Today I began to fill out the initial review forms for the POCKET material: one form for the Introduction to Customer Service unit and one form for Introduction to Economic Law. I plan to discuss the form with both academics when I next meet with them, as their input will be very valuable.
Yesterday I had a meeting with content author Louise Buxton at the Buxton campus. We discussed the development of her module material and viewed the two units that are currently uploaded onto the PlaySpace: Introduction to Customer Service and Responding to Customer Needs.
I informed Louise on the feedback from the meeting with Tina Wilson at the OU last week, namely: that websites included in the units should be contacted for permission; a clearer structure on activities; the need for a ’sales pitch’ introduction for the LabSpace; and the calculation for the units’ study hours.
From the equation that Tina recommended to calculate study hours for a unit, Louise and I worked out that unit 1 (Introduction to Customer Service) would be:
6 hours (time originally allocated to the section) + 0.3 (5% for new learners to the topic) = 6.3 hours
6.3 hours + 3.55 minutes (lengths of video and animation) + 6.75 hours (activity time) = 13 hours (rounded up)
I will update this study time in the metadata file for unit 1.
Louise and I agreed to meet again in two weeks time on Tuesday 8 July at Buxton. In the meantime Louise will write a reading list for each unit and will also write feedback on various activities. Louise sent me an updated version of the units today in word format.
This morning Sarah Malone (Project Manager) and I met with Antonios Platsas, who is authoring the International Economic Law module material for POCKET. This module is being written from scratch for POCKET, which means the development process is slightly different to the other modules on the project.
Antonios has written a large amount of the content now: units 1 - 5 are complete. An initial version of unit 1 has been uploaded onto the OpenLearn platform. Still to be added are the learning outcomes, study hours and interactions.
From the recommendations from the OU, the study time for these units should be along the lines of:
150 (time allocated to the whole module originally) - 30 (delivery time) = 120 120 + 6 (5% for new learners to the topic) = 126
126/6 (total number of units) = 21 hours (plus time for activities, videos, animations etc remembering that learners may want to watch these more than once)
Antonios and I plan to meet again in 2 weeks time when he will have finished writing the final unit and I will have started to create interactions for the units.
Today I met with two Multimedia Developers from the Interactive Media Unit at the University of Derby. This was a really useful meeting for me as it gave me an idea of different educational interactivities that the unit were working on, what could be achieved using Flash and I was also able to get some feedback on the Flash animations I had created already in Flash for the Introduction to Customer Service POCKET unit.
The feedback I received on my animation was really positive: both developers liked the illustration style and they said that was a factor that instantly drew them into the activity. The feedback provided on the quiz is a helpful factor and I was encouraged to add similar feedback to the quantitative/qualitative animation. From looking at animations that the Unit had developed I was encouraged to think about accessibility issues and also usability issues, including:
The developers strongly suggested that I test the final animations for POCKET with different people to check usability.
They also sent me some really useful links of animation examples:
Plus some tutorial guides from the Adobe website:
The developers said I could visit them anytime and show them how my animation and activities for POCKET were progressing so that will be really useful.
Yesterday I visited the Open University to meet with Tina Wilson and discussed the progress of the content development so far on POCKET.
We discussed the Content Development Kit and the different versions: there is the original Alpha version developed by the OU and now there is the POCKET version that is being developed during this project.
We also discussed the various documents included in the kit, including:
Customer Service Unit: First POCKET unit uploaded onto OpenLearn
The target audience of the LabSpace was confirmed as being both academics and learners. The idea of having a ‘learner profile’ was discussed, as there is a difficulty in knowing exactly who the materials are being designed for. The use of images available under a Creative Commons License was also discussed: attributed images are fine, but if possible the photographer should also be contacted to request permission for use.
Content and activities uploaded into the PlaySpace so far were discussed. The content can be put into LabSpace any time it’s ready. Another (‘Sales Pitch’) Introduction will have to be written for the LabSpace. As there is not currently a ‘next page’ button available to have at the end of sections, the length of each section should be considered and sections should not be too long. There is also the option of adding a link at the bottom of each section to encourage the users to go on to the next section. (eg. ‘Now you’ve finished this section, go and read the next section…’)
The content author is having difficulty calculating the study hours for each section so Tina advised to think about: how much time would have been allocated to the material originally; add 5% for new learners to the topic; plus the lengths of any video or animation material (remembering that learners may want to watch these more than once).
Unit 1 ‘Introduction to Customer Service’ will be placed under the category Business and Management. Activities need to be structured consistently, with headings and feedback, references to the learning journal and forum, expected time for activities, length of film clips/animations – see existing units on OpenLearn for guidance (good example: Lennox Castle Hospital K100_7, Section 1.1, Health and Lifestyle category). If any websites are linked in the units, check that the website owners are happy with this.
The end of each unit should be clear: eg. ‘This is the end of ‘Introduction to Customer Service’, you might want to visit [the other units from the original module]. You can read the acknowledgements [here].’
XML Formatting
The OU has put me in contact with Gerald Schmidt, an LTS Media Advisor, who is able to offer valuable support for XML formatting on POCKET. Tina and I discussed the flexibility of the OU XML schema and the possibility of using different colour contrasts and ‘next page’ buttons at the end of each section.
