Content Management:Cultural Misfit or Solution Fit for Investment

What we will cover

• The LTS approach to its Senior Management on why it should roll out a production version of an LCMS

• Our findings on the use of Hive as a LCMS

• Comparisons with other LCMS products Swinburne is using or trialing with other projects

• What may be done to foster academic commitment to an LCMS to realise a win win in LO repackaging and adaptation

What we wont cover

• Will Swinburne implement an LCMS as a core production environment in 2005/2006?

• Is Swinburne likely to be implementing one system or many systems?

• Which system or systems are likely to be implemented:• They all do the job they just do it differently• University politics rules

All Hail DigC

• To DigC or not to DigC• Self sourced

• Saved on media somewhere

• Loaded from source and placed on destination eg Blackboard subject area

• Use Blackboard as backup area

• Externally sourced • Get a version of content

sent from author – arrange digital rights or dinner

• Get course cartridge from publisher

• Get library to copy materials and arrange digital rights and link to resource within BB

• Grab URLs

And so it was written!

• Content is king

• The king is dead long live content management (content structures)

• Content ain’t useful in a learning situation until its made meaningful eg given a context . LCMS gives content a way of being discovered in relation to contextual search via metadata – long live metadata (our bastard prince)

• The trick is to spend less time reinventing the wheel but more on coding existing content so it can be discovered by the learner through appropriate meta data

• But what do the decision makers really think?

Senior Management

• What is Content Management?• Confusion over content on

websites and records and learning content

• We don’t have a problem with content management

• Library control it via online reserve?

• Blackboard and WebCT house all the content?

• Why do we need it?• Space efficiency – but

haven’t we created policies to control archiving of subject materials etc?

• Version control of subjects

• Consistency across 1000+ subjects

• ROI on expensive interactives

Hiving off content

• Hive pilot got off the ground because• Three directors had a vision• They backed their vision with strategic funds and

resources• Harvest Road were able to support our vision and

Hive interfaces Blackboard• eBusiness academics were keen to explore LO• LTS staff were keen to support the academics• ITS, IRG and LTS staff had the skills to test and

manage the application (availability was a problem so timing was the trade off)

The Hive Pilot Project

• June 2003 Briefing Paper recommends Hive

• August 2003 Hive Licence acquired for Pilot

• September 2003 Administrators trained

• October 2003 LILO Metadata Schema

• March 2004 eBusiness agree on sem 2 rollout

• June 2004 • content migrated from WebCT to Hive (then BB)• Metadata added using IMS1.2.1 fill in LILO fields• 10 subjects created within BB LMS

Primary Pilot Outcomes

• Assess how an LCMS could be used to realise the reported benefits of Learning Object adaptation and reuse

• documented audit and edit trail of detailing the workflow of all authors, administrators and digital rights managers etc

• report on whether or not Hive should be introduced into production system for 2005

Pilot project with Hive LCMS

• Depth and Breath of Pilot• include multiple subjects that share resources that can be

tracked, identified and compiled at three levels of granularity, the Learning Object (LO) level, the asset or artefact level (to allow LO to be altered or adapted to suit different contexts) and the lesson or topic level (a functional combination of LO and contextual artefacts)

• deconstructing a large learning object into smaller learning objects arises as one of the key things to test

Building the Hive

• eBusiness review WebCT content• Remove references to module and topic numbers• Finding the right content relies on getting the right

metadata recorded• LTS list type of metadata required (LILO) (Hungarian born Nicholas Kove

invented the Li-Lo air mattress in 1939, his company name was AirFix)

• The right Metadata Schema : LILO • eBusiness use LILO for their resources

• LTS staff publish into Hive

Harvesting the Honey

• Outcomes were:• Over 200 students exposed to CMS during

semester 2• Staff exposed to use of CMS• New organisation of material paradigms due to lack

of reference to module and topic numbers• Staff endorse conceptual advantages of CMS• Time and effort associated with publishing with

Metadata the key problem area• PD program required is less about software and

more about change management

Spreading the Honey

• Staff comments:• “Still excited about the vision”• “Pilot may not have been given the justice it deserves”• “lack of resources from the academic side”

• Staff insights• Metadata should accommodate the original source• Better examples of Metadata tagging and resultant

searches – quality of the metadata affected the value of the search

• PD program required is less about software and more about change management

Not getting stung

• Need a CMS – but phase in eg international

• Best practice – not all learning objects need extensive metadata

• Who decides what can be adapted and reused• Reusability is foreign to academics

Harvest Rd Hive

The Learning Edge & P-12• P-12 Pilot Project

• BB Application Service Provider

• Early days – approaching schools to gauge interest in both BB and the Learning Edge

• Learning Federation Learning Objects• Banks of Reusable materials

Blackboard’s LCMSEvaluation copy access to see how it looks

Tale of CMS

• LCMS applications solve problems but they also create them.• While they solve:

• Reuse and re purpose• Effectiveness and Efficiency of resource utilisation and

storage

• They create• Complexity in publishing student resources• New ways to work – new work flows• More time invested in cataloguing is less time for

research

Concluding Comments

• LCMS is a cultural misfit at present• Collegial sharing of materials happens but is based

on who knows who rather than who can find what• Quality of the student experience is more about the

interactions with people than software

• LCMS is a solution fit for investment• Managing information should take less time than

creating knowledge• Adapting materials to create new learning

opportunities is dependent on finding them in the first place

What we said we’d cover

• The LTS approach to its Senior Management on why it should roll out a production version of an LCMS

• Our findings on the use of Hive as a LCMS

• Comparisons with other LCMS products Swinburne is using or trialing with other projects

• What may be done to foster academic commitment to an LCMS to realise a win win in LO repackaging and adaptation

What we said we wouldn’t cover

• Will Swinburne implement an LCMS as a core production environment in 2005/2006?

• Is Swinburne likely to be implementing one system or many systems?

• Which system or systems are likely to be implemented:• They all do the job they just do it differently;• University politics rules

• Any Questions? We will try and cover these!