Introducing SOL*R

Scott Leslie

BCcampus

June 2, 2006

Outline

SOL*R Overview

Getting an Account/Logging In

Finding Resources

Contributing Resources

What Opportunities Can SOL*R Enable

Discussion

What is SOL*R ?A service for BC post-secondary educators

aimed at facilitating the

SharingDiscoveryRemixing &Reuse

of provincially-funded (and other) learning resources under “open content-” style licenses

http://solr.bccampus.ca/

Online Program Development Fund

Funding to public post-sec institutions to increase the number of online courses, programs, technologies, and services

Encourages inter-institutional partnerships

Resources produced through this fund become accessible system-wide for sharing and reuse.

Three rounds of the $4.5 million OPDF have taken place — one in 2003, 2004, and 2005, 4th just closed its RFP in April.

BC Commons License

1 of 2 license options for OPDF content

Developers to retain IP

Supports free sharing of content among a regional consortia

Developers retain commercialization potential outside consortia.

Reduces effort for permission to reuse

Requires sharing of modifications of original content with larger community

Some of the challenges we’ve tried to address…

Resource interoperability and granularity…

Learning Resources come in all shapes and sizes:

Different formats and media types – images, animations, web content, PDFs, Powerpoints, Word docs, course management system exports…

Different levels of ‘granularity’- concepts, lessons, modules, courses, programs

Different kinds of “Reuse”…

Instructors need to be able toReuse content "as is“

Wrap existing content "as is” in new contexts (re-aggregate)

Alter the content (either for quality, accuracy or to suite their own needs)

Sustainability…

BCcampus needs to be able toTrack content use and reuse

Support the cataloguing of content

Support versioning of content

Secure content which should only be available to validated BC Educators

…and some opportunities we’re trying to enable

Federation with other repositoriesOpen Archives InitiativeEdusource Communications Layer

Interoperation with different toolsWeb Services interfaces

Flexible item definitions and security modelComing Soon…

Multiple front endsIntegration with multiple back-ends

Getting An Account/Logging InNeed validated BCcampus Portal Account to access SOL*R

Go to http://portal.bccampus.ca/

http://solr.bccampus.ca/

Click ‘Login to SOL*R’

Then login with

username: lortest

password: lortest

Finding Resources

Browsing

Free Text Search

Advanced Search

Federated Search

Contributing a ResourceWhat kind of resource?

Which license?

Websites, WebCT exports, IMS Content Packages, Word documents, Flash movies…

Moderation Process; New Versions

Lesson Assembly ToolDrag and Drop content from the repository to make new resources or

Create new resources from scratch

Can use templates (which can be specific to individual users or groups)

Can export as IMS Content Package, SCORM file, PDF or plain web page

Potential Opportunities for your institution

Connect existing repositories to provide seamless search and retrieval to validated BC educators

Connect up different editing and authoring environments through the web services interfaces

Opportunities IIUse this for storing other kinds of data

Institution specific collections; collections shared between smaller consortia of institutions

Hosted model for Institutional collections

Direct access to resources for designers from with WebCT and other CMS

Demo Vista/WebCT CE 6 Integration

http://vista4demo.webct.com/webct/entryPageIns.dowebct

Next Steps450+ resources from OPDF Rounds 1 & 2 uploaded so far, more to come

Other content welcome!

Contact me at sleslie@bccampus.ca or 250-383-2456

Questions?

(oh please let there be questions!)