Content
In order for a repository to be successful, it must contain a sufficient number of quality resources that its stakeholders will find useful. During strategic planning, some high-level decisions regarding repository content were made such as: the type of content the repository will house and how it will be acquired, which may include creating content, licensing content, and/or collecting it from existing sources.
The Content Team should use the outcomes from strategic planning to draft a concrete set of priorities, guidelines, and policies for content acquisition and management. This team will want to brainstorm on any tasks related to implementing these decisions.
Content Types
The Content Team should review Strategic Planning Group decisions about repository content subject areas and then begin to establish relevant priorities, policies and procedures to acquire content. This group will determine which types of content (subjects and educational levels) should be acquired first. For example, The Orange Grove first concentrated on acquiring and developing content for College Algebra. The Quality Review Team will work to establish policies related to quality control of content.
Content Organization
Will you create one large collection of content or will there be multiple collections? If there are multiple collections, how will these organized, made visible, and accessed? Will there be any content that is restricted to your state, or other groups, due to licensing? What parameters/policies govern the creation of collections? For example, are defined groups allowed to have their own collections?
Content Acquisition
Once the priorities for content types have been established, the Content Team should explore possible methods for acquiring content to determine which options will work best for the repository.
One method is to locate sources of existing content and determine if and how you can collect it. Such content can come from a variety of sources. Here are some methods you might investigate.
- Use or repurpose existing state-level content — Many states and statewide institutions have already created content that could be added to your repository. For example, the University System of Georgia repository began with a goal of sharing e-Core content, the general education courses, that had already been developed within their university system with state dollars. Georgia faculty members requested to use small pieces of these courses. The courses were disassembled and divided into learning objects or small lessons, which were then placed in the repository for faculty use. This allowed more faculty members to make use of the existing course materials and enabled the content to be used for more than just the specific courses for which it was created.
- Solicit content from faculty and institutions—Faculty and institutions within your state can be a rich source of content for your repository. Many faculty members and K12 instructors are already creating content for use in their own courses, whether online or hybrid. Likewise, intuitions may have dedicated staff and resources to create content for institutional use. The challenge is to find a way to connect with the creators of this content in order to solicit contributions to the repository. The Orange Grove is exploring this option via a network of statewide institutional contacts to identify instructional and faculty development content. The long term goal is to establish paid regional champions to maintain contact with all the institutions in their region, to ensure a steady stream of repository contributions and to support use of the repository.
- Harvest and federate with other repositories—The advantage of a “standards-based” repository is that it can share and exchange information with other standards-based repositories. This allows your repository users to access content from not only your repository, but from harvested and federated repositories and collections as well. There are a number of methods and protocols for achieving this inter-repository sharing including: Open Archives Initiative (OAI) harvesting, Open Service Interface Definitions (OSIDs), Search/Retrieval via the Web/URL (SRW/U), and Z39.50/ZING. You should investigate each of these standards to determine which protocol would benefit your repository.
For example, The Orange Grove engages in both Open Archives Initiative (OAI) harvesting and in federation. Through harvesting the Orange Grove servers are able to access other repositories and “harvest” the metadata of the resources stored on their server. That metadata record is stored in The Orange Grove and is searchable by its users. If a user wishes to access the actual item, they follow a link from The Orange Grove to the repository where the item resides.
Federation also allows repositories to share content. In federation, there is an agreement in place allowing the users of one repository to search another repository. The user’s “home” repository acts as a portal to the federated repositories. The federation agreement allows a logged-in user to be “authenticated” for access into the federated repositories, saving the step of having to log into many different repositories. The Orange Grove currently federates with a number of other repositories including the University System of Georgia, MERLOT, the Library of Congress, and other repositories and collections.
To enable harvesting or federation, the Content Team should identify likely partners for these activities. Online research and networking can help you locate other repositories that offer the type and quality of content that meets your needs. Once identified, review websites for relevant information related to harvesting or federation or contact staff to determine if they are willing and/or able to be harvested by or federated with your repository. The Orange Grove team has noticed an increase in the number of collections that are enabling these sharing protocols and anticipates that this trend will continue.
- Enter into agreements with publishers—the benefits of licensing and distributing their content electronically in a modular format. Many are beginning to license content for use through their own repository or statewide online repositories. One example is The Orange Grove’s relationship with National Repository for Online Courses (NROC). The Orange Grove pays a license fee to NROC. Appropriate Learning Object Metadata (LOM) cataloguing information is associated with each resource prior to the NROC content being placed in the repository for user access. With either purchased or licensed content, the repository must clearly state the rights granted by the license and control access to authorized users.
- Access student-generated content—As part of their course work or as class projects, students are often engaged in creating items that could be used as learning objects or assets. Items may be of high-quality and valuable additions to your repository collection. A policy will need to be established as to whether or not your repository will accept student generated content and who is responsible for collecting, reviewing, and contributing these items.
- Create content - Originally many repository initiatives intended to create or develop all or most of the needed content. Generating content requires a substantial investment of time and resources. Producing a quality learning object often requires a team consisting at minimum of a subject matter expert, an instructional designer, and web programmer. Depending on the complexity of the material and the programming necessary, additional staff may be required.
