large number of high quality lecture notes, learning objects,
podcasts, documentation, guides and online learning activities in support of learning and
teaching. This work is of value to the institution in terms of repurposing, dissemination,
intellectual property and reputation.
These resources will be released under an intellectual property license that permits open use
and adaptation via an Open educational resources institutional repository. The repository will
enable the preservation, promotion, dissemination and access to these resources and will
provide:


OpenStaffs
a marketing opportunity to attract students and to provide potential students with
some insight into the higher education experience, helping to widen access, improve
retention, and reduce dropout rates.
add to the body of reusable content to support the curriculum. Structured educational
content leads to access to even more resources and increases the chances of finding
things that are useful, or which can be made useful.
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



a mechanism for recognising good teaching and potentially rewarding good teaching.
act as a “shop window” to the University and will be perceived, as an indicator of the
quality of education at Staffordshire University, as such, it will encourage more
overseas students.
support the ethos and mission of the institution, particularly in reaching educationally
disadvantaged students and in promoting distance, blended and flexible learning
By being free to all and empowering students, it provides an enormous benefit to
society at large, whether regional, national, or worldwide.”
This statement had been disseminated in presentations to senior management, to Faculty and via the
blog and web pages of OpenStaffs. As the message permeates the University new opportunities and
initiatives in OER are emerging; rich multimedia content from the Faculty of Health has been
discovered in conversation about the project.
5.3 Technical Challenges
One of the biggest problem areas which was not anticipated proved to be establishment of the
required technical infrastructure. The first part of this problem was the upgrade of the Blackboard VLE
from version 7 to version 8. This necessity was known before the start of the project (and mentioned
in the bid), but the processes of securing the necessary internal funding to enable the upgrade to take
place, scheduling the upgrade and subsequently implementing and testing it, took far longer than was
anticipated. Similarly, a second necessary component of the overall plan was the upgrade of the Hive
repository from version 3 to version 4 and subsequently version 4.1 (note this meant a two phase
upgrade). In this case major delays were encountered due to delays by Giunti in making upgraded
versions available, and also in freeing the necessary staffing resources within Information Services
needed to enable the upgrades to take place.
These two major technical upgrades were essential to put the University in a position where the
Blackboard – Hive integration and the associated internal exposure of resources could take place.
The fact that these proved to be more problematic than expected has caused significant delays in
other areas of the project plan. For example the creation of workflows for deposits, the
implementation of metadata schemas and the creation of bespoke interfaces. However this work is
now nearing completion and the test versions of both systems have been fully available since late
January 2010. This has enabled work to commence on internal deposit into Hive and the investigation
into formats for deposit. Training and knowledge transfer on Hive is well underway and work on
metadata is progressing. The upgrade to the live system is now in process and an evaluation of
Icodeon viewer for the Hive repository is taking place. This viewer should enable those searching for
content on the repository system to view the content in its intended form as part of the discovery
process.
The process of assigning roles for the ‘steady state’ management of the repository is also well in
process, with some roles decided. This has been taken into account in the knowledge transfer
process. In addition the current upgrade of the live repository system is also being used as a means
of carrying out knowledge transfer to Information Services technical teams. This will allow this process
to be fully managed by Information Services in the future as is the appropriate approach for a
corporate system.
On account of the technical delays caused mainly by the upgrades to Blackboard and Hive it was
decided to push ahead with publishing OpenStaffs OER content directly to JorumOpen. Digital
images from the Design Studies Collection have been upload into Hive and a solution to bulk upload
the images for Hive to JorumOpen is ready.
In hindsight although it has been disappointing that the technical work has not proceeded as quickly
as planned, it may well be that the exercise of promoting OER and gathering resource for deposit into
Jorum will make for a more successful and more widely supported launch of the live repository. This
is supported by the findings of the Focus Group Study (Appendix 3). In addition during a series of
meetings with Faculty Deans and Academic Directors led by Professor Stiles aimed at reviewing the
priorities of the Technology Supported Learning strategic plan (Appendix 1), it was noted that all
OpenStaffs
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Contact: Sarah Hall
Date: 26 April 2010
Faculties were keen to diversify their use of technology in support of learning. This diversification will
require the reuse of content which the repository will provide.
In addition at the recent 'Learning for Success Unconference: best practice and next practice in
learning and teaching at Staffordshire University' held for University staff, 31 March 2010, notes from
a workshop on Technology Supported Learning at Staffordshire compiled by the Head of Policy and
Planning, noted ‘good support for Hive and the reuse of content’.
Therefore these unfortunate circumstances have resulted in a position where when most staff
experience the repository it will be a repository which is highly populated with content, not only with
the OER resources covered by the project, but with content migrated from BlackBoard. This could
prove to be a positive advantage for future sustainability.
5.4 Quality
The University has quality guidelines and policies covering the creation of e-learning resources which
were felt to be adequate for internal use and use with partners. See Appendix 6 for the BlackBoard
Module Quality Checklist and the Staffordshire University Handbook for eLearning on the project web
site. These policies cover accessibility, copyright and standards.
In terms of implementation, these policies are enforced more robustly where material is deposited
through Blackboard than elsewhere. In this case quality assurance is carried out within Faculties via
peer review and modules must be electronically signed off thus providing an audit trail. In the case of
other e-learning material the same guidelines apply, but in practice there was no robust
implementation of the process. When the first directly contributed materials were made available staff
working on the project expressed reservations around quality. There was quite a debate around this,
and in general terms academics saw the content as being more important than the presentation,
whereas support staff were more concerned about the presentation of material, in particular minor
spelling errors.
It became apparent that greater care must be applied before material is released on open access
because of the risks of exposing copyright material to the outside world, taking the use of material
beyond the ‘fair dealing’ clauses of copyright for education. This reinforced the message that multiple
checks are required to create quality material for both internal consumption and open access.
When the first phase of material was made available, it was decided that in order to develop a fuller
understanding of the issues and identify the responsibilities and checks required as material
progresses to open access, the project team would itself collect material, review it and deposit it. This
work will inform workflows through the repository. However in the longer term it is planned is to
implement processes to support self deposit and sign off for open access. Quality checks on
educational content will be carried out at the point where a deposit is made into the repository, but to
maintain the momentum of the project staff in Learning Development and Innovation and Learning
Technology and Information Services have carried out basic quality checks on material for the project
mainly to minimise exposure to serious risks of copyright infringement.
.
Ultimately we have come to the conclusion that provided copyright issues are properly addressed in
terms of policy and procedure the ultimate decisions relating to quality must be made and owned by
the Faculty that is depositing material. We feel it both inappropriate (and almost certainly
unsustainable) for a central unit to make such decisions.
5.5 Metadata
Work on metadata is proceeding at a steady pace with meetings taking place between members of
Learning Development and Innovation and Library teams. Elluminate sessions and the work of other
Institutional projects in the programme on metadata have been a great help in scoping and prioritising
some of the decisions required to build a metadata schema for the content of the repository.
Metadata work started in October 2009 with a shared event for library staff and staff from Learning
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Development and Innovation on Metadata and Repositories led by Nancy Graham from Birmingham
University http://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/openstaffs/2009/10/26/metadata-and-repositories-event
See Appendix 10 for notes on this workshop.
Hive has an embedded metadata schema based on Dublin Core standards. Although this meets the
minimum mandatory requirements for the OER programme, this basic metadata is not
really sophisticated enough to accommodate the complex records which will be imported from
Blackboard. A hybrid scheme therefore is being used. Hive facilitates the incorporation of IMS which
creates fields for more technical information. The IMS metadata standard decided on for Hive is IMS
1.3.
By creating a record using the item type 'Learning Resource', IMS is automatically
incorporated, enabling technical information to be imported into Hive.
Populating metadata is still an ongoing issue, with the favoured approach being a combination of
expert free text input from the originator of the resource. This may be followed by input
from an administrator using an authority controlled subject classification scheme to improve subject
discovery of content and offer better browsing potential. Currently indexing is full text based so
a good level of retrieval is in place.
5.6 Staff Surveys
Copyright
Stimulated by an early examination of contributions to the project and concerns regarding copyright
relating to the content of some learning material, a quiz was set using Qualtrics software. The
objective of the quiz was to gain some indication of copyright awareness among University staff. The
quiz was delivered to a cohort of academic staff on the University PGCHE course. The conclusion
drawn from this sample is that academic staff have a general recognition of the broad concept of
copyright, but there is a gap in their knowledge relating to the details of applying copyright. See
Appendix 5 for a full report of the copyright quiz and summary of results.
The conclusions of the copyright quiz are supported by the Focus Group Study where one of the
conclusions is:
“Academics are not confident in the area of copyright and welcome support from elsewhere.”
Focus Groups and Surveys
Focus Group interviews took place between 2 nd March 2010 and 23rd March 2010 and were
conducted by Dr Geoff Walton. Geoff is leading a Research Informed Teaching Project at
Staffordshire University and has made time to share his research expertise and support the
OpenStaffs project.
Participants in the Focus Group were selected from range of stakeholders
employed by Staffordshire University, drawn from academic staff, e-learning facilitators, academic
librarians and included the Information Protection Manager. The aim of this study was to answer the
question:
”What thoughts and feelings (both positive and negative) do respondents have towards Open
Educational Resources?”
Themes emerged in six broad areas:
 promotion
 quality control
 copyright
 the purpose of learning objects (LOs)
 technical issues
 implications for working practices
Geoff’s conclusion and summary of the interviews, along with selected quotations can be viewed in
Appendix 3.
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The project team was surprised and delighted to read the report as the results are more positive than
expected. It is encouraging to see staff across the University recognising the benefits of sharing. It is
also encouraging to read that issues such as copyright and quality which have been major concerns
for the project team are also indentified as key themes by the Focus Group.
OER Staff Survey
A quantitative survey was constructed using Qualtrics and sent out by email to all staff employed at
Staffordshire University. Survey questions were intended to gain response regarding the extent of
knowledge that respondents had of OER and whether they would be willing to take part and create
resources in the future. Supplementary emails were sent out to academic staff via Faculty Learning
and Teaching Directors and subject librarians. This survey is reported in Appendix 4. Although the
sample was fairly small (30 respondents) the overall response to OER was positive. There the results
appear to show a significant interest in OER.
6 Outputs and Results
A summary of Open Educational Resources released through the OpenStaffs project, more than 120
resources have been deposited in JorumOpen through the project.
Description
Advanced Computer Investigation
Topics
Faculty/Service
Computing, Engineering and
Technology
Learning Hours
15 credit module
Access
JorumOpen
Mobile Applications and Systems
Computing, Engineering and
Technology
Computing, Engineering and
Technology
15 credit module
JorumOpen
15 credit module
JorumOpen
Computing, Engineering and
Technology
Sciences
15 credit module
JorumOpen
30 credit module
JorumOpen
Sustainable communities
Sciences
15 credit module
JorumOpen
Sustainable lifestyles and
communities
