OER Pilot FACE TO FACE MEETING (9 October, Amsterdam)

Participating: 
TERENA: Peter, Sigita
Kostas, Nelson, Adam, Antonio, Vicente, Giannis, Jean-Francois, Tibor, Eli

1. AGENDA, AOB
Peter briefly presented the history of the project and reminded that any additional information, including the minutes of previous meetings, can be found on the project wiki page. 
Peter went through the agenda that was previously sent around and explained the main aims of each part of the meeting.

Additions to agenda:
Antonio would like to give a presentation - before lunch 
Vicente - promo kit, present it when relevant
Chris (will join via VC) - MOOC platform - end of the day

Giannis: need to agree on the main goals of the meeting - which will be the main functionalities, application providers, … and a clear action plan for the coming months - only one month left before testing 
Vicente: need a clear definition of the features of the portal - initial study is a good starting point, should go through all the features and see what they mean and how to interconnect them with the aggregation engine
Eli: in the second version the features are more clear, should be a good basis for the discussion 
Peter: top down approach - define user needs first and then see what are the components instead of focusing on the exciting tools, define the added value of the pilot; should be managed as a software development project, multiple versions - most important features in the first version, others - later
Vicente: first - define features, then - think of what is doable and defining requirements to the data providers 

- - -

2. SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES

Peter presented the concept of the (GEANT) OER pilot 
(upload presentation online)

Added value: national repositories mostly don’t have paradata features, portal can be provided to the NRNs that don’t have their national repositories 

USER CONNECTION/LOG IN PROCESS 
Giannis: connecting mookid instance using your edukit identity?
Peter: would be good to have a possibility to log in with your google or Facebook account
Giannis: for submission of material identity is needed - eduroam credentials, etc.
Peter: can benefit from federated authentication - introduced later, not in phase one
Vicente: start with free registrations
Peter: can use google etc. - putting in edugain is more tricky
[demonstrates how TERENA federated login works]
Vicente: go from the easiest to more complex, even if you don’t have an account, you can open an account with your e-mail account 
Peter: federation is possible later
Giannis: one of the goals to have users - creation of another account is a barrier
Peter: local registration is a problem
Vicente: google login in phase one?
Peter: edugain login also needs to be looked at as it gives useful user information
Vicente: providing the user a very quick way of access 
Peter: happy with the local login, we need to focus on the features for now, if we need it federated - can be done easily later; needs to be put in the road map
Eli: this should be considered in the next phase, now focus on the purpose of the project
AGREEMENT: Connection - simple at first, allowing a user a quick way of access (e-mail, Facebook, google, etc.) - move towards federated log in the later stages

Peter: need to prioritise (paradata, system integration - later states), scope is very broad - primary focus on national repositories and/or federations run by the NREN and then other repositories (still mainly via NRENs)- try to convince our community first
Focus on multimedia content, but be ready for other types

TYPE OF CONTENT
Giannis: need to define the scope of the type of content - only multimedia - audiovisual - repository?
Eli: needs something to support the learning, as many different materials as possible - important to integrate different types, but maybe in phase two
Vicente: its easy to add other types of content after we do multimedia
Giannis: definition of “multimedia”? 
Peter: PP is also presented as a multimedia document; downloadable file or stream?
Tibor: […]
Vicente: from the mookid point of view every object is a container - video or audio which also has attached files 
Peter: attachment is a future proof concept? documents are uploaded more often than attached even to e-mails
Vicente: recommendation is to add the real files
Eli: its not our point to deal with the content
Vicente: portal has a digital object that is a container that has secondary essences that attach documents to that document
Giannis: we will not aggregate any content - thats decided, what we need is metadata and location of the object, if video or audio can be downloaded from the original source thats good for the user
Peter: lets focus on the needs, not the features of the tool 

What is multimedia?
Lecture recordings
Conference recordings
Learning Objects (?)

