Content Distribution Flow and Tracking
for the African Health Open Educational
Resources Network
Kathleen Ludewig Omollo
University of Michigan
September 29, 2011
Except where otherwise noted, this work is available under a Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.
1
One of the goals of Open Educational Resources
(often referred to by the acronym OER) is to
increase the visibility and use of educational
materials.
2
In order to meet that goal, OER must:
3
Have low barriers to access,
4
Be findable through a variety of pathways,
5
Be available in common file format(s), and
6
Be traceable so that you know when, how, and
how many people are accessing them. (This last
one is the most difficult.)
7
For this reason, the African Health OER Network
(“the Network”) pursues multiple distribution
methods for the widespread availability of OER
across the continent and the world.
8
The OER produced through the Network is
distributed through multiple offline and online
methods by:
9
The authoring institution,
10
OER Africa (Network co-facilitator), and
11
University of Michigan (Network co-facilitator).
12
This distribution workflow diagram shows the
whole ecosystem.
13
14
Now I will explore this chart more in depth,
looking at the distribution outlets and tracking
methods for each of the organizations.
15
Authoring Institutions
Let’s begin with the authoring institutions.
Server icon public domain, http://clker.com/. All other icons are
public domain or CC BY from http://thenounproject.com/
16
Authoring Institutions
African institutions often encounter challenges
with Internet access due to high cost of
bandwidth and power outages. This is why
offline access is extremely important.
17
Authoring Institutions:
Computer Lab
At least one of the institutions installs copies of
OER on the hard drives of desktop computers in
student computer labs.
18
Authoring Institutions:
Computer Lab > Example
Mr. Tom Ndanu, a lecturer from the University of
Ghana Dental School loaded several dental OER
videos from University of Michigan onto the
computers in the Dental School student
computer lab.
19
Authoring Institutions:
Computer Lab > Tracking
Currently the only measurement we have of
computer lab use is anecdotal and incomplete.
20
Authoring Institutions:
CD/DVD
At least one of the institutions distributes CD or
DVD copies of individual OER to students
enrolled in particular classes.
21
Authoring Institutions:
CD/DVD > Example
Example 1:
In 2009, Prof. Richard Adanu at University of
Ghana Medical School distributed a CD with the
total abdominal hysterectomy OER module to 19
fifth-year medical students.
22
Authoring Institutions:
CD/DVD > Example
Prof. Adanu distributed the OER to students in
two batches. He distributed to the first batch of
students one week and to other the following
week. By the time Prof. Adanu distributed it to
the second batch, some of those students had
already received copies of the CD from their
classmates in the first class.
23
Authoring Institutions:
CD/DVD > Example
Example 2:
In 2010, Prof. Adanu distributed a DVD with 4
OER gynecology learning modules to all 80
second-year medical students. The DVD
contained 3 modules that were created by him
and 1 that was created by Kwame Nkrumah
University of Science and Technology.
24
Authoring Institutions:
CD/DVD > Tracking
Currently the only measurement we have of
CD/DVD distribution at the institutions is
anecdotal and incomplete.
25
Authoring Institutions:
Server
Some of the authoring institutions have their
own OER servers that host content developed by
their instructors, staff, and students.
Some of these are publicly available and others
are available only through the local area
network due to bandwidth constraints.
26
Authoring Institutions:
Server > Examples
Here are some examples of institutional
websites:
27
Authoring Institutions:
Server > Examples
University of Cape Town Open Content
http://opencontent.uct.ac.za/
28
29
Authoring Institutions:
Server > Examples
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and
Technology OER
http://web.knust.edu.gh/oer/
30
31
Authoring Institutions:
Server > Examples
University of the Western Cape Free
CourseWare
http://freecourseware.uwc.ac.za/
32
33
Authoring Institutions:
Server > Analytics
Some of the authoring institutions track the
number of views or downloads of OER through
their content management system or by using
Google Analytics.
34
Authoring Institutions:
Server > Tracking
For the most part, this information is currently
shared and monitored only within the
institutions. One exception is the University of
Cape Town Open Content website, which
displays the number of views and a 5-star rating
on each resource page.
