The description of Xerte on the Xerte Project website is:

Xerte is a suite of powerful tools for creating interactive e-learning content for the Flash platform. Xerte is open source software, in use all over the world.

The POCKET team were very keen to find out more about Xerte and how we might incorporate it or collaborate with the developers as part of our project.

Julian began the demonstration by explaining the idea behind Xerte, which is to empower people to create their own learning material. The Xerte project has created tools to allow this. Xerte was first released in 2006 and is primarily aimed at developers as it requires a certain amount of scripting. It is in use all over the world and was released as open source software in August 2008.

Accessibility was a high priority in the development of Xerte and the team have worked closely with TechDis. When Julian presented some materials that had been created in Xerte, text to speech had been built in and the material could be navigated throughout just by using the keyboard.

Some of the projects that had been created using Xerte were large and contained a lot of content, multimedia and interaction while others were at a smaller scale, with simple multiple choice questions. This helped us to see the range of material that Xerte could be applied to. Many staff and students from the University of Nottingham have created learning materials using Xerte and needed little or no technical support.

Julian explained that the plan for Xerte was to become browser-based so that instead of downloading and installing an exe file, anyone with a web browser could log on and create materials simply and effectively. Editing is done directly in the browser, so there is no need to upload any content. This would also allow collaboration with other users in developing content. These tools are built on the Xerte runtime engine, which is also to be made freely available to the wider community. All files are stored on a server and templates on a database. Version 1.0 will be released in January 2009.

The Xerte Online Toolkit contains a wide range of interactive options, including:

• Image viewer (which allows zooming in and out of an image: useful for very detailed photographs)
• Flash paper (which allows zooming in and out of a document)
• Hotspots
• Quizzes
• Third party feeds: Googlemaps and KML; Flickr; Wikipedia; YouTube; RSS feeds (Although including this type of material contains a certain amount of risk as you can never be sure what will appear)

To include a file created with the Xerte online toolkit on a webpage, the file is provided in the form of a link and also code that can be included on a webpage. Xerte will export material as a zip or SCORM package. There is an RSS feed of all content produced by Xerte online.

Everyone who attended this demonstration of Xerte was very excited and impressed with the potential of Xerte to create really engaging, interactive and highly accessible learning objects. One concern raised was that there was no version control available, so when a Xerte learning object is edited and previewed online it automatically replaces the earlier version. However the Xerte team are accepting suggestions on further developments to Xerte on their mailing list.

The question for POCKET is how can we use this toolkit in our own project. We discussed the possibility of writing a wizard file (xwd) to incorporate the OU XML schema (only working within a subset of the schema as the whole schema would be too complicated). However this is complex development work and would be time consuming to achieve, although it is something I would definitely like to try out.

Another option might be to use Xerte with academics to produce learning objects:

• This content can be exported as a package file into a VLE like Blackboard, as it is exported as SCORM
• The CETIS Transcoder tool could be used to convert the SCORM package into an IMS Package
• The IMS package could then be uploaded onto OpenLearn

At this stage the POCKET team are keen to try out Xerte and see what we can produce!

One possible solution could be for academic content authors to use the ‘User Revision’ option on OpenLearn.

Instructions for using the User Revision option:

1. First you have to login or register on OpenLearn, then go to the unit you want to edit.
2. Then look down the right hand menu and you will see a tab labeled ‘Versions’
3. Under this tab click on the ‘Make a copy for revising’ option
4. It may take a few minutes but when the page refreshes it will show the revision copy of the unit (you’ll also see under the ‘Versions’ tab that there is now a version labeled ‘User Revision’)
5. You’ll see a tab in the right hand top corner of the screen labeled ‘Turn editing on’
6. If you select this tab your page will change to show the various editing features.
7. If you just want to amend typos, you can go into each section (by clicking on the headings) and you’ll see three tabs at the top of the screen: ‘View’ ‘Edit’ and ‘Revisions’
8. Select the ‘Edit’ tab and you will be able to directly edit into the text. You have to write a short description of the changes you’ve made before you can click the ‘Save’ button.

I plan to add these instructions to the POCKET content development kit and make this editing facility an option for the content authors involved in POCKET. The ability to edit directly onto OpenLearn means the authors will still be able to edit the units when the project has finished.