Other Items
The Needs Analysis questionnaires completed by content authors on the International Economic Law POCKET module and on the Hairdressing and Salon Management module were given to Tina. The third module for Derby was discussed and Tina said it is ok to have a unit that relies on a set text. Wording in the Introduction should highlight this fact and should match the working used in any units this applies to already on OpenLearn. (eg. ‘To study this unit you will need to buy the book…’)
I was also interviewed by Tina as part of the project evaluation process.
At the initial stages of developing the University of Derby’s law module for POCKET I have begun to look for images that can be used alongside the text. These images must be copyright cleared to be used on OpenLearn, so I have been looking at various websites that have images covered by the Creative Commons license. These include:
However, even when an image is available under a Creative Commons license it does not necessarily mean it can be used for the project as other restrictions may apply. Each image has specific terms and conditions so it will be necessary to check individual images with the university copyright department.
Having almost completed a draft version of the first POCKET material to be transformed to open content on the OU OpenLearn platform I feel this is a good point to reflect on the project process so far. The first unit I worked on for POCKET, taken from section 1 ‘What is Customer Service?’ from the Customer Skills module, as part of the Foundation Degree in Hairdressing and Salon Management ran at The University of Derby Buxton.
I found that downloading various OU XML content packages from the OpenLearn LabSpace and exploring the XML file in an XML editor was very helpful. It helped me to see the structure of the XML files already on OpenLearn and how the OU schema worked to achieve this structure.
Within the files that I downloaded from OpenLearn there were two OU schemas: OUGeneric_v1.2.xsd and OUGenericFull.xsd. As the Generic_v1.2 is the most recent schema and the one that offers most flexibility I decided to work to this schema only. Downloading a folder from OpenLearn also provided me with the other files I needed to include when I uploaded my unit (for example the XML file list and the metatdata file).
In the unit folders that can be downloaded from OpenLearn there are instructions for previewing an XML file before you upload it to the LabSpace. I did try and follow these instructions but found it to be a very time consuming and complicated process and personally I preferred to upload my file onto the PlaySpace to preview it.
XML editor
As the project promotes open content and open access the project team and I were very keen to use an open source XML editor. I downloaded and tried out a few different XML editors on the PC (including Jaxe and XML Copy Editor), but ran into problems when trying to get one of these editors to run on a mac. As I was working across both Mac and PC platforms I wanted an editor that I could use on both. That was the reason I decided to purchase oXygen XML editor as this works across both platforms.
Adding film and interactions
The OpenLearn site does not seem to have clear guidelines on what the ideal file size is to create and export film and animation files to the platform. From the schema and from downloading other OpenLearn units (which included film files) I was able to understand which file formats to use (for film this was mp4 and flv) and a kind of idea of the file size to export them to.
Uploading content to OpenLearn
I had a few initial problems uploading my files to the OpenLearn platform and I feel I would have benefitted from clearer instructions and guidelines available on the site. The ‘How to’ unit named Re-using, remixing and creating content, which I found quite useful. The problems I had uploading content to OpenLearn (to the PlaySpace) were:
I got advice in the Help and Support forum, which is a very useful feature.
Original material
The original material was quite easily broken down into separate units. Written originally for use on Blackboard, it also contained a lot of self-assessment and reflective exercises which provided a lot of scope and opportunity for developing into flash and video interactions.
A re-occurring problem with the material was that it quoted a lot from secondary sources. Due to copyright issues this could not be included in the material and the academic needed to either re-write or remove large quotes from the material. Another option was to direct readers of the content to the relevant websites.
Content author (Louise Buxton, University of Derby, Buxton)
Louise and I built up a strong working relationship by meeting regularly and this also helped to keep the project on track, give both of us clear goals to achieve by each meeting and kept us both informed of progress made. Also any problems that arose could be readily addressed and managed as soon as possible.
Flash animations and interaction (Estimated time taken:15 hours)
The material contained regular self-assessment activities which translated well into interactive activities. The Flash interactions were straightforward to plan from the existing activities in the material, but were fairly time consuming to create as this involved planning the scenes, doing illustrations, creating animation and adding actionscript where necessary. I found the Technology unit in the LabSpace helpful to see what kind of animations were on OpenLearn already (and to get an idea of style) but could not find any guidance on what kind of size to create the animations. It would have been helpful if the original Flash files were included in the OU XML package download.
Films (Estimated time taken: 21 hours)
Creating the films for this unit took a fair bit of planning, which included: recruiting the students to act in the films; writing ‘all rights release’ forms for the actors to sign; writing a script and prop list for each film; arranging the filming location. We were able to use the salon and the reception to film in and planned filming for two Wednesday afternoons, as there were no clients due in at this time.
Movie was used to edit the films and I also used Visual Hub to convert the files into mp4 and flv format. Similarly to the animations there was no guidance on the OpenLearn site on what size to export the video files to, so I downloaded a few OU XML package files from the LabSpace from units which used video and then saw from the video files included in these packages the average file size (about 3mb). Transcripts also had to be written for each film and saved as a pdf to be uploaded onto the OpenLearn site.
Study hours
These still need to be decided with the content author and are a factor which I think should be considered from the very start of the transformation. The content author has struggled with knowing how many hours to allocate, so a guide for calculating this would be a good outcome for the project.