SCORE Report

Findings of a Proof-of-Concept Project of the SREB Educational Technology Cooperative

Sharable Content Object Repositories for Education; An Initiative to Improve Digital Learning Course Content and Manage Costs in P-21 Education

December 2004

In 2004, the Southern Regional Education Board's Educational Technology Cooperative, a unique multistate cooperative composed of 37 higher education and K-12 coordinating and governing boards in the 16 SREB member states, participated in a proof-of-concept project for SCORE - Sharable Content Object Repositories for Education. SCORE was conceived to help state educational agencies, colleges, universities an schools work together to create and share quality digital learning course content through the use of federated state repositories.

The findings of the project in this report are based on knowledge gained by SREB and the Learning Object Repository initiatives of the Florida Distance Learning Consortium and the Maryland Department of Education. Additional information and support were provided by the Academic Co-Lab, several Learning Management Solutions (LMS) providers and other members of the SREB Educational Technology Cooperative.

THE NEED FOR SCORE: Working in settings often described as isolated “silos” that discourage sharing, many instructors currently lack ready access to high-quality digital materials that can significantly improve course content. Equally important, the opportunity to share content to avoid the high costs of course development is often ignored.

A related problem is the sheer number of state education agencies, colleges, universities and schools that need to learn about and use digital content successfully. In the 16 SREB states, alone, there are nearly 800 public two- and four-year institutions and more than 3,400 public school districts. Without a clear plan and coherent implementation strategy, their use of digital learning will continue to be fragmented, and many traditional barriers likely will continue to thwart large-scale use and more cost-effective practices.

THE GOALS OF SCORE: To improve the quality of digital learning course content learning objects and tools), to improve teaching and learning, and to achieve costs savings.

The proof-of concept project identified four key elements that SCORE will need to achieve these goals. They include:

1. integrated learning object repositories to allow faculty, teachers and curriculum developers to easily develop, share and use content across colleges, universities and schools within and across states;
    
2. policies and procedures that will ensure quality by providing guidance and requirements to create, approve, store and retrieve content.
    
3.  a consistent and mutually accepted meta-tagging convention and controlled vocabulary; and
    
4. policies regarding copyright and intellectual property owned by state education agencies, colleges, universities and schools.

FACTORS INVESTIGATED AND FINDINGS REPORTED: The project also identified key policy, quality control, technical, legal and financial issues that require investigation before an initiative of this scope should be launched. Stated in the form of questions, these issues and finding follow.

• What are the repository criteria and interoperability requirements that will support federated search of multiple repositories?

Requirements for repositories and interoperability among repositories continue to be addressed by numerous vendors, colleges and universities, and organizations. The proof-of-concept project has worked closely with and reviewed the work of many persons in the field who are leaders in repository development. These efforts have resulted in agreement on minimum standards and requirements that will grow as the technology changes and improves.

User (Developer and Searcher) Requirements:

• Content must be reusable.
• Search criteria should include mapping content to context.
• A cataloguing scheme should be designed so that searches are relevant and precise.
• Guidance and very effective simple searches and interfaces for tagging content are needed.

System and Interoperability Requirements:

• Components must comply with SREB's Principles of Effective Learning Objects.
• Flexibility and scale are critical to the success of this initiative.
• Interoperability in search strategies is essential to accommodate expansion of these repositories.
• The architecture must support local policies.
• The architecture should be designed so that the ease of enabling new services and capabilities will not change the underlying structure.

Standards Compliance:

• SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) compliance is intended to guarantee interoperability between LMS providers and digital learning course content.
• W3C HTML  protocols should be in place to ensure interoperability and to validate learning objects as they are created and reused.
• 508 standards are recommended.
• IEE LOM standards  are essential for meta-tagging conventions.

• What P-21 meta-tagging conventions, including required and optional tags, controlled vocabulary and digital object identifiers, are necessary to store and retrieve digital learning objects?

The project's significant and detailed work on meta-tagging conventions for P-21 has resulted in this publication, SCORE Users' Guide to Learning Object Metadata (LOM); Entering Metadata in LOM Fields. These metadata fields include postsecondary and K-12 requirements and state standards. They are based on the IEEE LOM  elements and incorporate the controlled vocabularies from Dublin Core and GEM. Continued investigation and work on metadata fields for tagging assets will be required.
 

• What quality standards, plan and process will ensure that only quality digital learning course content are placed in the repositories?

The project is creating a document, Principles of Effective Learning Objects, that defines for the SCORE initiative the attributes and characteristics of a quality learning object. This document will be central to the review and acceptance of digital learning objects for placement in SCORE. In addition, companion documents, including a Learning Object Review Instrument (LORI), will be used by state education agencies, colleges, universities and schools to review and approve learning objects.
 

• What legal issues, including sharing content among state education agencies, colleges, universities and schools and complying with intellectual property rights, must be successfully resolved through the SCORE initiative?

Quality and intellectual property issues are important when questions of sharing and using content owned by other parties are considered. To avoid many of these issues during the initial implementation of SCORE, the only content to be placed in the repositories will be content owned by state education agencies, colleges, universities or schools that are participating members of SCORE. Rights and responsibilities of participating states are identified in a Memorandum of Agreement document that SCORE has created.
 

• What budget and funding model is required to create and sustain multistate P-21 digital learning course content repositories?

It is evident that SREB states will need to make significant funds, resources and time available for SCORE to be successful in achieving its quality goals. Recognition of initial implementation costs has led to plans to seek grant funding to underwrite and support states' funding contributions. Working together, SREB and participating states will need to jointly develop an ongoing SCORE budget and determine levels of funding requirements of states and other users.
 

• How will information about digital learning objects, repositories and other aspects of the SCORE project be shared with state education agencies?

During the course of the SCORE proof-of-concept project work, the SREB Educational Technology Cooperative provided information about the status of the SCORE initiative at each of its meetings. The Educational Technology Cooperative also will host a meeting of all states that indicate an interest in becoming founding members of the SCORE initiative.

RESULTS: Preliminary findings from the SCORE proof-of-concept project indicate that despite the questions listed above, there are no barriers to launching a cooperative effort to develop multistate P-21 repositories of digital learning course content with federated searching capabilities.

To date, two SREB state agencies have committed to hosting repositories. They are the Florida Distance Learning Consortium and the Maryland Department of Education. During the last year, both agencies have devoted significant time and effort to the creation of repositories in their states that incorporate the central ideas in SCORE implementation.

From a Proof-of-Concept Project to a Viable Initiative

RECOMMENDATION: Based on the findings of this report, it is recommended that SCORE be established as a long-term, multistate, P-21 initiative to share digital learning course content among state education agencies, colleges, universities and schools in SREB states. Initial implementation of the SCORE initiative in the coming months should address the technical and quality-control issues of sharable content objects (SCOs); reciprocal sharing arrangements; budgetary requirements; and collaborative funding, evaluation and dissemination of information among SREB states.

 

For more information, e-mail Myk Garn at myk.garn@sreb.org.