35
36
OER Africa
The authoring institution transfers a copy to OER
Africa, who publishes it to additional channels.
Server icon public domain,
http://clker.com/. All other icons
are public domain or CC BY from
http://thenounproject.com/
37
OER Africa:
Server
OER Africa links to all and hosts much of the OER
developed by Network participants on their
server located in South Africa.
(http://www.oerafrica.org/healthoer)
38
39
OER Africa:
Server > Tracking
OER Africa monitors online visitors to their
website through two platforms: AWStats and
Google Analytics.
40
OER Africa:
Server > Tracking
AWStats, which is built-in to the web platform,
tracks the number of visitors, unique visitors,
page views, and bandwidth used. This is
recorded for whole Health space as well as
individual resources.
41
OER Africa:
Server > Tracking
Google Analytics tracks much of the same
information as AWStats, as well as the
geographic information for visits, downloads
and referrals to the site.
42
OER Africa:
Server > Tracking
Every month, OER Africa prepares an internal
report summarizing statistics for both analytic
services. OER Africa shares this report with
several partner organizations, including
University of Michigan.
43
OER Africa:
OER Commons
Using RSS feeds from the website, OER Africa
team sends descriptive information (such as
title, description, authors, link, license,
keywords) for the OER it hosts to OER
Commons.
44
OER Africa:
OER Commons
OER Commons (http://www.oercommons.org)
is a website that people can use to search OER
from many sources across a wide variety of
disciplines. It doesn’t host any content, but
points to resources hosted on other websites.
45
OER Africa:
OER Commons
On OER Commons, you can search by keyword
and tailor your search by grade level, material
type, media format, and conditions of use.
46
47
OER Africa:
OER Commons
People can rate or comment on each resource.
48
49
OER Africa:
OER Commons > Tracking
OER Commons uses Google Analytics to monitor
site traffic and search patterns. OER Commons
shares those statistics with some content
providers, including University of Michigan.
50
OER Africa:
GLOBE
Also using RSS feeds, OER Africa sends
descriptive information for all the OER it hosts to
the Global Learning Objects Brokering Exchange,
known as GLOBE for short.
51
OER Africa:
GLOBE
Similar to OER Commons, GLOBE
(http://www.globe-info.org/) is a website that
people can use to search OER. It doesn’t host
content but links to content hosted someplace
else.
OER Commons also pushes its records to GLOBE.
52
53
OER Africa:
GLOBE > Tracking
GLOBE does not make its analytics public.
54
OER Africa:
YouTube
OER Africa uploads many of the video-based
resources from the Network to YouTube.
(http://www.youtube.com/user/oerafrica)
55
OER Africa:
YouTube
YouTube is the most popular video streaming
service for user-contributed content.
56
OER Africa:
YouTube > Tracking
YouTube displays the number of views on each
video.
57
58
University of Michigan
OER Africa transfers the OER to University of
Michigan, who publishes it to additional
channels.
Server icon public domain,
http://clker.com/. All other icons
are public domain or CC BY from
http://thenounproject.com/
59
University of Michigan:
Server
In order to address bandwidth limitations,
geographically-dispersed users and long-term
preservation, University of Michigan (also
known as U-M) hosts duplicate copies of the
health OER from the OER Africa website on the
Open.Michigan website.
(http://open.umich.edu/education/med/oernet
work/)
60
61
University of Michigan:
Server > Tracking
U-M uses Google Analytics to monitor website
traffic and search patterns. Most of those
analytics are currently private, but U-M is
exploring methods to make some of this data
public.
62
University of Michigan:
OER Commons and GLOBE
Through RSS feeds, U-M sends descriptive
information for the resources to OER Commons,
who then sends it to GLOBE.
63
University of Michigan:
Learning Registry
Learning Registry
(http://www.learningregistry.org) is a project in
progress, led by the U.S. Federal Government.
Like OER Commons and GLOBE, its goal is also to
make it easier to find educational materials
across institutions and repositories.