Peter: no still images, not in the first phase - focus on moving pictures, video and audio 
Eli: MOOCs, moodles - customers of this project, not the providers

AGREEMENT: Focus on multimedia (moving pictures, video and audio) first, other types of content (still images, etc.) to be included later

Addition to agenda:
Giannis: indicators should be discussed 
Peter: will add to the agenda

- - - 

3. SERVICE SPECIFICATION

Eli presented service specifications - presentation based on the second version of the “TERENA-OER: State-of-the-Art and Outlook” document
[add slides to the minutes]
Features are divided into two phases - can be moved around, open for discussion

GENERAL FEATURES AND IMPLEMENTATION PHASES

Search - start searching in all medatada
Advanced search - a (big) list of categories from medatada
Vicente: Standard search - only one field, advanced - start filtering, another user interface?
Eli: you have 10, 20 fields of advanced search - only will get information on the fields filled in; fields - anything we would be able to collect, 8 fields for now
Giannis: complex search system might not be appreciated by the users
Vicente: maybe we can try that in the first phase, search fields are easy to place in the portal
Peter: basic search is title and speaker?
Vicente: simple search - one word, advanced - start filtering

Peter: having pointers in the middle of videos “this discussion/topic starts here”?
Maybe can be implemented in the future, but not yet widely available feature

Vicente: if (technical) metadata information is provided - good, but if not - we can get it; recommendation for providers - give us access to the media
Giannis: if you need to download the source in order to extract the information it will be very lengthy process
Kostas: it is easy but very time consuming
Peter: need to find the balance of how advanced can we go
Vicente: a lot of added value 
Eli: everything we can get automatically is very important (8 main field)
Peter: technical metadata - length, video quality, etc?

Vicente: custom search - google 
Peter: google engine not the google search 
Vicente: only inside your portal 
Eli: search, not advanced search
Vicente: google search engine - good feedback from the users
Eli: “phase 3” - combining our advanced search and google search - would be perfect
Vicente: for the first implementation use ARIADNE search engine and google engine
Peter: we should re-use an engine already created; harvest hidden content, index it properly and let the google engine find it
Kostas: index in the portal in order for google to do the search - how can we expose it from the repository?
Vicente: is there restriction to share the metadata?
Kostas: we want to harvest TERENA portal?
Vicente: TERENA portal will only have metadata and extra information added by the users, which is paradata
Eli: need to decide what kind of metadata we need 
Vicente: complicated subject, leave it for now?
Peter: need to define a roadmap for that

AGREEMENT: Search needs to be discussed separately depending on functionality 

Categories 
Eli: important for metadata - discipline or other features
Vicente: subject based browsing?
Antonio: communities, sub-communities
Vicente: thematic browsing?
Eli: first you chose a category and then get other search fields, need to decide on metadata used
Vicente: category can be a field for advanced search? best to have categories and sub-categories with some visuals
Antonio: most people who search use google - we are discussing the categories that will be used by very few people
Vicente: categories are more for browsing, not searching; portal found via google, but then stay on the portal as a trusted source
Eli: we can have advanced search as well 
Vicente: browsing is more user friendly

Vicente: 1st search - using google; if one of our videos found - gets to our portal
Peter: google make indexes in your portal

Eli: first stage - our internal stage, to have added value - start locally then go wider; users might start locally if they had a solution for that
Antonio: they have to be educated to start locally, but mainly users start globally (goggle)
Giannis: we cannot control the starting point of the users, but after they find our portal they will see its trustworthy 
Eli: what is the difference then from our portal and anything else?
Antonio: google - first step; second (choose a format for example) refine the search; MERLOT - very confused, communities are confused, no guarantee of quality of content, GLOBAL, ARIADNE - the same - why have something with the same results? if you have an attractive portal, good search, good contents - user will start going directly to it [especially for multimedia] - who guarantees the quality of the content?
Peter: providers - good content is the added value
Vicente: google search restricted for the needs of the portal

Users should be able to find our objects in google and then attract to our portal and get them to stay due to good quality content
Peter: need to achieve that TERENA portal comes up first on the google search

Thumbnails
For audio - default picture, also for those that do not provide a thumbnail;
Recommendation - provide a thumbnail, which is usually better than automatically generated