Sciences
15 credit module
JorumOpen
Researching for Art, Media and
Design
Arts, Media and Design
15 credit module
JorumOpen
Shorthand
Information Skills
Personal development planning
Presentations for business
students
Arts, Media and Design
Arts, Media and Design
Law
Business
15 credit module
15 credit module
4 hours
1 hour
JorumOpen
JorumOpen
JorumOpen
Web link
The Betty Smithers Design
Collection
Arts, Media and Design
JorumOpen
Knowledge Management
Computing, Engineering and
Technology
Forensic Computing Concepts
Computing, Engineering and
Technology
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24 Slides
uploaded,
4,000 images
currently waiting
for direction
from Jorum
A series of 9
lectures at MSc
level
A series of 7
lectures at MSc
Business Applications of
Computing
Information Systems in Industry
Delivering Sustainable
Development
OpenStaffs
Web link to
the Hive
Repository
Web link to
the Hive
Project Acronym: OpenStaffs
Version: 1.0
Contact: Sarah Hall
Date: 26 April 2010
Internet Applications
Computing, Engineering and
Technology
Methods and Issues of eInvestigation
Computing, Engineering and
Technology
Web Multimedia
Computing, Engineering and
Technology
Aging and Mental Heath
Health
RefZone
Information Services
Assignment Survival Kit
Information Services
Preferred Work Activities
Values and Motivations (Careers)
Skills and Personal Qualities
(Careers)
Careers Service
Careers Service
Careers Service
Service
Your final year project and your futureCareers
career plans
level
A series of 17
lectures at MSc
level
A series of 17
lectures at MSc
level
2 Lectures at
MSc level
Videos and
presentations
Series of 12
Presentations
Repository
Web link to
the Hive
Repository
Web link to
the Hive
Repository
Web link to
the Hive
Repository
Under
developme
nt
Link to
University
web site
Link to
University
web site
JorumOpen
JorumOpen
JorumOpen
Web link
It was pleasing to receive content from all six University Faculties and Schools and two Services,
Information Services and the Careers Service. All the material is interesting and some presented real
challenges in terms of format. The digital images from the Betty Smithers Collection are unusual and
interest in the collection has been expressed at meetings and external events attended by the project
team, notably representatives from SCORE (Support Centre for Open Resources in Education) at the
Institutional Strand Get Together in Nottingham and the College of West Anglia.
The videos from Computing, Engineering and Technology were recorded by the Faculty to develop
web site where learners can view videos free of charge. Students have the option to apply to the
University for support material and assessments, potentially leading to an MSc in Computer Science.
This is part of a new business model the Faculty is exploring, provisionally titled Lectures Online.
From the project perspective the videos are a great resource; however in terms of format they
presented some challenges. The videos were produced by an external company and there was no
access to the original files, only DVDs of the recordings. The DVDs were copied into Hive so that
links can be made to the online lectures. To make the videos available through JorumOpen web links
were made to the Hive repository. The videos initiated some discussions on quality through the
University discussion board and project meetings - there were some spelling errors on some of the
slides and there was concern that this would not reflect well on the University. There seemed to be a
division of opinion where support staff were concerned about presentation and editing and academic
staff were more mindful of the content, expressing the view that minor typos happen in real life and
find their way into lecture notes and presentations. In this case the videos have been made
available unedited. It was felt that they are real life lectures delivered in University teaching rooms,
with real students attending. Although they may be seen as unpolished in comparison with some
online lectures, comments from staff who viewed samples of the lectures were positive saying that the
academics delivering were clearly knowledgeable in their field, but more importantly came across as
approachable people with whom students would feel valued and motivated. This is an important
factor if the lectures are used as a recruitment tool.
The computing videos present recordings of complete lectures and as a consequence the file size for
each video is substantial meaning that videos can take several minutes to download to view. The
team believe that this may put off some potential viewers who may expect quick access to video clips.
However the Faculty has been contacted and asked to involve the Learning Development and
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Innovation team as new videos are commissioned, so that they can advise on video formats for open
access. In terms of quality it was agreed that this ultimately rests with Faculties.
6.1 Complete modules
OpenStaffs was pleased to receive ten complete modules from three faculties, Sciences provided
three complete modules on sustainable development, Computing, Engineering and Technology
provided four complete computing modules and Arts, Media and Design complete modules on
Researching for Art, Media and Design, Shorthand and Information Skills. This contribution reflects
support for the project from faculties and the commitment of staff in helping in the preparation of
modules for open access. The modules were all available in Blackboard. As the Hive repository and
Blackboard were not integrated and the project was working to a deadline, it was decided to copy
modules from Blackboard, repackage them and deposit the modules into JorumOpen. Repackaging
for JorumOpen required more work than had been anticipated at the outset. A key priority was to
ensure that only teaching content was exported and ensure that student information was protected.
The Faculty of Health have recently offered a significant amount of teaching material
including interviews, presentations which can be exposed through JorumOpen and Hive. At the time
of writing this report the content is being prepared and it is expected that it will be ready for
released this summer. This type of contribution supports the sustainability of OpenStaffs as the
diverse content of this material means that individuals and teams involved in the project will continue
to work together on new material for open access.
6.2 Packaging for JorumOpen
Initially the bFree BlackBoard course content extractor http://its2.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/about.html was
investigated - bFree had been used in the preparation of other University modules in
BlackBoard intended for distance learners. It was found to be unsuitable for copying courses from
BlackBoard and presenting them is a way that made them usable through JorumOpen. A detailed
description of a Learning Technologist's experiences is recorded in the project blog
http://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/openstaffs/2010/04/15/copying-material-from-blackboard-using-bfree/
The main drawbacks to the bFree package were the clunky navigation (and some empty navigation
routes, which would be misleading for the user) and a lack of an obvious index page to launch it. In
addition it was noted that JorumOpen does not recognise the bFree course files as an IMS package
and therefore does not allow a preview of content.
One of the main problems encountered in packaging for JorumOpen was that the work was with
material created in a number of formats and with no consistency in file names and structure. An early
investigation looked into the creation of a HTML index with hyperlinks to the relevant content. This
was found to be time consuming mainly on account of working with existing files. It took considerable
time to make sense of the content exported from BlackBoard due to the fact that the Learning
Technologist had to identify and delete unwanted files. Selected files were taken out of individual
folders and reassembled to create a new more sensible file structure.
For later courses it has proved more practical to look at the course in BlackBoard, create a HTML
index file in reference to it and the download individual files for hyper-linking. More complicated
courses require several index documents to adequately represent units within the course in a sensible
and navigable format, thus involving considerable time. The advantage of the HTML structure is that
the whole BlackBoard course is a usable resource outside a VLE. The disadvantage is the extensive
time required to create it; evidently this is not sustainable in the long term.
One of the final resources to be uploaded is intended specifically for staff, not directly for the use of
students themselves. This resource has been added to JorumOpen as a BlackBoard export and
HTML linked document but not converted to IMS packages. Part of finding a sustainable solution will
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be to decide who the audience is and take a closer look at how content is designed for presentation in
BlackBoard.
IMS Packages
It was hoped that using an IMS package would make content navigable and viewable in JorumOpen.
Exe was considered and ruled out because while it worked well with content that is all HTML it did not
work so well with other types of documents and BlackBoard content tended to be a mixture of all
types of Microsoft Office plus Adobe PDF files.
Reload has been the IMS packager of choice for the project because it copes with all types of files. A
more detailed account of the experience of extracting files from BlackBoard and repackaging
for JorumOpen are recorded in the project blog
http://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/openstaffs/2010/04/15/copying-material-from-blackboard-and-preparing-it-forjorumopen/
The creator of the Assignment Survival Kit (ASK) recommended a web link:
“I deposited it as a web link as I thought that would make ASK more immediately usable to
people than supplying the MySQL database, which would have been quite complex and
would require appropriate web server infrastructure as well as the necessary technical
expertise for it to be used (and this is really only necessary if people want to create their own
customised version). Many external people use ASK via our version now, so the web link is
the equivalent of this. If people do wish to create their own version we can supply the
database files if we know they have the environment and expertise to do so.”
The project discovered a surprising lack of support for content packaging in general at a technical
level. The project team, packaging BlackBoard content for deposit in JorumOpen, have had to resort
to exporting the course from Blackboard and hand-stitching a content package together to recreate
the structure because there is no "export as a content package" option in Blackboard. Once a
package has been deposited into JorumOpen it cannot be viewed properly. The package needs to be
downloaded and viewed in Reload to see its full contents. This lack of previewing capability acts as a
disincentive to searching and the reuse of learning content.
If content is migrated from Blackboard to the Hive repository, using the integration and migration tools
provided by Giunti the structure of the course doesn't come with the content, resulting in a collection
of items which need the structure recreating by hand (in Reload or a similar tool).
If such a content package is created by hand, like Jorum, Hive will not preview the package with the
structure intact, so a viewer such as Icodeon is required to view content packages. Early tests have
identified problems with the Icodeon rendering of IMS content packages too and this is being
discussed with Giunti and Icodeon.
JorumOpen does not have a bulk upload facility for individual items so the technical team used an
acceptance testing tool called Selenium to automate the deposit process for the Design Studies
Collection. This approach allowed us to programmatically deposit the 4,000 images via the
JorumOpen web interface, avoiding the laborious effort of depositing them manually. Selenium is
used in a software development context to automate acceptance testing of web applications. The
development team used the Selenium plug-in for Firefox to record the steps of logging in and
depositing an item into JorumOpen and exported the sequence of steps as Java code. The Design
Collection MODES database, containing the catalogue metadata, was exported in XML format and
manually edited to correct some misplaced metadata fields. Code was written to query metadata from
the XML file and insert it into the appropriate JorumOpen fields along with the image files. The
automated deposit code is available on the OpenStaffs web site.
The development team liaised with the JorumOpen team before depositing all 4,000 images and it
was agreed that a twenty image test deposit would be performed. The twenty images with their
metadata were successfully deposited using the automated tool. The JorumOpen staff contacted the
project team a few days later to ask that the rest of the 4,000 images not be deposited, because
JorumOpen might appear to be an image bank. Following discussions with the Director of Edina it
was agreed that the 4,000 plus slides form a single collection, and it would be helpful if they could be
treated as such in JorumOpen.
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Jorum agreed to arrange for a separate area to be created within Jorum to house the Design Studies
Collection. The OpenStaffs team have deposited the Design Studies Collection onto a Jorum staging
server and the Jorum team will house them in an appropriate location.
An issue of concern when depositing content in JorumOpen is that, despite indications that profiles
can be made private on the JorumOpen profile page terms and conditions, any content deposited has
the name and email address of the depositor published in the metadata available from the “show full
item record” link (see example below).
6.3 Institutional Policies for OER
Work on policy for OER is proceeding and the Associate Director, Learning Technology and
Information Services is taking policies to appropriate University committees for approval. Institutional
OER Repository policies have been written to build robust administrative practices as the repository
develops, and attempt to cover the legal issues associated with an open access repository. Some of
this work was informed by the Repository Consultation Day, Appendix 9. .
The policies are summarised below and the full documents are available in Appendix 8





