Library:Biology Content Curation - Final Summary
BIOL 112/121 Content Curation Project - Final Summary
The Biology department partnered with the library for assistance in identifying Open Education Repositories (OERs) with the intent to retrieve learning objects that could support the Biology faculty's flexible learning initiative. The library's role was to search OERs, retrieve topic relevant results, create supporting documentation, and create a content curation process that would be sustainable for the Biology department to work with.
Stakeholders for this project include: Biology faculty, Flexible Learning Librarian, Subject Librarian, Student Librarian, Research Assistant, UBC IT, CTLT
The three areas of the project's workflow include: Identification, Permissions, and Description
Deliverables
Within the two month timeline the following objectives were achieved:
- OERs identified and selected based on their strengths in the sciences
- Learning objects were selected and retained for faculty approval, with particular emphasis on Biology 112/121 subjects
- Licenses were identified for objects with permissions for copyright
- Search plans were created for efficient and effective OER searches
- Supporting documentation was created in the wiki to assist with sustainability
- A low-cost/effective interim space was created to store content with the ability to migrate
- A functional public facing portal (BioFlex Content Curation) was created to for Biology faculty to access learning objects
Identification
With multiple OERs to choose from, the identification of OERs was completed based on an inclusion/exclusion criteria. This resulted in a selection of quality OERs that were stronger in the sciences. The approval process included feedback from faculty, which also helped inform identifying better OERs to support Biology 112 and 121. The selected OERs include:
MIT OpenCourseWare
Khan Academy
OER Commons
Openstax CNX
MERLOT II
NSDL (National Science Digital Library)
Approval Process
As the collection of learning objects and search results grew, the approval process required an effective way to communicate between faculty and researcher. A Google spreadsheet was revised and organized by course unit and subject in order to facilitate the approval process. Learning object links were placed in the spreadsheet.[1] Faculty selected links, chose the appropriate course number, and entered the approval date (if approved for use). Faculty comments helped shape how the learning objects should be curated as objects were identified for courses outside of 112 and 121, suggesting that there needed to be some room to grow the curation space if required. This was worked into the workflow to ensure sustainability. Care was taken to weed out duplicate learning objects. The resulting search plans are the documentation demonstrating searches completed and provide search efficiencies for each OER.
Search Plans
The search plan process revealed specific OERs to be retrieving better results than others and some were better able to handle more complex search queries (Boolean operators, truncation, etc.) while still others returned better results when searching using broader terms or by using a Google site search.
A Google custom search was created, but with only Google account holders being able to access the custom search, it did not deliver an open search for anyone to use.
Each OER required its own search plan and several iterations were tested, and all were added to the wiki along with the project's documentation.
Library:Biology_112/121_OER_Search_Plans
Permissions
For permissions the goal was to curate only open access Creative Commons licensed content; however, several OERs are content aggregators and also collect works that are protected under copyright. Faculty indicated that they would prefer to have access to the learning object even if it meant they could only provide a link or embed a video. As a result all relevant learning objects would be available along with the licensing information for each object.Consultation with the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office (SCCO) helped develop a permissions workflow should the need to obtain permissions from the rights holder be required.
Description
Metadata
A metadata template had been created to catalogue the learning objects. This template was refined to fit with the faculty’s needs for identifying learning objects. Based on faculty feedback, the metadata fields were reordered to reflect how Biology faculty might browse metadata when searching for content. Further consideration was given to how data would be entered, ensuring that moving from field to field would go with relative ease.
Subjects were kept at a high level and based on the course topics. No controlled vocabulary was identified as a possible solution for further description. However, the GEM taxonomy (Gateway to Educational Materials) was used for searching OERs and could be explored as a possible solution.
File:Biology Content Curation Metadata version2.docx
Word Press
Regular meetings were held with IT while developing a curation space.
Findings: The wiki would not be the best location for data entry. Gravity Forms was explored as an option to create a metadata template for data entry and the Word Press view would be the portal for finding learning objects; however, IT discovered that this would not be a sustainable option as a clean metadata export could not be easily achieved. Word Press became the public interface, and it was decided that the best option to enter and store metadata would be by using Google forms linked to a Google spreadsheet. Furthermore, this also ensures clean metadata exports if migration is needed.
BioFlex Content Curation
Sustainability
As a temporary repository, the BioFlex project is sustainable as it can easily be updated and maintained. With the library's contribution of the search plans, the Biology department can retrieve content, approve it and enter into their database for storage, which can then be viewed and searched by other users. The BioFlex project stands as an example of how a content curation process can be achieved in a low-cost effective manner.
Long term sustainability requires consideration for permanent storage and requires infrastructure to support the preservation of learning objects.
For the library, sustainability requires a graduate student research assistant -- with a preference for iSchool students -- who can work with the supervising librarian to complete the work of identifying content, clearing permissions, and creating metadata descriptions for learning objects as well as creating supporting documentation. The student research assistant should also be available to liaise with faculty and SCCO as required.
Knowledge areas
- Information needs assessment
- Information retrieval. The ability to create search strategies that efficiently retrieves relevant information
- Collection development to evaluate sources
- Metadata creation and description
- Copyright and licensing permissions
- Subject area knowledge is beneficial, but not essential
- Knowledge of wikis, word press is helpful
Training required
- orientation searching and using OERs
- permissions and copyright overview
- wiki page creation for UBC wikis