Interoperability of learning object repositories: Linking the personal and community storehouses of future knowledge

Griff Richards
eduSource Canada Research Leader
Simon Fraser University Surrey

Learning object repositories hold the digital resources that make on-line instruction possible. Whether in collections held by individual professors, learning communities, or publishers of knowledge artifacts, the reusability and hence the potential market for e-learning objects depends on the extent to which the objects can be found, selected for appropriateness, and retrieved for use in a new instructional context. This presentation outlines the current success of eduSource Canada, in building an interoperability framework to link repositories. The ECL or eduSource Communications Layer is an open protocol to enable search, gather and retrieval within the eduSource community and gateways that extend this functionality to other learning object repository networks. With its unique ability to link both peer-to-peer and web services models, the ECL has been earmarked for integration into the MIT Open Knowledge Initiative through the LionShare project.

SFU Surrey
10153 King George Highway, Surrey
British Columbia, Canada V3T 2W1
email: griff@sfu.ca

Brief Bio of Griff Richards
Griff Richards holds a Ph.D. in Educational Technology (Concordia University) and has spent 25 years in the research and development of computers applications in education. He has managed to survive each onslaught of new technology by holding fast to sound pedagogy that promotes interaction of the learner with content, self and others.

He has spent the last 5 years building a research team at SFU Surrey to link knowledge management and education. This group has been successful in winning several applied research grants in the area of learning object repositories, and knowledge management. Recently, as Research Integration Officer for the TeleLearning Network of Centres of Exellence, he led the $1.6M Portals in Online Objects in Learning (POOL) repository project and is currently a principal in the $8M eduSource Canada consortium.

His group shares funding in LORNet, Canada’s new $7.5M Learning Object Repository Research Network, SAGE-21 a $3M research network on Simulation and Games in Education, and in the $US 1.7M Mellon funded LionShare Project (with Penn State and MIT).

He teaches Cybernetics and Instructional Design online through Athabasca University’s Master of Distance Education Program. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia and avoids snowy places.

Recent Papers / Presentations in this area

2004 Hatala, M. and Richards, G., Eap, T., and Willms, J., “eduSource: Implementing Open Network for Learning Repositories and Services” Special Track on Engineering e-Learning Systems held at ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC) 2004 (accepted)

2003 Richards G. and Hatala, M., “Interoperability Frameworks for Learning Object Repositories” In Proceedings m-ICTE, Badajoz Spain. December (accepted).

2003 Hatala, M. and Richards, G., “Value-added Metatagging: Ontology and Rule-based Methods for Smarter Metadata.” In: M.Schroeder and G.Wagner (Eds.) Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web (RuleML2003), Springer-Verlag, LNCS 2876, pp.65-80

2003 Hatala, M. and Richards, G. “Making a Splash: A heterogenous peer-to-peer learning object repository” WWW 2003 Poster

2003 Richards, G. “Learning Object Repositories” In C. Bereiter (Ed.) Learning Technology Innovation in Canada: A supplement to Journal of Distance Education Special Issue on TeleLearning-NCE. 17(3).

2003 Richards, G., McGreal, R. Hatala, M. and Friesen, N. “The evolution of Learning Object Repository Technologies: Portals for On-line Objects for Learning” Journal of Distance Education, Special Issue on Learning Object Repositories 17(3) (Spring 2003).

2003 Richards, G., and Hatala, M. “Semantic Cobblestones: An interoperability mechanism for learning object repositories” In R. McGreal (Ed.) Learning Objects and Metadata (working title). Routledge-Farmer (to appear 2003).

2003 McGreal, R., Richards, G., Friesen, N., Paquette,G. and Downes, S. eduSource: Creating learning object repositories in Canada. IEEE Learning Technology (available at http://lttf.ieee.org/learn_tech/issues/january2003/1)

2002 Richards, G. “Editorial: The challenges of the learning objects paradigm” Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology 28(3) 3-10.

2002 Dufresne, A., Senteni, A. and Richards, G. “La contextualisation des banques de ressources – barriers et clés” Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology 28(3) 27-42.

2002 McGreal, R., Anderson, T., Friesen, N., Sosteric, M., Hewitt, K., Ring, J. MacLeod, D., Richards, G. Hatala, M. Calvert, T., Chiasson, M., Roberts, T., Carey, T., Harrigan, K., Paquette, G. and Downes, S. “eduSource: A pan–Canadian learning object repository” In Proceedings of the E-Learn 2002 Conference. Montreal: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.

2002 Richards, G., McGreal, R. and Friesen, N. “Learning Object Repository Technologies for TeleLearning: The evolution of POOL and CanCore” in E. Cohen & E. Boyd (Eds.) Proceedings, Informing Science + IT Education Conference, June 15-18, Cork, Ireland. 158

2002 Hatala, M and Richards, G. “Global vs. Community Metadata Standards: Empowering Users for Knowledge Exchange” International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2002). In I. Horrocks and J. Handler (Eds.) The Semantic Web-ISWC 2002. Berlin: Springer-Verlag 292-306

2002 Hatala, M. and Richards, G., ”POOL, POND and SPLASH: Canadian Infrastructure for Learning Object Repositories” The 5th IASTED International Multi-Conference Computers and Advanced Technology in Education (CATE 2002) May 20-22, Cancun, Mexico.