Metadata Policy for information describing items in the repository
Data Policy for full-text and other full data items
Content Policy for types of content and data set held
Submission Policy
Preservation Policy
“The OER policies outlined in Appendix 8 have made a journey through the governance of the
University – discussed at both the Information Strategy Group and sub groups reporting to
Academic Board, they have required very little refinement and have served as important
dissemination opportunities. There is wide representation on the committees from faculties and
services; there are important influencers and keen early adopters, the curious, and those for
whom this is the first opportunity to engage with OER. The discussion has enabled OER
awareness to gain momentum, energy and direction, it has also generated demand for the
development of an Open Archive Repository for research output and a presentation to the
Research, Enterprise and Advanced Scholarship Committee takes place in late April 2010 to
explore this further”. Dave Parkes, Associate Director, Learning Technology and Information
Services
6.4 Guides for depositors
Interim guides for depositors have been written for academic staff contributors and librarians based
on deposits to JorumOpen and are available on the project web site. The purpose of the guides is to
encourage depositors, explain the philosophy of OER, identify the content and formats that are most
suitable for open access, outline the legal responsibilities of depositors around copyright, accessibility
and data protection. Importantly ensuring depositors know where to seek further advice on OER
issues. When Hive is fully updated and ready for depositors and creators to use, appropriate guides
will be written, training offered along with the publicity for the launch of the repository. It is early days
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yet and the search interface and metadata for Hive is not fully developed, but when interfaces are in
place for users to browse and search the repository appropriate guides will be produced.
Nearing the end of the project the team is aware that much of the advice offered to staff on OER has
been about copyright and IPR, focussing on legal responsibilities and the risks to the University of
Copyright Infringements. There is a strong case for focussing on the more positive aspects of Open
Access by promoting Creative Commons content that can be integrated into learning material.
Locating and using copyright cleared material is identified as an area of concern identified by staff
participating in the Focus Group, Appendix 3. Workshops and more podcasts on copyright (and
Creative Commons) are planned when the restructure of Information Services is complete.
OpenStaffs has shared guides written to date with the Unicycle project. Unicycle is producing a guide
for staff at Leeds Metropolitan University, inviting other projects in the programme to contribute and
comment, particularly projects in the Institutional strand of the programme. The final version will be
released under a Creative Commons licence at the end of the programme.
.
6.5 Outstanding Project Objectives
As outlined in Section 5.3 the project has suffered from delays in upgrades to BlackBoard and Hive
and as a result the integration of BlackBoard and Hive. As a consequences a number of objective set
out in the project plan of June 2009 have not been achieved before the formal end of the project in
April 2010. Outstanding objectives are summarised in the table below. As work progresses on the
integration of the repository and BlackBoard it is anticipated that most of these objectives will be met
over the next few months.
Objective: Initial capture of content for OpenStaffs project
1. Configure repository ready for content migration
2. Identify and describe constraints and dependencies arising from the dual use of content
in Blackboard and as OERs
3. Create and populate environment for testing content migration and OER operations and
workflows
Objective: Quality assurance for OER
4. Develop workflow/process for the application of copyright metadata to University OER
(and restricted release closed resources)
Objective: Metadata, packaging and discovery of OER
5. Develop/select/adopt metadata for OER to facilitate harvesting, discovery via search
engines (inc Google Scholar) and via tools such as SWORD via RSS/Atom
6. Investigate formats and tools for creation of OER objects. Investigation issues of
granularity of resources for reuse/repurposing and tools for the creation/packaging of
OER in appropriate formats such as SCORM, IMS CP and IMS Common Cartridge
7. Implement necessary interfaces for the above
Objective: Develop process for exposure
8. Identify available technical facilities for exposure
9. Develop process and interfaces to access restricted material
Objective: Further curation
10. Investigate and put in place processes and interfaces for statistics/usage
11. Process for reviewing and removing content
Objective: Dissemination
12. Update stakeholders and interested parties through project web site, blog and RSS
feeds
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6.6 Events and workshops
Hive Workshop and briefing on OER project 9 July 2009 for Information Services and Learning
Development and Innovation staff. Attended by 14 people the session included briefings on:






National context
University strategy
University business plan and models for Open Access
Repository central to IS strategy
Hive demonstration and hands on practice
Roles for librarians, Learning Development and Innovation specialists and copyright
leads for the project
Metadata and Repositories – 22 October 2009 event organised for staff in Information Services and
Learning Development and Innovation in preparation for working with the repository. There were 20
attendees during the day including the Associate Director Learning Technology and Information
Services who introduced the event and gave some institutional context to the OER project. The
session was led by Nancy Graham and Jill Graham from Birmingham University. See Appendix 10
for outcomes of this workshop.
Repository training on Hive Test - 23 February 2010 event organised for staff in Information
Services and Learning Development and Innovation in preparation for depositing material in the
repository. The session covered logging on to Test Hive. Making a deposit, editing, version
management and linking to items in Hive and was attended by 19 members of staff.
Giunti – 3 March 2010 demonstration of Giunti packager software to people creating OERs for
deposit, viewing and reuse. The event was attended by 12 members of staff from Information
Services and Learning Development and Innovation.
Repository Consultation Day, Friday 19 March led by Dominic Tate from the Repository Support
Project. The day was arranged for staff in Information Services and Learning Development and
Innovation to assist and advise as we develop roles and workflows to organise and manage the
repository. This builds of the work we did with Nancy Graham on metadata and repositories in
October 2009. The event was attended by 14 members of staff. See Appendix 9 for the action points
from this session.
Repository Technical Roles Event – Friday 26 March event organised for IT managers to learn
about the technical architecture of the Hive repository and to identify roles and responsibilities for
supporting and managing the repository technically. Following a presentation from the Project
Technical Manager, IT roles and responsibilities were identified and a plan for the update of the live
Hive repository by Information Services was agreed.
6.7 Web Site, Social Networking Site and Project Blog
OpenStaffs web site at www.staffs.ac.uk/openstaffs
OpenStaffs has a presence on SUN (ELGG) the University social networking site. SUN is open to all
staff of the University, project documents are shared through SUN and some staff have engaged in
discussions on issues such as file type and quality through this network.
A WordPress blog for OpenStaffs has been maintained at http://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/openstaffs
Along with other blogs from projects in the OER Programme the OpenStaffs blog feeds into a public
netvibes page:
http://www.netvibes.com/hwilliamson#oer-institutional_projects
OpenStaffs created publicity posters and examples of the posters were displayed at the OER national
programme meeting in March. http://www.staffs.ac.uk/about_us/projects/openstaffs/
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6.8 External dissemination of OpenStaffs and OER
September 2009 Members of the Learning Development and Innovation team attended ALT-C and
Professor Mark Stiles participated in a role play scenario based on attitudes to OER.
September 2009 Professor Mark Stiles presented on Open Content at the EdReNe Conference in
Italy, September 2009 http://edrene.org/workshops/repositories/ws3-3.html Following the Conference
Giunti published a press release to highlight the partnership between Giunti, JISC and the OpenStaffs
project, Giunti press release http://www.giuntilabs.co.uk/info.php?vvu=15&pud=600
November 2009 Professor Mark Stiles and Dave Parkes delivered a session on OpenStaffs and
Open Educational resources at the Open Learning Conference, Nottingham University
December 2009 Professor Mark Stiles was a keynote speaker at the IASK International Association
for the Scientific Knowledge Conference December 2009, speaking on Sustaining Innovation:
Influences, Barriers and Possible Answers http://www.iask-web.org/tl09/programme.html
February 2010 Professor Mark Stiles summarised the work of OpenStaffs to the Project Team of the
Interactive TV Project at the College of West Anglia, Kings Lynn, (a JISC curriculum delivery project).
Professor Stiles is a critical friend to the CWA project and great interest was expressed in the Betty
Smithers Collection.
March 2010 Professor Mark Stiles led a discussion on OER at the 'Learning for Success
Unconference: best practice and next practice in learning and teaching at Staffordshire University'
6.9 Internal dissemination of OpenStaffs and OER
Librarians have worked as advocates for OER with Faculty contacts and through Faculty meetings.
Members of Learning Development and Innovation have talked about OpenStaffs in the context of
other projects they are involved in, most notably the Enable project, an institutional wide project
looking at curriculum development, also sponsored by JISC http://www.projects.staffs.ac.uk/enable/
Items on OER and the OpenStaffs project have been published in Information Services News which is
distributed to all University staff through email and is available on the Information Services web site:
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/uniservices/infoservices/
Throughout the project monthly reports on progress have been sent to the University Executive
through the Business Re-Engineering Manager and to the Portfolio Manager in Information Services
for the Senior Management Team. In addition the Information and Knowledge Board (part of the
Information Services governance structure) has received regular updates from the project CoDirectors and the University Executive Pro Vice Chancellor has received regular reports from
Professor Stiles in her in her role as the project Executive Sponsor.
6.10 Outputs from the evaluation process
Evaluation
At the outset of the project librarians in Learning Technology and Information Services worked
through the list of resources offered by Faculties and Schools to support the bid, making contact with
module leaders, course creators and Faculty e-learning co-ordinators, collecting resources. All
OpenStaffs
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Project Acronym: OpenStaffs
Version: 1.0
Contact: Sarah Hall
Date: 26 April 2010
available material was examined for potential issues in the context of OER. Librarians were asked to
encourage and support any new contributions to OpenStaffs, acting as advocates for OpenStaffs.
At an early stage issues around the understanding and application of copyright in the creation of
resources was recognised as an important issue to address and fed back to the project team. This
was in common with other projects in the Programme and communications with other projects through
blogs and Elluminate sessions; especially on legal issues were a source of support.
Recently the project has been examining more closely attitudes to OER among Staffordshire
University staff. It would have been desirable to work more on marketing internally produced OER,
but this was limited by the delays in establishing a working repository. Some members of staff have
been shown JorumOpen, particularly contributors of OER and some early feedback has been
gathered.
The discussions held at the early stage of the project revealed a very mixed picture. This ranged from
reluctance to contribute resources to the project, those who were willing to contribute resources but
would only involve themselves if no or minimal effort was required (workload was often cited as the
reason for this attitude). To finally those who were both willing and keen to contribute and work with
the OpenStaffs team.
Around the midpoint of the project the University’s Information Protection and Security Manager
conducted a survey via a quiz on copyright to ascertain levels of staff understanding of the issues
involved. Details of this are provided in Appendix 5, but the overall conclusion was that a significant
gap relating to the detailed issues around copyright existed. As a result support material, including
podcasts, is being created to promote copyright and creative commons more widely and actively.
Towards the latter stages of the project an experienced researcher who is a member of Information
Services held a series of telephone interviews with a range of individuals using a common
questionnaire originally targeted at a focus group. This approach was adopted to overcome the
difficulties in gathering focus group members together physically. The detail of this activity is covered
in Appendix 2 and Appendix 3. The outcome of this research clearly revealed that the project had
been successful in raising the profile of OER in the institution. The majority of respondents (75%)
described themselves as lecturers. Almost half (45%) were from the Faculty of Health, and 25% from
the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology the rest were spread evenly through the
faculties and schools. The majority (65%) work full-time. It was clear that the majority of staff viewed
OER as an activity offering positive benefit. Concerns that staff raised were more about practical
issues around the work load associated with OER and the need for processes which facilitated the
creation and publication of resources rather than acting as bottlenecks.
At the same time a Qualtrics survey was sent out via email to all staff employed at Staffordshire
University. Survey questions were intended to gain response regarding the extent of knowledge that
respondents had of OER and whether they would be willing to take part and create resources in the
future. Supplementary emails were sent out to academic staff via Faculty Learning and Teaching
Directors and subject librarians. Participants in the survey were given an option to leave an email
contact address if they were interested in more information about OER. This information has been
passed on to the project team and faculty librarians to follow up. People who responded to the
survey and asked for more information came from Faculty of Health, Faculty of Arts, Media and
Design, Faculty of Sciences, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology and Information
Services. This is and indication that interest in OER is spread across subject disciplines in the
University. This survey is reported in Appendix 4.
OpenStaffs survey results have been sent to Lou McGill of the Synthesis and Evaluation Team to
contribute to the work she is doing on staff attitudes to publishing and using OERs for the Institutional
strand of the OER Programme.
6.11 Lessons learned
The importance of Executive level commitment cannot be overstated. There is no doubt that the
inclusion of OpenStaffs in the Executive portfolio of projects has contributed greatly to the project’s
OpenStaffs
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Project Acronym: OpenStaffs
Version: 1.0
Contact: Sarah Hall
Date: 26 April 2010
success in acquiring OERs for deposit, in raising the profile of the OER concept across the University
and in leaving the project in a position where the use of OERs at Staffordshire has a sustainable
future.
A hard lesson to learn has been the impact on large projects such as OpenStaffs that organisational
restructures can have. The reorganisation of Information Services impacted negatively on the project
due to lack of clarity around the ownership of roles and the organisation and execution of necessary
