Travel-well resources

Eminent, Vilnius, December 2009, 26-27

History of the concept• MELT project: launch of the LRE portal, a

repository containing about 40,000 Los and 92,000 assets.

• Interoperability issue: in order to build such a repository, we first looked at:– Technical interoperability (metadata, query

standards, etc)– Semantic interoperability (mapping among the

different vocabularies)

The LRE portal

http://lreforschools.eun.org/LRE-Portal/Index.iface?rvn=1

The LRE tag clouds

http://lreforschools.eun.org/LRE-Portal/Index.iface?rvn=1

What about the content interoperability?

• After the repository was set up, we started to analyze the content ant to test it.

• Each content provider shared quality content but… – It this content traveling well?– Is it usable in contexts different from the one it

was produced for?– What are the traveling-well indicators?

The eQnet project• The eQnet project aims at studying those issues

together with the teachers using LRE resources in real contexts.

• So far, we have identified some travell-well parameters:– Language independence/Low language

dependence (easily translatable) OR Multilinguality;– Strong visual structure (animations, images and

short videos are traveling best)– No large semantic density (easy to include in any

curriculum)

Other parametersMore relating to quality in

general• Cultural appropriateness: the resource respects

the cultural and social norms of teacher and/or pupil.• Usability: users can find their way through the

resource almost intuitively. This may be possible even if the user is unfamiliar with the language of the resource.

• Technical features: easy to access (no login or plug-ins)

• Openness: open license, free to use, open code (like in flash resources)

A question of pragmatism

• The theoretical identifiers characterizing travel well resources must be tested by users.

• The real use is crucial and it is strictly linked to the concept of traveling well (the concept of travel will means that something has worked out already… “It travels well or traveled well”).

• The quality issue is somehow related to the concept but not the same.

Recent papersdealing with learning

resource quality (2005-)• EUN, A European Schoolnet Framework for Quality of Learning

Resources (2005), http://insight.eun.org/ww/en/pub/insight/thematic_dossiers/articles/quality_criteria/equality4.htm

• EUN, Quality criteria (2005), http://insight.eun.org/shared/data/insight/documents/quality_criteria.pdf

• Becta, Quality principles for digital learning resources (2007), http://feandskills.becta.org.uk/download.cfm?resID=32112

• Leacock, T. L., & Nesbit, J. C. (2007). A Framework for Evaluating the Quality of Multimedia Learning Resources, http://www.ifets.info/journals/10_2/5.pdf

Quality indicators

Need for travel well indicators with examples

An objective of the project is to find such indicators and to write some recommendations for repository owners or content providers to be taken into account when sharing their resources at an international level. This could be useful in other EU-projects as well.

Thank you for your attention!

Silvia PanzavoltaANSAS (ex INDIRE)s.panzavolta@indire.it

Credits:Image taken from:

Dia, www.indire.it/dia