Language
language for user interface - English
metadata language - [not to deal with it in great detail the 1st phase] - 1st option - metadata in English, if not available - language of the content (recommendation to provide metadata also in English)

Social media sharing
Vicente: social media signs embedded on the website, also URL and IFRAME
Antonio: “social media sharing” - change to just “sharing” in general; 
Vicente: sharing and embedding 

Dynamic tag cloud - second phase
Eli: anything that we can implement - the most viewed videos, usually they use the words; shows popularity, need to decide on categories 

Also to be implemented in Phase 1:
News and information
About us
Help

Paradata
Vicente: all paradata in phase two?
Eli: rating? comments?
Vicente: would be nice to have, we can start
Peter: have to be ready for handling paradata
Eli: phase 1+ before GN4 starts (1st April) - for implementation of some basic paradata

AGREEMENT: 
Phase 1 [end of this year]: metadata (general features: search/advanced search, thumbnails, categories, social media sharing/embedding, news and information, about us, help)
responsive web design, mobile applications
terms and policy
dashboard - implemented through google analytics
web access for the disabled 
Phase 1+ [before GN4 starts]: basic paradata (rating, comments), RSS
Phase 2 [after GN4 starts]: membership, alert and paradata (dynamic tag cloud, suggested items, peer review, popular items, etc.)

EMBEDDED PLAYER:
if URL available; for providers - mandatory access to embeddable player, naked player - recommended; 
can we ask for only those providers who can provide material that keeps users on our portal? or help them find material - put user in contact with content? suggest direct URLs as good practice but not mandatory. 
GOAL OF THE PORTAL:
Eli: users should use our portal for SEARCHING, it is ok if they leave for the learning process
user goes outside, but our portal can remain open in the bar

BROKEN LINKS:
Content no longer there? Broken links taken out? Provider should do that.
Terms and policies should cover that - solve it at the policy level

- - -

4. SOLUTION FOR RECORDING LECTURES - easy2rec

Antonio presented and demonstrated “the simplest tool to record lectures” for teachers (students, etc) - for making learning objects

Peter: could this have a tab on the front page “search TERENA OER”, could be used as a promotional tool for us
Antonio: yes, when TERENA OER is ready
TERENA OER - referatory, not a repository, will not be storing any material, so recordings cannot be placed directly on TERENA OER.

- - -

5. PuMuKit presentation 
[get the presentation for wiki]

Vicente presented PuMuKit - a platform that automates the process of publishing on the internet audiovisual content at a university. 
Multimedia contents can be stored in one database through various channels (iTunes U, YouTube, RSS, a web portal type WebTV)

Kostas - requirements for API?
Vincente: portal communicate with the aggregation engine via API
Kostas: whats your preference?
Vicente: Used Solar, but we had security issues; now prefer REST API
AGREEMENT: GRNET and UniVigo teams to keep in touch to continuously re-evaluate the process 

Hide the objects that are down and contact the content providers about problems with their servers?

Peter: Graphic design (logo, etc.) - leave it blank for the moment (due to TERENA —> GEANT Association)

Vicente: need clear definition, good metadata, URL to naked player 
Browsing - very important, else it will look like a search engine; for that - clear vocabulary is needed
Need to find some more repositories 

Nelson demonstrates repository of an NREN - educast.fccn.pt - not open, but can perhaps be made available? only available for higher education institutions
Nelson: Openness - political decision; TERENA OER is a good project to encourage openness, else its a waste to have a lot of content that cannot be used
Another problem - many professors do not want their content to be opened 
Eli: people want to share their material more and more, see it as PR for themselves
Antonio: people use the product to record their lectures, but not to share it
Vicente: Uni of Manchester - the biggest lecture capture system, 150 lecture halls recording - 300 later this year, thousands of hours of recordings every semester - issue: who gives the right to record? two scenarios - opt in and opt out
Opt in - professors ask for their lectures to be recorded
Opt out - by default it is recorded; if they don’t want it to be recorded - then a professor has to sign
Uni of Manchester went for the Opt out scenario. 
Eli: there is already enough material 
Vicente: don’t have enough, there is no other repository that targets the subject
Giannis: at the level of exposing this information there are always problems 
Eli: local repository usually used for own audience (students), other circles - maybe
Peter: lets start with learning objects, short LOs 
Kostas: have access to 6 repositories, none with the subject, some offer only .pdf