Sometimes, a repository is an outgrowth of a group already engaged in learning object development. For example, Wisc-Online was created with FIPSE grant funds to store learning objects created by the Wisc-Online development team. Today, participating Wisconsin Technical Colleges contribute $8,000 annually to Wisc-Online. In return the Wisc-Online multimedia developers create up to 8 learning objects for their faculty each year. Kay Chitwood, Director of Wisc-Online, suggested that one of the reasons their repository has been successful is that the faculty do not have to be skilled in the software used to create learning objects. Faculty provide subject matter knowledge and their ideas to teach the content to Wisc-Online staff that create learning objects which are included in the repository.
If the decision is made to create repository content, review the elements to develop quality materials - adequate staff, time, hardware, and software development tools. Be sure to consider the resources at your disposal such as commercial providers, faculty, institutional staff, or students. For example, WISC-Online engages the college language department faculty to translate resources into other languages.
Format
Another task is to determine the approved formats for resources and learning objects. This team may need to coordinate with the Technical Infrastructure Team to ensure that the planned hardware is adequate to support the selected formats. For example, if you will stream audio or video content, you may require a streaming server. You will also need sufficient bandwidth available for desired applications.
Another consideration is how you will store the content in the repository. There are two methods to store content within the repository:
- Resource files and metadata are stored on the repository servers
- A link to the resources and metadata is stored on the repository servers
There are pros and cons to each approach. If the resource files are stored in the repository, the content management responsibilities rest with the content owner or repository staff. Content control is maintained in house and the staff is completely in control of the items. A URL to items stored outside of the repository saves storage space and eliminates the need to update the content if changes are made to the files. However, any change to the URL causes the links to break, rendering the content inaccessible to the users. The Orange Grove uses a combination of these methods. Some content is physically stored on The Orange Grove’s servers, while other materials are accessed via links. Whichever method you select, add either the items themselves or the relevant links will need to be added to your repository.
If you do plan to store the actual files, you will also need to determine what types will you accept (e.g., single file, zip file, IMS/SCORM package, executable file)?
Accessibility
An important decision is whether you must restrict access to any repository content. As mentioned earlier, some resources in the Orange Grove are available only to Florida educators. Access is governed by permissions granted by the state of Florida, institutions, or instructors that funded or developed these resources. Restricted access will also be required if commercial content is included in your repository. Usage of these items will be dictated by licensing/purchasing agreements which specify copyright requirements.
Users may have some content they are willing to share widely while other items they feel should be restricted to their group or institution. For example, to address any faculty concerns related to copyright and sharing, The Orange Grove established “collections” within the repository. Each of the colleges and universities in the state system may establish its own institutional collection for which administration is shared with the institutional administration. Contributors from that institution may choose to submit their items as a public resource (available to all users), a Florida-only resource (available only to Florida educators), or a resource within their institutional collection (available only to users who are authorized to access that collection).
Collections may be established based on any criteria the repository chooses, such as in-state educators only, K12 only, or institution only. Establishing institutional collections also de-centralizes some quality control and administrative tasks, which can be useful to repositories with limited staff.
If the content is going to have restrictions, then you will need to be establish permissions. Permissions will dictate what each type or group of users is authorized to do. Users can be assigned to groups or roles that allow them to perform certain tasks within the repository such as contributing, reviewing, editing, commenting on or deleting resources.
The Orange Grove grants a variety of user permission levels to restrict access to resources with licensing requirements that preclude access by the general public, and to support peer review of contributed items. The levels of user access available in the Orange Grove include Searchers (who can search for, link to and/or download resources from the repository), Contributors (have all Searcher permissions plus the ability to contribute resources to the repository), and various levels of Administrator access for managing repository items and performing other administrative tasks.
Finally, this group should consider any potential accessibility issues that may arise. Research and adopt/create ADA/Section 508 Accessibility conformance requirements
Copyright
The Content Team should also address copyright and digital rights management issues. For a repository to remain a viable enterprise, it is important that the users who contribute content feel confident that their authorship rights are protected. A repository should have clearly defined policies as to the copyright status and digital rights management of a contributed item. Policies can vary among institutions regarding who retains rights to faculty created content. The content team should research these policies.
The Orange Grove uses a Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/) Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa) license as the default copyright statement. This license lets others change and build upon the resource for non-commercial use. New works must give credit to the original author and must be licensed under the same terms. Contributors to The Orange Grove may leave the rights statement as it is or substitute other copyright restrictions for their contributions. Creative Commons offers a variety of licenses which feature different levels of copyright restriction. GNU General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html) is another popular type of open license for products.An additional consideration is issues surrounding digital rights management (DRM). DRM describes technologies used to limit the usage of media by preventing copying or converting by users. When including media such as music, videos, and animations, especially those produced by a commercial provider, it is important to be aware of the terms of usage.
Content Maintenance
Once the content is in the repository, determine your maintenance schedule. We recommend that you review content periodically to ensure the material is not outdated or superfluous. It is suggested that you review content at least every three years. The software should be able to assist you in the tracking and notification of resources in need of review.
If you house external URLs in your repository, links may break or not function properly. Some repository software automatically review links and provide notification of broken links. In The Orange Grove, a date for review of the materials in each collection is set within the software. When the item reaches the designated “age” for review, the owner of the item is notified. The Orange Grove repository software also includes a URL checker, which notifies the owner of an item (the person who contributed the item to the repository) if a link is broken.
Resources