underpinning technical work. This underlined the necessity of getting infrastructural technical support
aligned to the need of this type of development.
As has been said elsewhere, in hindsight, the need to modify the project’s work in response to these
problems has proved to have unexpected benefits as discussed in Section 5.3 Technical Challenges.
Early in the project, the project managers identified the need to recruit a repository manager to focus
on the investigation and development of roles, responsibilities, and workflows involved in setting up
and managing the repository and laying the groundwork for repository advocacy, The Information
Services restructure made it impossible to pursue recruitment for such a role and this had a negative
impact on the project. A new development like this requires continuous planning, execution,
coordination and advocacy. It is much harder to achieve this with activity and ownership fragmented
over part-time participants alone.
.
The increasing willingness of colleagues to provide resources for exposure as OERs has highlighted
the value of exposing potential depositors to colleagues’ material. In particular this has proved a
“confidence builder” in that seeing colleagues’ contributions helps potential depositors overcome
reservations that they may have about their own resources. In addition exposing colleagues to such
things as YouTube.edu, OpenLearn, ItunesU, etc has proved an effective method of engaging
colleagues and has been a platform for generating ideas about future resources.
A wider lesson worth considering might be the need to have in place the means for depositors to view
the end results of their efforts in a positive way. Colleagues have been disappointed when they have
viewed their resources as deposited in JorumOpen, and the need for JorumOpen to expose
resources in visually acceptable way requires further consideration.
7 Outcomes and Impact
Returning to the project Aims and Objectives summarised in Section 4 it can be seen that reading
through the report , that there are significant gaps between aims and achievements set out at the
beginning of the project and the position of OpenStaffs at the end of the project. Work packages set
out in the project plan that have not been achieved are listed in Section 6.6 and below is a summary
of the list of project aims and objectives set out in Section 4 with a few words against each
summarising where OpenStaffs is now in term of the project intentions.
a. Establish a clear University mandate/position on OER – the project has resolved the
mandate position, produced policies on OER and taken them through the University approval
process.
b. Explore legal issues around OER including the impact on the University and its extended
community – staff development needs identified and progress made on addressing them.
The project has successfully gathered examples of material which can be used to create
scenarios to guide future depositors. The project has highlighted the need to gain
permissions. In addition it has revealed the need to address issues around material provided
by individuals and organisations outside the University including commercial publishers. The
project has raised awareness of Creative Commons.
c.
Address policy issues – the project has established Institutional OER repository policies.
d. Develop new business models – the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology is
actively exploring the ‘Self Learn’ model. The faculty of Arts, Media and Design is exploring
the ‘Showcasing for recruitment’ model. Deans are looking at extending the use of technology
OpenStaffs
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Project Acronym: OpenStaffs
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Contact: Sarah Hall
Date: 26 April 2010
supported learning and developing new business models to attract students and expand into
new markets for recruitment. OER would play a significant part in developing new courses,
providing access to innovative and engaging material through Creative Commons. In turn
where courses are planned for open access material new material from the University can be
released to the OER community
e. Deposit content that is the equivalent of 500 credits into JorumOpen – a summary of
OER released through the project is listed in Section 6.
f.
Offer a range of learning materials from different subject areas and Faculties – a
summary of OER released through the project is listed in Section 6.
g. Upgrade the Blackboard VLE and Hive repository software - not achieved but in hand
h. Integrate BlackBoard and Hive - not achieved but in hand
i.
Develop an Interface between Hive and JorumOpen - not achieved but in hand
j.
Investigate customer interfaces - not achieved but in hand
k.
Cataloguing and metadata schema for repository content – IMS metadata standard
selected, see Section 5.5
l.
New roles for support staff – roles are being established as Information Services completes
the current restructure
m. Testing and evaluation – not fully achieved but in hand
n. Incorporate a system to collect statistics to quantify the use and reuse of content – not
achieved but, but under investigation
o. Stakeholder feedback – surveys and focus groups have been used and more will follow as
the repository develops
Although the project has struggled with organisational and technical problems we are getting to the
point where the project is beginning to look sustainable as the various aspects come together.
The involvement and the engagement of people who work with copyright, learning objects and liaise
with academic staff in their regular jobs has allowed the management of OER to be integrated into
existing roles. In the long term it is expected that this model will be more sustainable than a model
limited to the timescale of a project.
8 Conclusions and Recommendations
Although the project has struggled with overcoming technical and organisational barriers,
nevertheless the overall approach has led to a position where both the use of OERs and the provision
of resources locally via an institutional repository appear to be sustainable. In particular policy and
governance issues have been successfully addressed and although the reorganisation of the
University’s Information Services has caused the project enormous problems, the fact that this
reorganisation coincided with the project, has enabled many issues around the management and
support of both an Institutional repository and the use of OERs to be addressed as part of the
reorganisation process.
As has been discussed in detail elsewhere in the report Staffordshire’s approach to ensuring that any
JISC project is fully aligned to local strategy and business goals has been firmly validated. Without
this approach the high level support that the project has enjoyed would not have happened.
OpenStaffs
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Project Acronym: OpenStaffs
Version: 1.0
Contact: Sarah Hall
Date: 26 April 2010
The experience of the project has shown that the release of existing resources as OER can be both
labour intensive and time consuming. This has led to the conclusion that the internal processes for the
creation of learning resources (along with associated guidance and policy) in the future need to take
into account the possibility of their subsequent release as OER.
The project has also shown the importance of local champions within faculties and the need to
engage faculty e-learning support staff in these processes. Without this OER could become viewed as
a centrally imposed approach, with resulting negative perception.
9 Implications for the future
The difference between a learning content repository and an institutional repository is not well
understood and it is hard to get the message across. A learning content repository, like Hive, has the
functionality of an institutional (library/resource-flavoured) repository but different metadata (mostly
Learning Object Metadata rather than Dublin Core) and it integrates closely with learning
management systems (VLEs, etc). This is important because integration with VLEs imposes extra
constraints on what can be done with the content. For example, a take-down policy might require an
offending piece of an OER to be removed from open access. If this same content is being served to
the institutional VLE, this needs to be done in a way that allows the content to remain accessible via
the VLE. In other words, the learning content repository is more analogous to a database than a
library of resources. Ignore the difference at your peril.
Support for content packages is not mature or widespread enough. Support is poor both in terms of
exporting content from VLEs and viewing packaged content in repositories. Though deposit of content
packages is possible, repositories do not render content packages in a form that would help a user to
identify and reuse the content. This will act as a barrier to reuse of OERs and, hence, managing and
diversifying the delivery of learning content, until it is addressed.
It is clear that the true cost benefit of OER release is not yet fully understood and is likely not to be so
until associated new business models are more fully realised.
A challenge for all institutions in the context of OER is the achievement of a shared attitude to risk,
particularly in terms of potential claims of copyright infringement.
It is clear that business models associated with OER are in their infancy and whether any institution
pursues models based on for example Self Learn and the sale of assessment and accreditation; OER
as a reputation builder; or OER as a means of enhancing recruitment via ‘Showcase’ will be highly
dependent on any given institutions business strategy. Any local approach to OER will need to be
thus aligned.
From the perspective of sustainability as well as addressing the above issues it is clear that a number
of other uncertainties will need more exploration, for example the real actual demand for OERs is not
fully understood, in particular the demand from employing organisations. The degree to which
companies might wish to draw on OERs and how that might generate revenue creation for higher
education institutions needs much further investigation.
OpenStaffs
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Project Acronym: OpenStaffs
Version: 1.0
Contact: Sarah Hall
Date: 26 April 2010
10 Appendices
Appendix 1: Strategic Plan for Technology Supported Learning
Appendix 2: OER Questionnaire for the Focus Group
Appendix 3: Focus Group Report
Appendix 4: OER All Staff Survey
Appendix 5: Report on a Copyright Quiz and Summary of Results
Appendix 6: BlackBoard Quality Checklist
Appendix 7: Open Educational Resources at Staffordshire University
(Mandate Rationale)
Appendix 8: Institutional OER Repository Policies
Appendix 9: Notes from the Repository Consultation Day
Appendix 10: Notes from the Metadata and Repositories Workshop
OpenStaffs
Page 26 of 55
Appendix 1: Strategic Plan for Technology Supported Learning
Overall strategic aim:
To develop and implement a flexible and agile approach to the use of technology support learning (TSL) to enable its impact on contributing to corporate goals to be
maximized.
Activity for 2007-2012
Implement effective
management of learning
resources and course
related information
Objectives by 2012
Have in place an institutional repository which is focused
towards learning and teaching and which will, by working
seamlessly with technologies used for delivery, provide:
 Flexibility and diversification in TSL approaches
 Effective management and reuse/repurposing of learning
and course related content
 Responsiveness in creating resources for new course
products