Peter: promotion - ask universities: “are you ready to place your contents on OER?” encourage universities, provoke, sort of competition - tools have to be in place for that
Antonio: Manchester approach is to be encouraged 

ACTION: Should get in touch with SWITCH about “SWICH TUBE”

- - -

6. TERENA Metadata Analysis 

Kostas presented various ways in which content of all source repositories of TERENA OER can be evaluated - language, format, important elements, etc. Information based on LOM.
[can be uploaded with the minutes?]

Giannis: this demonstrated how messy the metadata is that we are currently getting
Eli: need to figure out whether what we have is enough to work with
Giannis: need to have metadata application profile first

- - -

7. Coffee break: 
- harvest Youtube channels (ACTION POINT for Kostas - figure out how to do that and which channels)
- harvest RSS feeds of the universities participating in the iTunesU - ACTION POINT for all 

- - -

8. Architectural part, application profile (Giannis)
[Presentation]

What are the first providers that we will select for our pilot in a couple of months? - “friends and family” - Campus do Mar, Uni Vigo, should also contact SWITCH, educast; alternatives - harvesting iTunesU (quality of metadata is good, also have thumbnails)

Kostas: problem is mapping from native schema - LOM - application profile, who is going to do that? also vocabulary mapping 
Giannis: Hidden effort that creates a barrier for aggregation 
Peter: youtube is not that complex, iTunes also provides quite some information
Giannis: need to understand every data provider and metadata available

Giannis: 2 alternatives: RSS itunes and Youtube edu
Peter: approach friends first

Kostas: Eli - send us xml files, we can use them for the beginning 
Giannis: if the vocabulary is in English then its easy for us

Giannis: we need help in defining the mapping, even if we only use “friends and family” 

Giannis: always need to have an English label, maor should have vocabulary in English

Metadata Application Profile DOCUMENT

Giannis: cannot continue without deciding on metadata schema 
some elements will be mandatory for the providers, some mandatory for the portal
if something is coming to the portal and does not have the mandatory element, will be rejected
we should not force the providers to tell us in which language are the titles provided but we should have this information on the aggregator and the portal
We are proposing that only 4-5 elements should be mandatory if we want to have a critical mass, if not then other elements can be added 
4 mandatory: title, description, language of the object, location of the object (URL, etc), media format (but this could be defined at the level of aggregator), subject (need to decide if its mandatory or recommended) - maybe not on the first stage? 
Eli: what are the automatic options that we have (authors?) and the other thing is “creator” - has to be there from the legal aspects - can be done automatically 
Giannis: the “rights” element, if the creator can be considered the institution, UVigo can be the creator, else need to identify the professor and thats tricky
Eli: we can decide what is necessary and then decide what we can have in the first phase realistically 

Giannis: Mandatory element - will not display this record if it doesn’t have this value
Giannis: General ID - necessary, but hidden from the user
Eli: combination of keywords and description and then make it mandatory
Kostas: text based search can be done from title, description, etc.
Peter: keywords should not be mandatory

Giannis: vocabulary vs free text elements - language should be a filter, language for the metadata should be there but not the users; this can be automatically generated so can be mandatory - mandatory but comes automatically

ACTION: Ask NRENs of some countries to propose a couple of institutions that are on iTunes U 

Giannis: need to check whether iTunes U are providing RSS (agreement between universities and iTunes U)
Vicente: RSS - for everyone to harvest
Giannis: need to check just in case

Giannis: educational metadata elements, Learning resource type and target audience - recommended, not mandatory
Vincente: target audience - not easy, need to start from scratch 
Giannis: educational elements - recommended, have some examples with those elements to show why they are important 

Giannis: need to include something in the position paper about competitive advantages