JISC

Efficient resource discovery is key to enabling the reuse of digital learning resources: if a resource cannot be found it will not be reused. The JISC's eLearning framework (ELF) and Internet Environment (IE) recognise this by providing for a number of services for resource discovery. In particular, two ELF toolkits have been developed for the resource discovery domain – d+ (Brokerage for Deep and Distributed e-Learning Resources Discovery) and MDC (Middleware for Distributed Cognition) – and a similar resource has been developed for the JISC IE by the Subject Portals Project. These toolkits allow resource discovery to be embedded into the teaching and learning environment, doing so will hopefully highlight the availability of reusable digital learning resources to teachers and students at the time when such resources are most relevant, i.e. when writing an online course and when studying. The d+ project has shown a particularly simple approach to making resource discovery available within a VLE, that is as simple web pages in WebCT; we will extend this work by applying the same approach to the MDC and SPP toolkits and also embedding into another VLE (Moodle).

Aims and Objectives

The overall aim of the project is to conduct a comparative evaluation of the suitability of the d+, MDC and SPP resource discovery toolkits for enabling resource discovery from within a VLE. We will also appraise the usefulness of embedding resource discovery into a VLE and the suitability of the simple approach of creating resource discovery web pages as a means achieving this embedding.

The specific objectives are to:

• compare the three toolkits on criteria such as fitness for purpose, maintainability, extendibility, robustness, usefulness etc.
• ascertain whether a selection of lecturers prefer a resource discovery tool embedded into the VLE they use to their current approach to resource discovery.
• ascertain from a selection of lecturers whether enhanced functionality over that available from the simple web page based search tool is necessary or desirable; ascertain from other stakeholders whether such an approach is suitable for their concerns.

Project Methodology

We will construct demonstrators of each of the toolkits embedded into the WebCT and Moodle VLEs that will allow engineering and computer science lecturers at Heriot-Watt University to search disparate repositories and catalogues for resources to integrate into the VLE they use (WebCT or Moodle) and to create resource lists for their students. Our approach to integrating the cross search tools and the results they return is to adopt and evaluate the simplest solution possible, building on the example of the simple d+ "widget" / WebCT URL tool.  We will enhance the toolkits by producing customisable or template-driven "widgets" which could be easily tailored for use by others. We will provide feedback to the JISC community in our reports as to whether that approach works, and what its limitations are, thus providing evidence about what circumstances might justify the effort of developing a more sophisticated approach. We will also investigate producing resource lists as RSS feeds.

Implications/ Deliverables/ Stakeholders

We will produce report to the JISC community containing a detailed explanation of the project, including lessons learnt that can be passed on to the wider community, and listing availability of other outputs (e.g. toolkit enhancements). We hope that through this we will be able to inform future work on resource discovery for teaching and learning in engineering and related disciplines. More detailed technical feedback will be given to the developers of the toolkits, and any enhancements to the toolkits will be made available to other users. These enhancements will include the templates, style sheets and transforms used to create the embedded toolkits. We will also provide a draft binding of the IMS Resource List Interoperability data model to the RSS specification for the wider interoperability and learning technology communities.

Project Partners

The project is based at Heriot-Watt University, and is lead by ICBL, part of the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, with support from EEVL, the Internet Guide to Engineering Mathematics and Computing, at Heriot-Watt University Library.

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