OpenDock Project Weblog

We're great fans of the Creative Commons system for denoting open content licensing. In educational settings especially, the simplicity of CC licensing can cut through a lot of silly obstacles to sharing.

We've now made it very easy to add Creative Commons licensing to knotes weblog content. There are new links in the Manage sidebar for managing a CC license (you need manage role on a weblog to see that sidebar).

KNotations | You can now add 'real' creative commons licensing in knotes blogs

I've added Creative Commons licensing for the content in this weblog. See the sidebar near the bottom left ( screenshot at the right of this entry). I chose the Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license. It is easy to change this choice if you have manager role in the weblog. Details / how-to are in the KNotations blog entry linked to above.

Back in Barcelona, I am having a look at the notes from the meeting, and I have something to say about the "tagging" for the documents, specially for the UoLs.
There is one document provided with the specification called "IMS Learning Design Best Practice and Implementation Guide" which contains some rules for describing a UoL. We may use some of these guides for tagging the UoLs.

The point (extracted from the doc) is:

3.2.4 The Design Phase Examined in Detail
The starting point for the creation of a design is a use case narrative. For the narrative to contain sufficient detail, it should conform to the following document structure, which is derived from Alistair Cockburn's use case template:

Title - a very short description.
Narrative - a general description of the use case in educational terms (see below).
Primary Actor - student in student led learning, teacher in teacher led situations.
Scope - runtime systems involved in the delivery.
Level - description of the level of complexity.
Stakeholders and Interests - a discussion of the roles and their respective responsibilities.
Preconditions - a specification of what is needed in order to provide the student with learning experiences.
Minimal Guarantees - role specific preconditions.
Success Guarantees - role specific demands for the learning experience to be successful.
Main Success Scenario - relate to the runtime systems involved.
Extensions - various failure scenarios.

The narrative should be structured in the following way

Title - a very short description.
Provided by - author, institution, etc.
Pedagogy/Type of learning - case based, problem based, individualized linear, etc.
Description/Context - idem
Learning objectives - idem
Roles: - the various participants, such as student, tutor, assessor, etc.
Different types of learning content used - local texts, internet pages, multimedia DVDs.
Different types of learning services/facilities/tools used - external expert, groupware.
Different types of collaborative activities - among students, between students and tutors,
Learning activity workflow - how Actors / Content / Services interact.
Scenarios - e.g., the same content may be used for face-to-face and distance learning.
Other needs / Specific requirements - e.g. accessibility, specific target groups, etc.

As you can see, if one intending to develop a UoL uses this guide to seed the information about the UoL, we may get a lot of information about the Unit of learning. This information can be posted attached to the zip file or embedded on the system (that is, using the tagging method provided with the repository). So, I think it would be interesting if UoL designers followed this guide.

Well, this is just an approach we could have in mind.

By now, I am exploring the possibilities for that "UoL Preview method" that was suggested during the meeting. I will let you know what it is going on with that, and it would be nice if we all keep in contact and comment any point that can appear.