Another factor to note at this stage is that when you re-upload a unit tags that you applied to the original unit are not saved. For example I’ve tagged the POCKET units under the tag ‘POCKET‘, but I have to re-tag them every time I edit and re-upload the unit, even if it is just a minor change. It would be useful if there was an option on OpenLearn to save the tags on a unit when you re-upload it.

Its success led to the creation of another resource: www.multimediatrainingvideos.com, which offers free training videos in using more complex multimedia programmes like Flash, Director and Photoshop. In its second month, the site received nearly 60,000 hits.

These are websites that I plan to incorporate in the various resources I’m putting together for the staff development workshop at Derby. I think this is an excellent resource that staff would be very interested in. It also makes me wonder if we can include some similar video training work in our POCKET collaboration area on LabSpace, particularly now we are beginning to work with more external partners.

The Sakai CLE is a free and open source Courseware Management System. It features a set of software tools designed to help instructors, researchers and students collaborate online in support of their work–whether it be course instruction, research or general project collaboration.

This could be an interesting platform to test our POCKET materials, as the software is available for download or there are sites online set up as testing areas.

Searching and finding OERs

Available from the UNESCO’s OER Community Wiki, this is a useful collection of existing search engines that have been specifically created for finding OERs.

Creative Commons Video Sharing Sites and Social Media Tools

A roundup of online video hosting services and related tools that support publishing under Creative Commons. These are services for sharing documentaries, movies and short video clips that can be legally downloaded and freely distributed under the terms of license.

Further resources for distributing and finding CC video works and Public Domain films are also provided. The list of sites includes Catalogs, Search Engines, Open Source Software, Social Video Applications, Creative Commons Help and related video reference materials. All of the sites and tools are free to use or download.

1.    Importing to Blackboard as a zip file of the XML content file and other files (the same zipped file which I would upload to LabSpace):
This file uploads to Blackboard and I selected ‘content.xml’ as the entry point, but the final view only shows up as the raw XML source file with the message “This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.”

2.    Importing to Blackboard the plain zip of the unit downloaded from OpenLearn:
The plain zip provides the content as HTML files. I uploaded this to Blackboard as an ‘item’, selected the option to ‘unpackage’ the file and selected the ‘index.html’ page as the entry point.
This worked fairly well in Blackboard, except I had to amend some of the code in the page HTML files as the main navigation file couldn’t be navigated back to from the separate pages initially. I was unable to import this as a package, I could only upload it an item. After contacting Wilbert Kraan at CETIS for advice, I intend to repackage this zip of files using RELOAD as an IMS Content Package file.

3.    Importing to Blackboard as an IMS Content Package downloaded from OpenLearn.

PROBLEM: When I import this IMS CP into Blackboard it uploads, but when I view it I see this error message in the left side panel:

HTTP Status 404 - /webapps/bb-cntplayer-bb_bb60/adl/
type Status report
message /webapps/bb-cntplayer-bb_bb60/adl/
description The requested resource (/webapps/bb-cntplayer-bb_bb60/adl/) is not available.
Apache Tomcat/5.5.17

PROBLEM: When I uploaded it as an item to Blackboard it only displayed the first page of the unit and not the navigation page.
ACTION: I then created an index page, using the index page from plain zip file downloaded from OpenLearn. I had to double check that the index page was still linking to the styles.css document.

PROBLEM: The front image was missing, which after downloading other units I found this a problem with all the units, although images in the other sections of the unit appeared. When I checked the IMS content package folder for the unit the front image was missing, although it is still referenced in the index file (which was not downloaded as part of the IMS content package).
ACTION: I added the front image into the IMS content package file, in the Items folder

PROBLEM: There was also no navigation contained in the IMS file so when you selected a unit from the main navigation page to get back to this navigation page you had to use the browser navigation.
ACTION: I copied the navigation code contained in the page files downloaded as a plain zip from OpenLearn, but this had to be added to every page in the file. However it did then work.

PROBLEM: Links to further resources appear on the front page, but only the links to the OU courses. These should be changed to show the specific university course for the unit. When I looked in the Index file the link to the University of Derby wasn’t appearing.
ACTION: I altered the code in the Index file and added this link in the HTML

PROBLEM: The style sheet looked like it needed some more additions as weblinks and list text appeared in a different font.

