oerscout: widening access to oer through faceted search

Ishan Abeywardena, Chee Seng Chan & V. Balaji

7th Pan-Commonwealth Forum (PCF7)

Abuja, Nigeria6th December 2013

OERScout Widening Access to OER through

Faceted Search

• The Search Dilemma• Faceted Search• OERScout

Content repositoriesPortal repositories

Content and portal repositoriesMcGreal, R. (2010). Open Educational Resource Repositories: An Analysis. Proceedings: The 3rd Annual Forum on e-Learning Excellence, 1-3 February 2010, Dubai, UAE.

Curation

So…how do I find the material I need for my teaching?

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Literature• ...The problem is in finding the resources, and more correctly finding the “right”

resources. Using a regular search engine like Google to find content is not always a viable option as it will generate too many answers. There is, hence, a need to easily find relevant content...” (Hatakka, 2009)

• “searching this way (using existing search engines such as Google) might be a long and painful process as most of the results are not usable for educational purposes” (Pirkkalainen & Pawlowski, 2010)

• No single search engine is still able to locate resources from all the OER repositories (West & Victor, 2011)

• One of the major barriers to the use and re-use of OER is the difficulty of finding quality OER matching a specific context (Dichev & Dicheva, 2012)

• “…the problem with open content is not the lack of available resources on the Internet but the inability to locate suitable resources for academic use” (Unwin, 2005).

Native search mechanisms perhaps?

Identify which material to look for (e.g. integration, C++ programming)

Identify the search queries (e.g. “undergraduate mathematics”)

Locate repository (word of mouth, some link somewhere, go to the more popular repositories)

Run multiple queries to find resources

Read each resource to identify the usefulness (openness, access, relevance)

Identify useful resources

Repeat steps 3-6 on multiple repositories (hundreds to thousands…..)

Native Search in Repositories

Locate repository (word of mouth, some link somewhere, go to the more popular repositories)

Run multiple queries to find resources

Read each resource to identify the usefulness (openness, access, relevance)

Identify useful resources

Frustrated??

i. Facilitate finding, retrieving and sharing of OER.

Encourage the development of user-

friendly tools to locate and retrieve OER that are

specific and relevant to particular needs.

(UNESCO Paris OER Declaration, 2012)

The Declaration

UNESCO. (2012). Paris OER Declaration, Retrieved September18, 2012 from http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/Events/Paris%20OER%20Declaration_01.pdf

How useful is a resource really?

Measures of usefulness

Openness

Accessibility

Relevance

Desirability

Less useful resources are less desirable for teaching and learning needs….

What is Desirability?

Free Text Search vs. Directory Search

Free Text

Directory

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“Sug

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Desirability

Resources ranked according to the Desirability

“Astrophysics”

“Stars”

Faceted Search

OERScout

READS LEARNS RECOMMENDS

OERScout

Advantages of OERScout

• Generates ranked lists of relevant OER

• Incorporates the Desirability framework

• Uses faceted search• Repository and metadata

independent

www.oerscout.org

Acknowledgments

This research project is funded:

• as part of a doctoral research through the Grant (# 102791) generously made by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada through an umbrella study on Openness and Quality in Asian Distance Education.

• by the Education Assistance Program (EAP) of Wawasan Open University, Malaysia.

Ishan Sudeera Abeywardena acknowledges the support:

• by the Commonwealth of Learning, Canada in the form of a grant to attend the 7th Pan-Commonwealth Forum in Abuja, Nigeria;

• by the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where he is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Computer Science;

• by the School of Science and Technology, Wawasan Open University, 54 Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah, 10050, Penang, Malaysia where he is currently employed.

• Ishan Sudeera AbeywardenaDeputy Dean and Senior LecturerSchool of Science and Technology, Wawasan Open University, 54 Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah, Penang, 10050, Malaysia. e-mail: ishansa@wou.edu.my

• Chee Seng ChanSenior Lecturer Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.e-mail: cs.chan@um.edu.my

• Venkataraman BalajiDirector, Technology & Knowledge Management Commonwealth of Learning, 1055 West Hastings Street, Suite 1200, Vancouver, BC V6E 2E9, CANADAe-mail: vbalaji@col.org