Effective exploitation of research outputs to inform
teaching and learning
Expand the use of TSL for
Flexible Learning, WBL and
Business and Community
Engagement activities and
the strengthening of SURF
and other partnerships
Use appropriate and linked technologies to provide targeted
support for employers, mentors, partner tutors and work-based
learners, and targeted information to create and maintain
employer engagement.
Put in place a system of
learner-focused Quality
Enhancement for TSL
Provide flexible and targeted support for course development
and delivery activities, including validation, provision of course
related information, progression, and access to support and
expertise
Use appropriate technologies to make effective use of PDP
and ePortfolios as an intrinsic part of the learning experience.
Create an agile quality model based on communities of
practice and linked to the dissemination of good practice and
staff development making use of:
 Peer observation of eLearning
 Evaluation of eLearning designed to inform award
leaders
- 27 -
Current Milestones

All VLE content in repository
and repository content available
for reuse in a variety of systems
Sept 08

Repository management in
place Sept 09

Research outputs in
repository Sept 09

Business processes in place
to feed course related
information to repository Sept 10

On-line guidance for staff on
the production, and distribution,
of various media Sept 09

SURF WBL content in
repository accessible from WBL
portal Sept 08

Pebble Pad content in
repository Sept 09

Enhanced WBL support point
Sept 09

Guidance and processes for
joined-up enrolment in TSL
systems (April 2010)
Means of verification

Review of repository
content and statistics




Guidelines for models piloted
Spring 08
2 Models in place including
guidance July 08
PO and evaluation of eLearning
in place Sept 08



Review of repository
content
Analysis of WBL
Support point usage
across SURF
Review of TSL
processes
Review and report End
08
Diversify the delivery of TSL
Implement a fast-track quality model with guidelines for
validation panels founded on the use of “badged” models of
eLearning
Have diversity in TSL delivery using a range of new media and
technologies, including VLEs, Web 2.0 applications, mobile
technologies and other emerging technologies

Fast-track approach via models
agreed Sept 08

Guidance and policy for use of
Web 2.0 and other new media
(Spring 2009)
Online “Roadmap for TSL
Developments” (August 2009)
Evaluated pilots of new
approaches and technologies
(2008 ongoing)

Review via validation and
monitoring outputs of TSL
usage and
implementation
Provision of TSL awareness
session for all new academic
staff - (By Jan 2009)
TSL PGCert Sept 08,
Diploma Sept 09, Masters 2010

Uptake of sessions
and courses
Analysis of CoP
participation

Have identified a range of models for the use of diverse
technologies and agree guidelines for their interoperation with
each other and corporate systems
Disseminate good practice
and build effective staff
development in TSL
Agreed, for Web 2 and other emerging technologies, a policy
for use and minimum level of corporate control
Staff development in TSL is integrated with course
development and delivered “at point of need”.
Provide a range of CPD activities, both non-accredited and
accredited. Models in TSL are developed and exploited in a
community of practice approach to ensure spread of good
practice.
WBL integrated into TSL CPD
Improve the administration
of TSL and the provision of
course related information
Provide an expanded range of accredited provision of
eLearning focused courses, including an eLearning Masters
course(s) provided collaboratively with Faculties.
Effective, responsive and customer focussed administration of
eLearning and related support is in place
 Electronic Prospectus implementation
 Student Record System enhancements
 e-Enrolment & VLE interfaces
 On-going Institutional Portal implementation




Models of TSL further
developed via a CoP approach to
ensure the spread of good
practice (ongoing)


New website course search 2008
Electronic Module enrolment
2008/9
Online results portlet re-launch
2008



- 28 -
Co-ordinated approach to the
provision of an electronic
prospectus to ensure all
requirements are taken into
account and outputs available in
the repository (2010)
Improved Blackboard integration
to enable more automated and




Review of Electronic
module enrolment and
results portlet
Review of prospectus
Feedback from Faculties
on Blackboard enrolment
flexible staff and student
enrolment Sept 08
Put in place an approach to
Research and Development
in TSL which enhance the
University’s reputation and
attract external funding
An institutional approach to R & D in TSL designed to
maximise income and funding



Ensure that the work on
Study Skills and Information
Literacy makes appropriate
use of, and is integrated
with, TSL
Availability of guides and opportunities for technology access,
hardware and software familiarisation, online skills and
relationships, motivation online audio and video material, peer
interaction and technology, information literacy and study skills.
Instant messenger support available from help desks and
specialist subject and discipline support. Ongoing digitisation of
material.

Implemented a technical
infrastructure which will
allow the ready
interconnection of TSL
applications and other
systems and which will allow
TSL applications to be
introduced/removed in a
flexible and responsive way
Further develop the University server, storage and network
infrastructure, and systems to provide a modular, agile and
responsive environment based on industry standards.
Including:
 Appropriate use of Web service approaches (SOA).
 Use of virtualisation to provide flexibility in capacity and
greater resilience of core TSL systems

Carry out a study of the TSL
support and resourcing
needs within faculties
including how these can be
best linked to central
support and produce a
report recommending the
way forwards
Develop an identity management system to allow seamless
access and authorisation to TSL applications.
Effective support for use of TSL within Faculties
TSL support within Faculties works in partnership with central
support
- 29 -





Plan for TSL R&D linking centre
and Faculties (Jan 09)
Annual Staffordshire TSL
Conference (2008)


Attendance and
participation in
Conference
Number of publications
Increased publications in TSL
across the University (2009)
Increased use of audio and video
tools (eg podcasts) (2009)
Electronic guides for study and
resource use (2008)
Digitisation of key resources
(2008 on-going)

SOA developments via online
results portlet and development
of online module enrolment
(2008/09)
Virtualisation strategy and plan
(2008)
Implement an identity
management solution (2009)

Reports on progress from
Corporate Information
and IT
Report on Faculty TSL Support
and Resourcing Requirements
(Spring 2009)

Report presented for
action

Review of repository
content
Number and take-up of
digitised resources
Appendix 2: OER Questionnaire for the Focus Group
complied by Dr Geoff Walton
- 31 -
- 32 -
Appendix 3: Focus Group Report compiled by Dr Geoff Walton
- 33 -
- 34 -
- 35 -
- 36 -
- 37 -
Appendix 4: OER All staff survey
- 38 -
- 39 -
- 40 -
- 41 -
- 42 -
Appendix 5: Report on a Copyright Quiz and Summary of Results
compiled by Dr Geoff Walton and Sue Howlett
OpenStaffs Open Educational Repository (OER) Copyright Element
OpenStaffs Open Educational Repository (OER) is a pilot project sponsored by JISC and the
Higher Education Academy; it runs from May 2009 until April 2010.
OER can include all types of resource: full courses, course materials, complete modules,
notes, videos, assessments, tests, simulations, worked examples, software, and any other
tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge. These resources will be
released under an intellectual property license that permits open use and adaptation.
Copyright, IPR & OER
Aim of this part of the project is to ensure University staff understand the legalities of
Copyright and IPR (Intellectual Property Rights), how it relates to OER and to what extent
that understanding s.
Planning Meetings