I also downloaded the unit as an IMS Content Package and re-packaged it in Reload. Although when I previewed it in Reload the unit looked ok (although the front page was missing) an error appeared when I uploaded it to Blackboard as an IMS content package.

Exporting an IMS CP downloaded from OpenLearn, straight back into OpenLearn
The IMS CP uploaded onto OpenLearn and the naviagation panel appeared at the side. There were still a few problems with the styles, with different fonts showing up for lists. The result can be seen on the unit: International Economic Law

Uploading a test IMS CP file to Blackboard
I downloaded a Content Packaging v1.1.4 Content Package from the IMS Global Learning Consortium website and uploaded this to blackboard as an IMS CP. This appeared fine and reassured me that our version of Blackboard can handle IMS CP and has also given me the test file to look through the code.

Uploading a SCORM 2004 package into Blackboard

I converted the IMS CP I downloaded from OpenLearn into SCORM 2004 using the CETIS Transcoder tool. Using Firefox it uploaded but would not show the content. Using Internet Explorer it uploaded and showed the navigation panel, but then would only show error messages when the links were selected for the separate pages. It also did this in Safari.

Exporting as a Moodle file, downloaded from OpenLearn
This uploads as an item onto Blackboard but no content appears.

Useful tools

As part of this investigation I used the Transcoder tool from CETIS, which allows you to upload certain packages and get them back in a form that your local VLE understands. Transcoder aims to address conversions between the most common eLearning content formats in use: IMS Content Packaging 1.1.3, IMS Content Packaging 1.1.4, IMS Content Packaging 1.2, SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, and IMS Common Cartridge 1.0.

Another potentially useful tool (that Wilbert told me about) was the Blackboard Building Block: The Open Standards Content Player

• List of various CMS conversion tools

• IMS Content Packaging Best Practice and Implementation Guide

Conclusions so far

So far I have not been able to transfer units created in XML format for OpenLearn directly  into BlackBoard. For interoperability purposes I would like to have the units in IMS Content Package format and be able to transfer them easily within different VLEs. However it appears that this will take quite a bit of work, recoding and repackaging.

“opensourceCMS.com was created with one goal in mind. To give you the opportunity to “try out” some of the best php/mysql based free and open source software systems in the world. You are welcome to be the administrator of any CMS system here, allowing you to decide which system best suits your needs. The administrator username and password is given for every system and each system is deleted and re-installed every two hours. This allows you to to add and delete content, change the way things look, basically be the admin of any CMS system here without fear of breaking anything.”

Ross Gardler of OSS Watch opened the workshop with his presentation on What is Open Development? This presentation suggested that open source was a good model for sustainability… but not just by itself. The key attributes of Open Development were noted as:

• User engagement (what’s important to your users?)
  • Ross advised that open source projects need  a good user base before it can start receiving contributions
  • User feedback is important and acts as market research
  • Users will watch before they actually get involved
  • Everyone in the community should be encouraged to help new users - this creates sustainability
• Transparency
• Collaboration
• Agility

In a project that involves open development there must be flexibility - which Ross admitted proposes project management issues. The JISC is flexibility but at the end of the project the original objectives need to be met. Ross stated the following tools that were essential in open source development projects:

1. Website
2. Archived mailing list
3. Issue tracker
4. Version control

Ross listed the essential processes involved in open source development projects as:

• Decision making
• Conflict resolution
• Transparency
• Recognition and reward

The next presentation was by Gianugo Rabellino of Sourcesense on ‘The power of community-led software development’. He also talked about sustainability and how this equals diversity and highlighted the big name companies (like IBM and Windows) who are all getting involved in open source development.

Simon Mather of UHI and LearnDirect then gave a presentation on ‘Barriers to Community’. Barriers Simon spoke about included:

•  Infrastructure
  • operational experience, transition costs, stability, security, technology maturity, process adaption, data migration, code
• Tools
  • developer training, versioning, development lifecycle
• Code adoption
  • licensing, application design, testing, staffing
• Community collaoration
  • technical direction
  • competitive advantages
  • return on investment

UFI have apparently saved a seven figure sum by using open source technologies.

