The Spoken Word
Spoken Word set out to induce students and their teachers to consider what it means to 'write on and for the internet', and to develop an environment which allowed them to do that. This meant: providing tools and technologies; coping with intellectual property rights; supplying engaging and valuable content; and encouraging self-conscious awareness of the learning and teaching process. A general ambition was to use emerging technologies to exploit traditions of the Scottish University — to assert the primacy of 'formation' of the individual over the 'information' and persuade students to 'think for themselves, work on their own and contribute their work to the work of groups'.
Executive Summary
Objectives
The UK / US project summarised our central objectives as:
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improving student learning and retention
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developing aural literacy in our students
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augmenting student competence to write on --and for -- the Internet
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enhancing digital libraries through a focus on learning
At GCU the last two of these objectives took priority as more central to our ‘constructivist’ pedagogy. We intended to embed and sustain the developments of the project and to disseminate in GCU and elsewhere.
Tools and Technologies
A ‘separation of concerns’ model was implemented to manage change and aid sustainability: multimedia content at the backend; transactions layer with metadata repository in the middle; and a range of choices of presentation layer, user interface, tools. This enables plug-in / plug-out development. We needed a ‘digital library’ and REPOS, provided by MSU in 2003, is still in use as our ‘middle layer’ (Repos, 2008). Also in 2003, Fedora was identified as having the potential to fulfil more of our aspirations and, in parallel with our service delivery; we have increased our development effort on this solution and will migrate to it in 2008. At GCU we developed Padova — a browser based, front-end, hyper-linking environment — as the major finding-aid / catalogue / content selection tool for this library. Audio and video from the BBC (and other sources) are accessed through this system. Northwestern has gradually developed tools for segmenting and annotating these media. We have continued to collaborate with the testing of the delivery of the content and tools using a range of emerging technologies — Fedora, SAKAI, Shibboleth etc. In consultation with teachers we enable a set of Web 2.0 ‘browser based’ interaction facilities to meet their students needs. We are testing access to our digital library through our SIRSI library catalogue as part of a strategy to supply multiple finding aids.
Rights and Permissions: Overcoming legal obstacles
In 2003 we cooperated with the BBC to establish a working relationship— formally reflected in a ‘Legal Deposit Agreement’ and a GCU User Licence. The User Licence is available as Appendix D to this report. These grant international rights to the use of its programmes deposited on, and served from GCU sites. The permissions restrict to ‘non-commercial educational use only’ and GCU accepts liabilities for third party rights. A ‘radical rights clearance strategy’ exercises diligence in relation to these liabilities. These forms of permissions enable the citation and use of the media for international scholarly communication. With the support of an additional grant from HEFC, Spoken Word contributed a case study to the Intrallect led rights study. We have presented on our rights strategy and intend to publish in this area. We have agreed a five-year continuation with the BBC (2008-13).
Engaging and Valuable Content
Rather than ‘second guess’ teachers we sought from the outset to identify teachers who were reasonably ‘tech savvy’ as selectors of content for students. We called this tactic ‘getting our dissemination in first’. We included teachers in the USA and in Bologna in addition to GCU; we have used three HEA subject networks to expand our circle of teachers in the UK. Our range of disciplines has grown well beyond political science and history to: anthropology; economics; biology; law; hospitality management; English as a foreign language; women’s studies; social policy; and others.
Pedagogy
We are social constructivists. But we recognise the historic rights of teachers in western universities to advance their own teaching styles and accommodate to their students learning styles. We acknowledge ‘pedagogical pluralism’ and supply content and tools in ways that enable the selection and choice of content and tools to students and their teachers. We believe that this aids sustainability and helps to ‘future proof’ the investment in the project.
General
We believe we have fulfilled the letter and spirit of the JISC call. Our strategy has embedded the outcomes of the grant to ensure sustainability of the support for learners. As a 1992 university we have built associations with leading institutions and individuals and enabled knowledge transfer from them. Our unique partnership with the BBC to deliver material to learners across the world is greatly valued by us. We have received widespread recognition for others for the contributions of the project.