Meeting to discuss copyright challenges.
o What do people know?
o How to promote and deliver?
What did we want to achieve?
o Discover how well staff understand copyright legislation
Plan of Approach
o Copyright Quiz
o Type of delivery
 Electronic?
 Paper?
 Chalk and talk?
 Multimedia?
 Create Learning Objects
o Measured learning
o Pedagogical model
Copyright Quiz
First steps, working with a Librarian colleague, a set of appropriate questions were devised. It
was decided that using Qualtrics (electronic) online survey software would be the most
- 43 -
appropriate, immediate and cost effective method of delivering the questions to a target
audience.
The tutor of the PgCHPE cohort was approached and asked for his students’ participation in
the survey as part of this course.
Pedagogical Model
Working with an E-learning Models Co-ordinator there was discussion around the best model for the
desired result. Several options were considered and the decision was as follows:
Delivery pattern – This is likely to be a ‘single session’ input with online activities before and after the
face-to-face session
Learners - Participants are a PgCHPE cohort at Staffordshire University, likely to have some
experience of using technology.
Learning outcomes – to be aware of copyright issues and apply correct regulations to resources.
Tools used – podcast.
Models discussed: Blended learning model (for individual activity) and underpinning principles.
These learning objects will also be made available on Blackboard in the near future.
Measured learning
The aim of the quiz was to ask them to engage with the quiz before a learning face to face
session. Part of their session would be a presentation on copyright and IPR and then they
would be given an opportunity to listen to the podcast and then access the quiz again a few
days later.
Analysis of copyright quiz data
The twenty participants for this questionnaire were drawn from the PgCHPE course and all are staff
employed at Staffordshire University. The quiz was administered in the November of 2009. This was
administered before the podcasts were played.
The majority of respondents (75%) described themselves as lecturers. Almost half (45%) were from
the Faculty of Health, and 25% from FCET the rest were spread evenly through the faculties and
schools. The majority (65%) work full-time. Most of the participants (70%) described themselves as
‘fairly aware’ of copyright and only 25% described themselves as ‘not very aware’.
Intellectual property drew more uncertain responses where 35% of respondents described
themselves as ‘not very aware’. Plagiarism gained the most positive response where participants
described themselves as either ‘fairly aware’ (50%) or ‘very aware’ (50%)
Using guidance appears to be a problematic area. Only 15% of respondents answered ‘definitely yes’
to the question on using copyright guidance. By contrast 25% of respondents reported that they may
use guidance and 45% answered that they ‘probably or ‘definitely’ would not use guidance material.
The majority of respondents (95%) recognize that copyright applies to all materials and 50%
understand that copyright is in place for the life of the author plus 70years.
Ownership is a more problematic area with only 50% of respondents recognizing that copyright is held
by the employer.
Only 35% of respondents recognize that when permission for copyright clearance is needed they
should obtain it from the rights owners before using the work.
Worryingly, regarding web pages, 69%of respondents in total either believe they can copy web pages
without permission (37%) or believe web pages are not covered by copyright (32%).
- 44 -
Unfortunately, take up of the post podcast quiz was only a fraction of the original survey and so no
comparison can be drawn.
In conclusion it appears that whilst there is a general recognition regarding the concept of copyright
there is a significant gap in knowledge relating to the detailed issues surrounding it. Therefore it is
recommended that the copyright podcast are promoted more widely and are more via the webpage,
staff induction and training.
- 45 -
Appendix 6: Blackboard Quality Checklist
- 46 -
Appendix 7: Open Educational Resources at Staffordshire
University (Mandate Rationale)
Open Educational Resources at Staffordshire University
OpenStaffs
The University has been successful in securing HEFCE funding under the Joint JISC/HEA Open
Educational Resources pilot projects call. £250,000 has been allocated to the institution for the
delivery of open educational resources which can be full courses, course materials, complete
modules, notes, videos, assessments, tests, simulations, worked examples, software, and any other
tools or materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge. These resources will be
released under an intellectual property license that permits open use and adaptation.
Staffordshire University is committed to disseminating its learning and teaching materials as widely as
possible by providing free, online access where possible to these resources.
The University produces, a large number of high quality lecture notes, learning objects, podcasts,
documentation, guides and online learning activities in support of learning and teaching. This work is
of value to the institution in terms of repurposing, dissemination, intellectual property and reputation.
These resources will be released under an intellectual property license that permits open use and
adaptation via an Open educational resources institutional repository. The repository will enable the
preservation, promotion, dissemination and access to these resources and will provide:






a marketing opportunity to attract students and to provide potential students with some insight
into the higher education experience, helping to widen access, improve retention, and reduce
dropout rates.
add to the body of reusable content to support the curriculum. Structured educational content
leads to access to even more resources and increases the chances of finding things that are
useful, or which can be made useful.
a mechanism for recognising good teaching and potentially rewarding good teaching.
act as a “shop window” to the University and will be perceived, as an indicator of the quality of
education at Staffordshire University, as such, it will encourage more overseas students.
support the ethos and mission of the institution, particularly in reaching educationally
disadvantaged students and in promoting distance, blended and flexible learning
By being free to all and empowering students, it provides an enormous benefit to society at
large, whether regional, national, or worldwide.
Specific details of deposit, processes involved and general background information including staff
copyright, guidance and FAQs can be found at the Open Staffs web site.
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/openstaffs
- 47 -
Appendix 8: Institutional OER Repository Policies
STAFFORDSHIRE UNIVERSITY INSTITUTIONAL OER REPOSITORY
POLICIES
Metadata Policy for information describing items in the repository
1. Anyone may access the metadata free of charge.
2. The metadata may be re-used in any medium without prior permission for not-for-profit
purposes provided the OAI Identifier or a link to the original metadata record are given.
3. The metadata must not be re-used in any medium for commercial purposes without formal
permission.
Data Policy for full-text and other full data items
1. Anyone may access full items free of charge.
2. Single copies of full items can be:
a. reproduced, and displayed or performed in any format or medium for personal
research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission
or charge.
provided:
b. the institution, the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given
2. Full items must not be harvested by robots except transiently for full-text indexing or
citation analysis
3. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal
permission of the copyright holders.
4. Some full items are individually tagged with different rights permissions and conditions.
5. This repository is not the publisher; it is merely the online archive.
Content Policy for types of document & data set held
1. This is an institutional repository.
2. No content policy defined.
Submission Policy concerning depositors, quality & copyright
1. Items may only be deposited by accredited members of the institution, or their delegated
agents.
2. Authors may only submit their own work for archiving.
3. Eligible depositors must deposit bibliographic metadata for all their publications.
4. Eligible depositors must deposit full texts of all their publications, although they may delay
making them publicly visible to comply with publishers' embargos.
5. The administrator only vets items for the eligibility of authors/depositors, relevance to the
scope of the repository, valid format, and the exclusion of spam
6. The validity and authenticity of the content of submissions is the sole responsibility of the
depositor.
7. Items can be deposited at any time, but will not be made publicly visible until any publishers'
or funders' embargo period has expired.
8. Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors/depositors.
9. If the repository receives proof of copyright violation, the relevant item will be removed
immediately.
Preservation Policy
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1. Items will be retained indefinitely
2. The repository will try to ensure continued readability and accessibility.
It may not be possible to guarantee the readability of some unusual file formats.
3. The repository regularly backs up its files according to current best practice.
4. Items may be removed at the request of the author/copyright holder, but this is strongly
discouraged.
5. Acceptable reasons for withdrawal include:
a. Journal publishers' rules
b. Proven copyright violation or plagiarism
c. Legal requirements and proven violations
d. National Security
e. Falsified research
6. Withdrawn items are not deleted per se, but are removed from public view.
7. Withdrawn items' identifiers/URLs are retained indefinitely. If necessary, an updated version
may be deposited. The earlier version may be withdrawn from public view.
8. No closure policy defined
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Appendix 9: Notes from the Repository Management Day
Repository Management – Consultation Day
19 March 2010
Leader: Dominic Tate, Repository Support Project (RSP) dominic.tate@nottingham.ac.uk
Attendees from Information Services (IS): Helen Miller, Nicky Adams, Phil Calvert, Kathleen
Morgan, Shaun Coates, Paul Johnson, Deb Roberts, Alison Pope, Pam Dunning, Sarah Hall
Attendees from Learning Development and Innovation (LDI): Christa Appleton, Sam Rowley, Ray
Reid
Location: Library Conference Room, Cadman Building, Stoke
Background
The University has an institutional repository, Hive, which is managed by Information Services with
LDI leading on the technical development of the repository. It is anticipated that the repository will be
‘live’ from April 2010. The development of the repository has been an objective of the OpenStaffs
institutional Open Educational Resources project, April 2009 to April 2010. Delays in the upgrades to
the repository have meant that some of the objectives of OpenStaffs have not been met in terms of
repository interfaces, workflows, depositor training and advocacy. However during the course of the
project issues have been raised concerning the content that would be exposed to open access
through the repository, for example file size and type, quality issues around compliance with data
protection, accessibility and copyright. Experience gained by staff in IS and LDI can be used to
inform the management and development of a sustainable University repository.
It is an objective of the University to make educational material created within the University more
accessible for reuse and repurpose by internal developers of learning material, saving time and effort
and avoiding ‘reinventing the wheel’.
In addition the University intends to make quality resources available on open access to raise the
profile of the University, support recruitment and contribute to the freely available material to support
current and potential students nationally and internationally.
Outcomes from consultation day