The afternoon was split into two separate groups:

1. Tools and processes in open source projects (for developers and project managers)
2. Project governance (for project managers and principal investigators)

I joined the first group where we had small group discussions on the topics of: users, openness, tools and barriers.

Feedback from this session included:

• Users will resist change so it is important to involve them in the process (managing expectations)
• Contributing should be made as easy as possible
• Even if our project is small, you should still invite people to contribute
• Openness is good and open source can be good (but not just because it’s open source)

Feedback from the second session included:

• Building a community means that you can’t control it
• Time needs to be allocated to manage communities - this could result in precious contributions

On 16 October the POCKET team ran a workshop at the University of Derby to showcase the initial outputs of the project and the processes involved. The workshop was called ‘Developing Open Educational Resources: The POCKET Perspective’ and was particularly timely following the recent announcement from HEFCE of an initial £5.7 million of funding being made available for pilot projects on Open Educational Content in higher education institutions.

POCKET Project Manager Sarah Malone introduced the workshop and gave a bit of background on the project and outlined the aims of the day for participants, which were to:

• gain a good understanding of the work undertaken by POCKET and identify the issues surrounding the production of open learning materials
• understand the approaches needed to make existing content into viable open content, based on the experience of OpenLearn and POCKET
• be able to share knowledge between novice and expert participants on the creation of Open Educational Resources (OER’s)
• have the ability to plan and describe relevant designs for open learning material

Patrick McAndrew from the Open University then gave a presentation on ‘Exploring the pedagogy and design of OERs’ and then asked people to discuss with their neighbours the considerations of making content open. This led into the workshop group task, where small groups were given a hard copies of material that was to be transformed for OpenLearn. The groups were asked to discuss the components included in the material (eg. images, maps, text etc) and how these components could be transformed to open content. The group feedback was then recorded with Creative Vado cameras and fedback to the whole workshop group after the task had finished.

Points that were raised during the group task included: copyright issues and handling of third party material; and how to make the material more interesting and engaging for online delivery. This led in to a big group discussion on the practicalities and consideration of issues with production of open learning materials. One comment was that is was easier for large institutions like MIT to transform their materials in this way because they have support of their rights department and lots of flash and multi-media developers. How can you do this effectively if you are a smaller institution with less resources?

After lunch it was time for the showcase part of the workshop where myself, Roy Attwood and Mike Jeffries spoke about our experiences so far developing module content for POCKET. I spoke mainly about the development of material at Derby, which includes the Customer Service module and the International Economic Law module. I explained the process of content development on the project using a Compendium mindmap to illustrate the many issues and considerations. I then showcased the Introduction to Customer Service unit and the features included in it on OpenLearn.

Roy spoke about the experience of creating open content at the University of Bolton, including how they had created and made it available it in the past. He talked about his experience as an academic using the OU XML Schema and showcased the template he has written to make the process of uploading new content to OpenLearn easier.

Mike then spoke about the experiences at the University of Exeter, where they had long been involved in creating web-based content. He spoke on behalf of the academic who had written the module that is being transformed for POCKET, and explained how the content had to be slightly rewritten due to issues such as copyright and independent learning.

Workshop participants were then given the chance to ask the project team questions, which mainly focused on the experiences of the academics involved in the content development process. Sarah Malone then outlined how new partners could get involved in the project and advantages of this for both parties were discussed.

The workshop was then split into three groups:

1. The OpenLearn platform and its tools: This group was led by Patrick McAndrew and Tina Wilson and focused on how people can make their mark on OpenLearn without using XML (eg. Compendium)
2.  Why open content? This group was led by Dave O’Hare and Sarah Malone and looked at the benefits of making material ‘open’, including benefits for the academics involved.
3. Using OpenLearn XML: This group was led by myself and Gerald Schmidt and aimed to show how XML can work an enabling tool

In myself and Gerald’s group we found that many people there had good technical knowledge, but that they were concerned about how to enable academics to create XML content in order to create learning materials. Gerald demonstrated how to create a simple drag and drop activity in XML and I demonstrated how to download a unit from OpenLearn, edit it and then upload it again.

Feedback from the workshop was very positive and the project team have made some useful contacts and gained a possible partner (University of Nottingham) on the project.