.
64
University of Michigan:
Learning Registry
U-M is working on a plug-in for the
Open.Michigan website that supports the
Learning Registry framework.
65
University of Michigan:
Blip.tv
U-M uploads any video resources from the
Network that have a U-M author or co-author to
Blip.TV.
(http://openmichigan.blip.tv.)
66
University of Michigan:
Blip.tv
Similar to YouTube, Blip.tv is an online streaming
video service. In addition to hosting content, it
can also push content to other video hosting
services.
67
68
University of Michigan:
Blip.tv > Stats
Blip.tv tracks the number of views per video by
distribution channel.
69
70
University of Michigan:
YouTube
Blip.tv pushes videos to YouTube. YouTube tracks
the number of visits, likes, dislikes and
comments.
71
72
University of Michigan:
YouTube
YouTube also tracks the geographic distribution
of visits.
73
74
University of Michigan:
Roku and Boxee
Blip.tv also distributes video to two Internet
television services: Roku and Boxee.
(http://www.roku.com)
(http://www.boxee.tv)
75
University of Michigan:
Internet Archive
The videos, audio files, and textbooks are also
added to Internet Archive. Internet Archive
automatically creates streaming versions and
downloadable versions in multiple formats.
(http://www.archive.org).
76
77
University of Michigan:
Internet Archive > Tracking
Internet Archive provides the number of
downloads and user reviews for each resource.
78
University of Michigan:
Espresso Book Machine
The Espresso Book Machine is a print-ondemand book machine. It prints 300 page books
in 7 minutes at low cost.
(http://www.lib.umich.edu/espresso-bookmachine)
79
University of Michigan:
Espresso Book Machine
The textbooks from the Network are added to
U-M Espresso Book Machine catalog.
80
University of Michigan:
Espresso Book Machine > Tracking
U-M library internally tracks the number of
books printed.
81
University of Michigan:
Slideshare
U-M is experimenting with adding the
presentation slides and text documents from the
Network to SlideShare.
(http://slideshare.net.)
82
University of Michigan:
Slideshare
Slideshare enables individuals to easily browse
or embed documents.
83
University of Michigan:
Slideshare > Tracking
Slideshare tracks favorites, comments,
downloads, views, and embedded access.
84
85
University of Michigan:
DVD
Occasionally U-M prepares sampler DVDs with
content from the Network to distribute to
people who may not be able to download large
files online.
86
87
University of Michigan:
CD/DVD > Tracking
U-M has created 245 disks to date
• 200 PEPFAR Annual meeting in May 2011
• 30 OER Africa Convening meeting in May 2011
• 15 across U-M since April 2011
88
University of Michigan:
CD/DVD > Tracking
Aside from the number of disks created, it is
difficult to tell how many people and how often
the disc has been accessed. U-M plans to add a
tracking pixel to partially measure access.
89
University of Michigan:
Mobile
U-M is currently working on an initial prototype
to convert some of HTML-based learning
modules for mobile distribution.
90
91
University of Michigan:
eGranary
Lastly, U-M has initiated a partnership to
distribute offline versions of the OER through
eGranary.
92
University of Michigan:
eGranary
eGranary collects offline versions of electronic
collections through a web crawler or
removeable media. eGranary then aggregates
the collections and distributes them to servers
to over 300 academic institutions in developing
countries for access on their local area
networks.
(http://www.widernet.org/egranary/)
93
94
University of Michigan:
General > Tracking
As part of an effort make our analytics
transparent, U-M recently began to develop
public dashboards with stats from a variety of
distribution outlets.
95
http://openmichigan.geckoboard.com/dashboard/B015055A8C1C1E43/
96
University of Michigan:
General > Tracking
There is a dashboard for Open.Michigan overall
and one for the African Health OER Network is
in progress.
97
Closing Remarks
The authoring institutions, OER Africa, and U-M
continue to explore innovative methods to
distribute and track usage of OER.
98
Comments and Questions
Send your comments and questions about the
Network to healthoer@oerafrica.org.
99