Panos BamidisAssist. Prof. Medical Informatics-Medical EducationMedical SchoolAristotle University of ThessalonikiGreece

Multi-type Content Repurposing and Sharing in Medical Education

Baltimore, USA, 10tthMay, 2011

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

http://www.meducator.net

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

2

What is mEducator?

A Best Practice Network (BPN) co-funded by the – eContentplus 2008 programme of the European

Commission, Information Society and Media Directorate-General, Digital Content & Cognitive Systems

Start Date: May 1st , 2009 Duration: 3 years Contract Reference: ECP-2008-EDU-418006

As a BPN, it compares different solutions (2) to draw best practice recommendations

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

3

mEducator Partners1 Aristotle University of Thessaloniki GR Coordinator, Technology provider, Content provider, User/Evaluation,

Dissemination

2 University of Cyprus CY Technology Provider, Content provider, User/Evaluation, Dissemination

3 Democritus University of Thrace GR Content provider, Technology provider, User/Evaluation, Dissemination

4 MEDTING Medical Exchange Limited IR Content provider, Technology provider, Dissemination

5 Technical Univ. of Cluj-Napoca RO Technology provider, Pedagogical expert

6 Université Nice Sophia Antipolis FR Content provider, User

7 Medical University Plovdiv BG Pedagogical expert, Content provider, User

8 Università degli studi di Catania IT Pedagogical expert, Content provider, User/Evaluation

9 University of Helsinki FI Pedagogical expert, Evaluation

10 St George's Hospital Medical SchoolUK Standardisation Body, Pedagogy Expert,

Technology and Content Provider

11 Succubus InteractiveFR

Content and Technology Provider

12 The Open UniversityUK

Technology Provider

13 Coventry University UK Content provider, Technology provider

14 European Cervical Cancer Association FR User/Evaluation

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

4

How do people share nowadays

Usually expose individual repositories (instead of allowing distributed searches)

Case of search engines (e.g. Google):– data are restricted to specific kinds of documents

(such as HTML, PDF… i.e. do not harvest metadata as such)

Minimal sharing mechanisms… Minimal interoperability between systems… Peer collaboration ?

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

5

mEducator central idea

discover, retrieve, use, rate, re-use and re-purpose educational content irrespective of any Learning Management System use

providers and users of such content may be – expert instructors (academics / health professionals)– students / learners

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

6

Ultimate goal…

provide mechanisms for content publishing, discovery, & retrieval

analyze policies and mechanisms for content evaluation, rating, renewal and repurposing

elaborate on intellectual property rights for educational material

test the impact of true interoperability, repurposing, enrichment, and embedding of a variety of highly attractive and up-to-date learning resources in each of the partners’ curricula

provide recommendations on how to implement interoperable educational content discovery and retrieval networks

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

7

mEducator “content”

refers to any type of educational material with a registered history of creation and evolution

Is linked with – specific educational goals and objectives– learning outcomes – educational contexts/settings

comes recommended with – certain types of teaching methods & strategies– and/or assessment

Personal Blogs

Class Discussion Forums

eTrace – Graphics annotation based lessons

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

Luxembourg, 11 May 2010, mEducator Annual Review9

10

What is Repurposing?

‘...transforming a learning resource initially created for a specific educational purpose in a specific educational context in order to fit a different new purpose in the same or different educational context’As defined in deliverable mEducator D3.1 Content Repurposing: Definition of Repurposing Reasons & Procedures

•Repurposing to different languages •Repurposing to different cultures •Repurposing for different pedagogical approaches •Repurposing for different educational levels •Repurposing for different disciplines or professions •Repurposing to different content types•Repurposing for different technology•Repurposing for people with different abilities•Repurposing to educational content•Changes in the content itself

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

11 Luxemburg, 26/02/2009

Describing Repurposing histories:Metadata schema extensions

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

12

Metadata Scheme Overview

Analyse existing standards Relevant fields from

existing standards

Identify additional pedagogical information

Explore requirements for repurposed content

Fields to describe repurposing history

Fields describing additional pedagogical

information

Identify any additional critical information

Additional fields

mEducator Metadata Scheme

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

13

The competing perspectives (tensions)

End users directly involved in metadata creation….but current metadata standards are difficult to use

– Semantic ambiguity / overlapping– Time consuming process– Not all fields are meaningful (from a sharing perspective)– …where is the learning?

Controlled vocabulary/terminology vs. user vocabulary (taxonomies vs folksonomies)

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

Proposal of a Tree-based Conceptual Model (Based on LOM/HealthcareLOM)

Representation of the Tree Model in XML

– XML Schema, XML Example File Moved towards a Graph-based Conceptual Model (RDF Model) Proposal of controlled vocabularies for some metadata

elements and linking of them with the RDF Model Representation of the RDF Model in XML (RDF/XML)

– RDF Schema, RDF Example File

mEducator Scheme: Achievements

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

15

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

16

Content sharing: envisaged solutions

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

17

mEducator will test 2 different approaches for sharing

1. loosely coupled LCMSs– via mashup

technologies2. federated architecture

– semantic web services / open linkedservices

partner institute 1

partner institute 4

partner institute 3

partner institute 2

partner institute 5

federated architecture

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

Solution 1 Overview

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

Solution 2 overview

Current Solution 2 architecture:(1) federated access to eLearning repositories across the Web:integrating existing educational resources from across the Web using Linked Data/Linked Services technologies enabling federated queries for educational resources by end users and 3rd party applications

(2) publishing educational resource metadata as Linked Data: following state of the art Linked Data principles (URIs, RDF, SPARQL, interlinked data with established vocabularies such as SNOMED, MESH, GALEN…)

19

Web Service Web Service

LCMSLCMS

API layer

OU resource metadata store

…

External LCMS

Data & services

Application & presentation

Data & services integration

Web Service

LCMS

Linked Services

OU metadata

API layer

Solution 2 User Interface

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

meducator

co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus programme

21

Associate Partnership Associate Partnership ApplicationApplication

RegisterRegister and join the and join the mEducatormEducator community communityhttp://www.meducator.nethttp://www.meducator.net