Identify the purpose of the repository and develop an action plan for the next few months.
Consider a plan of approach to some barriers already identified and some potential barriers
to the development and use of the repository.
Recommendations from Dominic, as an external consultant, on priorities and the way
forward
Action plan
Theme
1. Identify the purpose of the repository and write
policy documents to support the repository
2. Identify Item types to go into the repository with
priorities
This may include






learning material from Blackboard
learning material created outside the Blackboard
environment
University documents
material to support the Research Excellence
Framework (REF)
research archive
electronic content managed by the Library and IS
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Lead
IS Management
IS Management
3. Identify contributors to the repository and
establish access and authentication, interfaces,
training
4. Metadata
 Understand the metadata that is automatically
extracted as learning material Hive and
Blackboard are integrated
 Understand the metadata that is automatically
extracted at each new deposit
 Additional descriptions required
 Who adds any additional details? Contributor?
Cataloguer? Repository manager?
 Controlled vocabulary or free text?
 Review dates?
 Links to permission documentation for records
(e.g. permissions from third parties or CLA
records)
IS Management/Repository Manager
5. Interface
 Single interface for depositors (academics)
 Maintaining deposit through Blackboard will
maintain a procedure already familiar to many
 Interface for other contributors and repository
administrators
IS Management/Repository Manager
6. Quality
 Quality check required
 Are existing checklists adequate
 Who conducts quality checks
o Depositor
o Faculty quality assurance procedure
o Information Services
 Are additional checks required for open access
material beyond checks made on material for
internal learning and teaching?
7. Standards
 Compliance with legislation and licences
e.g.
o DDA
o Data protection
o Copyright
o Creative Commons
IS Management/Repository Manager
8. Advocacy
Advocacy should be a managed project with an
implementation strategy
 Identify faculty champions
 Work with faculty elearning co-ordinators
if possible
IS Management/Repository Manager/
Faculty librarians/Faculties
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IS Management/Repository Manager
IS Management/Information Protection
& Security Manager/Repository
Manager
9. Staff provision to implement the repository in the
short term and maintain a sustainable repository
 Repository workflows
 Time
 Priorities
 Quality assurance checks
 Random sampling?
 Training
 Roles and responsibilities
 Financial benefits/costs
 Added value to the University
10. Training and supporting material
 Case studies
 Guides for depositors
 Understating copyright and other
legislation
 Examples of good practice
 Advocacy
IS Management
IS Management/Repository Manager
Next Steps
The management of the repository should be sustainable and realistically managed and resourced by
existing staff in IS and LDI with the support of University senior management teams.
a. Write repository policy documents and take them through University committee structure
for approval
b. Identify a repository manager/ repository management team
c. Complete Hive/Blackboard integration
d. Identify a realistic and achievable starting point for working with the repository and adding
new material to the repository
e. Policy for retrospective checks on material already in Blackboard/Hive (especially for
material intended for open access)
f. Establish and evaluate workflows based on the Hive structure, identify bottlenecks and
delays
g. Work on metadata
h. Work on repository interfaces
i. Evaluate metadata and interfaces in terms of searching and finding
j. Establish access and authentication levels to contribute and administer the repository
k. Work on advocacy – key to making the repository a success. Different contributor groups
and faculties may require different approaches
l. Work on good practice advice for creators of learning material especially in terms of
compliance with DDA and copyright
m. Identify a trial Faculty or programme area for development and testing – recommended to
stage repository roll out
n. Work with faculty e-learning facilitators if possible
o. Consider ways of measuring impact through statistics, case studies, etc
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Dominic Tate suggests returning for a further workshop in 8 – 10 weeks when the Hive/Blackboard
integration is complete and the IS restructure is in place with some roles around repository
management and technical support established.
Dominic will be sending some recommendations following this consultation day.
Links to some of the supporting material mentioned during the day

Repository Support Project (RSP) http://www.rsp.ac.uk/


OpenDOAR – policies tool http://www.opendoar.org/tools/en/policies.php
Communication skills for advocacy (this first advocacy event is in London, but RSP plan to
arrange free regional events this spring/summer)
http://www.rsp.ac.uk/events/index.php?page=Advocacy2010-0514/index.php
Contacts for advice on managing sustainable learning object repositories



Huddersfield University (Graham Stone)
Oxford Brooks University
University of Worcester
Economics of open access
Alma Swan – The open access citation advantage
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18516/
Sarah Hall: Information Services
19 March 2010
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Appendix 10: Notes from the Metadata and Repositories workshop
held at Staffordshire University led by Nancy Graham, Birmingham University
Activity 1: Good and bad reasons to open up educational resources
Bad
Good
Use resources as promotion to external users.
Makes resources/teaching material
transparent.
Opening up resources to wider world,
broadening your audience.
Not reliant on ‘closed systems’ (VLEs etc.)
Encourages culture of sharing to become the
norm.
Digital copies help to preserve print copies.
Avoiding duplication of effort.
Encourages creativity.
May improve quality.
Save time and money.
Fear that teaching material isn’t ‘good enough’.
Currency/obsolescence of both content and
format.
Fear that nobody will use your material.
More resources needed to digitize content and
keep repositories sustainable.
Work can lose USP/creativity if copying others
or expecting others to copy you.
Wary of putting out original ideas.
Can cost money.
Activity 2: 20 questions to ask of a resource (starts us off thinking about metadata)
Group 1










Copyright – Creative Commons, access rights, licence
Quality – digital storage
Cost – How much will it cost to resource in terms of money, time
Level – High, Low, PG, UG, progression from one to other
Language
Relevance – due to obsolescence need to know if it’s relevant (technology used, lifespan of
content, language)
Standalone?
Skills and training needed
Format – text, online test, paper, ppt/prezi, audio, beta, conversion of formats, film, disaster
recovery, recall, maintenance updates/sustainability, DDA, technical infrastructure
Subject area – discipline
Group 2















Date created, date amended/modified (law, science vs. history of art)
Level of students intended for
Format – technical level
File size
Creator? If you’re not the creator – do you have permission to deposit
Organization – name/logo/brand
Originator/author
Policy on searching from other repositories/search engines/robots
Duplicate resource
Media type
Educational type (case study/quiz/lecture)
Self-directed learning or mediated by staff
Special requirements
Language
Copyright and translation
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





Summary of content
Time the activity will take
Learning outcomes
Credits/award/qualification
Subject heading and keywords
Level of embedded metadata
Group 3













Topic
Subject
Type – course, video, articles, presentation, module, entire course, reading list
Who is it aimed at? – UG, PG etc.
How old is the content and therefore how relevant
Where does it originate from?
Which version?
Format (software, technical support)
Special instructions
Ratings, feedback, frequency of use
Suggestions/recommendations for other resources
Language
Size of material
Main areas raised above:
Pedagogy
 Level
 Use – direct/mediated
 Purpose – time taken to complete
 Lifespan – shelflife, dates
Access
 People and robots will come searching your resources
Describing the material
 Controlled vocabulary, subject area, learning context (credit-bearing etc.), granularity,
language
 Quality indicators – branding, feedback from users, versioning
 Copyright information
 Format – all technical information, usability, media, size, requirements, accessibility
Training for depositors and users
Cost of all of these activities
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