The session lasted one hour and took place in the computer lab at the Buxton campus. The students were split into 5 groups: 4 groups of 4 and one group of 3. Four groups looked at two units and one group looked at one unit and therefore the groups were labeled and assigned the following units:

• Group 1: Responding to Customer Needs  (1a) and Writing a Report (1b)
• Group 2: Introduction to Customer Service (2a) and Analysis and Presentation of Data (2b)
• Group 3: Analysis and Presentation of Data (3a) and Responding to Customer Needs (3b)
• Group 4: Market Research Methods (4a)
• Group 5: Introduction to Customer Service (5a) and Market Research Methods (5b)

Learner profile

• The 19 students were all studying NVQ Level 2 in Hairdressing at University of Derby, Buxton
• There were 2 males and 17 females
• The ages of the students ranged from 16 right up to 35 + with the majority (almost two thirds) of the students aged 16 – 19.
• The previous qualifications held by the majority of students (nearly 80%) was school qualifications, with 1 student having no formal qualifications and 2 students having degrees.
• The average time spent on the Internet each week by the group was 1 – 5 hours
• The learners used the Internet for a range of purposes: the most common being finding general information and contacting friends. Four out of the five groups said that they used the internet to help with their studies.

Feedback
The groups that looked at units that specifically concentrated on Customer Service (Introduction to Customer Service and Responding to Customer Needs) agreed that it was a subject that they were interested in, whilst the groups that looked at more data focused units (Market Research Methods, Writing a Report, Analysis and Presentation of Data) disagreed and strongly disagreed that it was a subject that they were interested in.
All groups, except for 1a, 2a and 5a, disagreed and strongly disagreed that they enjoyed learning online in this way.
There seemed to be a mixed reaction to the content of the material with a range of responses to whether the material would be relevant/helpful to their studies, and the most number of groups disagreeing that the would want to look at the material further.
The most number of groups agreed or strongly agreed that the material in the units was new to them, with only one person in one group strongly disagreeing with this.
Market Research Methods appeared to be the unit where learners picked up new skills as both groups that looked at this unit agreed with this statement.
Navigation of the units did not appear to be a problem, with all groups (except from Group 2a) agreeing or strongly agreeing that it was easy to find their way around the unit.
All groups except Group 3b and 2a agreed or strongly agreed that the information was presented clearly.
The majority of groups also agreed or strongly agreed that there was enough activities in the units, however 3 groups disagreed that there was enough variety of activities.
Most of the groups were not sure whether useful feedback was provided for all activities and only Group5 agreed with this statement.
No groups thought that the units were too easy for them: Group2 answered that both units that they assessed (Introduction to Customer Service and Analysis and Presentation of Data) were challenging as did Group 1b who assessed the unit Writing a Report.

When asked to state good points about the units the responses were fairly varied.  The most common factor, with Groups 1b, 3a and 5a mentioning this, was the large volume of information included in the units. The animations and other activities were highlighted by Groups 1a, 2b and 5a. Only Group 3b stated the fact that the units were available online and accessible from anywhere as an advantage.
When asked to state what could be improved on the units the response was much more unified and concerned the readability of the units. Groups 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b and 4a all said that the font size was too small and difficult to read. Groups 1b, 2a and 2b also added that there was a lack of space in the units, which also made it hard to read.
Many learners commented to me during the session that they were unable to fully feedback on the units because of these reasons.
Other comments included that the appearance of the units was too formal and the groups would have preferred to see more colours and more images. Only one group mentioned that having audio in the units made it difficult when access to speakers was limited.

Overall findings
There were certain limitations to how this feedback session can help evaluate the POCKET materials so far, which include:

• Only the Customer Service module units were assessed
• The POCKET units have been taken from Higher Education Institution material and the learners in this feedback session were just beginning to study at Further Education level.
• The learners assessed the units in groups for reasons previously specified, however the units are designed for learners to use independently.
• The feedback session only lasted one hour, so groups had limited time to work through the units.

Feedback to be taken forward from this session includes:

• The units that include audio should have subtitles for when learners do not have access to speakers or headphones.
• Readability of the units, including font size and colour and also layout, need to be looked at. Factors such as font size and colour are dictated by the OU XML Schema so cannot be changed by contributors to OpenLearn. If possible, it would be more accessible to have the option of changing the text colour and size on each page of the OpenLearn website to suit individual learners.