Content Management:
Cultural Misfit or Solution Fit for Investment
What we will cover
• The LTS approach to its Senior Management
on why it should roll out a production version of
an LCMS
• Our findings on the use of Hive as a LCMS
• Comparisons with other LCMS products
Swinburne is using or trialing with other projects
• What may be done to foster academic
commitment to an LCMS to realise a win win in
LO repackaging and adaptation
What we wont cover
• Will Swinburne implement an LCMS as a core
production environment in 2005/2006?
• Is Swinburne likely to be implementing one
system or many systems?
• Which system or systems are likely to be
implemented:
• They all do the job they just do it differently
• University politics rules
All Hail DigC
• To DigC or not to DigC • Externally sourced
• Self sourced • Get a version of content
• Saved on media sent from author –
somewhere arrange digital rights or
dinner
• Loaded from source and
placed on destination eg • Get course cartridge from
Blackboard subject area publisher
• Use Blackboard as • Get library to copy
backup area materials and arrange
digital rights and link to
resource within BB
• Grab URLs
And so it was written!
• Content is king
• The king is dead long live content management
(content structures)
• Content ain’t useful in a learning situation until its made
meaningful eg given a context . LCMS gives content a
way of being discovered in relation to contextual search
via metadata – long live metadata (our bastard prince)
• The trick is to spend less time reinventing the wheel but
more on coding existing content so it can be discovered
by the learner through appropriate meta data
• But what do the decision makers really think?
Senior Management
• What is Content • Why do we need it?
Management? • Space efficiency – but
• Confusion over content on haven’t we created
websites and records and policies to control
learning content archiving of subject
• We don’t have a problem materials etc?
with content management • Version control of
• Library control it via online subjects
reserve? • Consistency across
• Blackboard and WebCT 1000+ subjects
house all the content? • ROI on expensive
interactives
Hiving off content
• Hive pilot got off the ground because
• Three directors had a vision
• They backed their vision with strategic funds and
resources
• Harvest Road were able to support our vision and
Hive interfaces Blackboard
• eBusiness academics were keen to explore LO
• LTS staff were keen to support the academics
• ITS, IRG and LTS staff had the skills to test and
manage the application (availability was a problem
so timing was the trade off)
The Hive Pilot Project
• June 2003 Briefing Paper recommends Hive
• August 2003 Hive Licence acquired for Pilot
• September 2003 Administrators trained
• October 2003 LILO Metadata Schema
• March 2004 eBusiness agree on sem 2 rollout
• June 2004
• content migrated from WebCT to Hive (then BB)
• Metadata added using IMS1.2.1 fill in LILO fields
• 10 subjects created within BB LMS
Primary Pilot Outcomes
• Assess how an LCMS could be used to realise
the reported benefits of Learning Object
adaptation and reuse
• documented audit and edit trail of detailing the
workflow of all authors, administrators and
digital rights managers etc
• report on whether or not Hive should be
introduced into production system for 2005
Pilot project with Hive LCMS
• Depth and Breath of Pilot
• include multiple subjects that share resources that can be
tracked, identified and compiled at three levels of
granularity, the Learning Object (LO) level, the asset or
artefact level (to allow LO to be altered or adapted to suit
different contexts) and the lesson or topic level (a
functional combination of LO and contextual artefacts)
• deconstructing a large learning object into smaller
learning objects arises as one of the key things to test
Building the Hive
• eBusiness review WebCT content
• Remove references to module and topic numbers
• Finding the right content relies on getting the right
metadata recorded
• LTS list type of metadata required (LILO) (Hungarian born Nicholas Kove
invented the Li-Lo air mattress in 1939, his company name was AirFix)
• The right Metadata Schema : LILO
• eBusiness use LILO for their resources
• LTS staff publish into Hive
Harvesting the Honey
• Outcomes were:
• Over 200 students exposed to CMS during
semester 2
• Staff exposed to use of CMS
• New organisation of material paradigms due to lack
of reference to module and topic numbers
• Staff endorse conceptual advantages of CMS
• Time and effort associated with publishing with
Metadata the key problem area
• PD program required is less about software and
more about change management
Spreading the Honey
• Staff comments:
• “Still excited about the vision”
• “Pilot may not have been given the justice it deserves”
• “lack of resources from the academic side”
• Staff insights
• Metadata should accommodate the original source
• Better examples of Metadata tagging and resultant
searches – quality of the metadata affected the value of
the search
• PD program required is less about software and
more about change management
Not getting stung
• Need a CMS – but phase in eg international
• Best practice – not all learning objects need
extensive metadata
• Who decides what can be adapted and reused
• Reusability is foreign to academics
Harvest Rd Hive
The Learning Edge & P-12
• P-12 Pilot Project
• BB Application Service Provider
• Early days – approaching schools to gauge
interest in both BB and the Learning Edge
• Learning Federation Learning Objects
• Banks of Reusable materials
Blackboard’s LCMS
Evaluation copy access to see how it looks
Tale of CMS
• LCMS applications solve problems but they
also create them.
• While they solve:
• Reuse and re purpose
• Effectiveness and Efficiency of resource utilisation and
storage
• They create
• Complexity in publishing student resources
• New ways to work – new work flows
• More time invested in cataloguing is less time for
research
Concluding Comments
• LCMS is a cultural misfit at present
• Collegial sharing of materials happens but is based
on who knows who rather than who can find what
• Quality of the student experience is more about the
interactions with people than software
• LCMS is a solution fit for investment
• Managing information should take less time than
creating knowledge
• Adapting materials to create new learning
opportunities is dependent on finding them in the
first place
What we said we’d cover
• The LTS approach to its Senior Management
on why it should roll out a production version of
an LCMS
• Our findings on the use of Hive as a LCMS
• Comparisons with other LCMS products
Swinburne is using or trialing with other projects
• What may be done to foster academic
commitment to an LCMS to realise a win win in
LO repackaging and adaptation
What we said we wouldn’t cover
• Will Swinburne implement an LCMS as a core
production environment in 2005/2006?
• Is Swinburne likely to be implementing one
system or many systems?
• Which system or systems are likely to be
implemented:
• They all do the job they just do it differently;
• University politics rules
• Any Questions? We will try and cover these!