Towards a Framework for Open Courseware

THE THIRD REPORT OF THE TLTP WORKING GROUP ON OPEN COURSEWARE

The Teaching and Learning Technology Programme is jointly funded by the four higher education funding bodies, HEFCE, SHEFC, HEFCW, and DENI

Copies of this and other TLTP working group reports can be obtained from:

Sarah Turpin
TLTP Co-ordinator
Northavon House
Coldharbour Lane
Bristol BS16 1OD

EPOC Membership

Keith Brown: PCCAL - Computer Aided Learning for Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences
University of Bath
Steve Lay: Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP)
University of Cambridge
Simon Price: TLTP Economics Consortium, Centre for Computing in Economics
University of Bristol
Douglas Siviter (EPOC Chair): School of Computing, Information Systems and Mathematics
South Bank University
Phil Siviter: School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences
University of Brighton
Sarah Turpin: TLTP Co-ordinator

EPOC Information

EPOC's home page on the world wide web is at http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/icrd/EPOC/index.html

This is Report No.3. in a series of reports issued by the EPOC Working Group on aspects of "Enabling the Provision of Open Courseware". The primary aim of this report is to provide further discussion of some of the more technical issues which in the first report were merely summarised.

Target Audience

All those with a technical interest in the interoperability of courseware; i.e., all those who are prepared to delve into the technicalities of open courseware and courseware management. A willingness to explore these technical issues is the only pre-requisite; no prior technical knowledge is required. It will help to have previously read EPOC's first report as an appropriate context for this report.
All those who require an in depth understanding of what open courseware is and why the TLTP community needs it (e.g., courseware developers, learning resource managers).

Main Points

There are serious technical inhibitors limiting the exploitability of courseware (including all of the courseware produced by TLTP projects).
A common source of these technical inhibitors is the incompatibility of courseware (and its associated system software) produced by different projects.
Courseware will need to become "open courseware" before these inhibitors can be removed.
The term "open courseware" is used to describe modular courseware that is inherently flexible, and has the capability of being used as part of an integrated courseware environment. In an "open courseware" scenario, academics can select appropriate teaching materials from a diverse range of courseware products (e.g., via compact disks, the University network, or the internet (especially WWW)) in order to create a custom learning environment. In other words, lecturers can regularly, eagerly and effortlessly "pick and mix" from distributed courseware products, to create integrated learning environments that are tuned for particular courses and groups of students.
An evolving set of scenarios (see Appendix A) illustrates the need for a range of courseware management tools which can be used to manage large collections of diverse courseware resources, and also illustrates the need for open courseware as an enabling technology for the development of such tools.
Issues which any Courseware Management System needs to address include:
- issues of structure, views, navigation and orientation;
- issues of structural interfaces, resource interoperability and integration;
- issues relating to the management of student generated information.
Although several TLTP projects have developed systems in an attempt to cope with courseware management issues which they have identified as relevant to their projects, the courseware and the Courseware Management Systems of any of these projects, are not compatible with courseware and Courseware Management Systems of other projects, so interoperability of courseware is limited to the scope of each particular project.
A project is proposed:
- to distil, from the existing efforts of the courseware development community, a standard framework and set of supporting protocols (FRAMEWOC) to enable the interoperability of courseware and Courseware Management Systems
- to place in the public domain the technical specifications of FRAMEWOC
- to develop a public domain, FRAMEWOC compliant Courseware Management System
- to provide advice, guidance, software, and workshops to enable courseware developers to upgrade their lessonware to FRAMEWOC compliance
- to provide advice, guidance, software and workshops to enable developers of Courseware Management Systems to upgrade their products to FRAMEWOC compliance
Appendices to this report describe a number of existing Courseware Management Systems to enable the reader to gain an overview of what courseware management involves and how courseware management can be approached in a variety of ways. The EPOC working group would like to express its gratitude to all the contributors who provided brief reviews of their systems in the appendices to this report.
EPOC reports, and all the sections provided by contributors, are also accessible as evolving documents on EPOC's web site. The web versions of the reports inevitably contain information which is more up to date than the information contained within this printed report.

What you should do with this Report

After reading this report, you should recognise some of the problems we are describing, and the need for the solutions we are proposing. You may have ideas and/or opinions on some of the issues raised here. You may be wondering what you can do to make your courseware more "open". You may want to ensure that your courseware, or perhaps your CMS, becomes FRAMEWOC compliant at the earliest opportunity. You may have a perspective - due to your particular circumstances - which this report has not addressed but which you feel should be addressed. We urge you to do two things:

Join in the collaborative effort which EPOC is leading. EPOC's home page contains instructions on how to contact us, either directly or via the EPOC mailbase. Let us know your ideas, opinions, questions and concerns.
Pass this report on to other people you know who may be interested in its contents (see Target Audience, above). EPOC's strategy is a collaborative one, and the more people who get involved - even if just to express an opinion - the better.

All readers are invited to contribute to the web versions of EPOC's reports. In particular, contributions are welcomed for the appendices of this report, i.e., appendix A "Scenarios" and appendix B "Systems which address courseware management issues".

Keywords

EPOC, Open Courseware, Standards for Open Courseware, Framework for Open Courseware, Teaching and Learning Technology, TLTP, HyperCourseware, Courseware Management Systems, Course Browser, Computer Based Education, Computer Assisted Learning, Courseware Development.

SECTION 1 : INTRODUCTION
- 1.1 A Context for this Report
  - Reports Summary to Date
- 1.2 A Context for Open Courseware
SECTION 2 : DISCUSSION OF REQUIREMENTS FOR OPEN COURSEWARE
- 2.1 What is Open Courseware?
- 2.2 Scenarios
- 2.3 Software Requirements of the Scenarios
SECTION 3 : COURSEWARE MANAGEMENT
- 3.1 Examples of issues addressed by existing Courseware Management Systems
- 3.2 Future Approaches to Courseware Management
GLOSSARY
REFERENCES
Appendix A : Scenarios
Appendix B : Systems which Address Courseware Management Issues
Appendix C : Some popular misconceptions, especially involving World Wide Web

Footnotes

[1]: Terminological note: in this report we refer to the individual units of courseware which a CMS manages as "Activities", from the technical terminology adopted by two of the CMSs described herein - HyperCourseware and Caleidoscope. In other contexts we may refer to these units by the more pedagogically oriented term "lessons", and collectively, as "lessonware".