As one of the top eight research Universities in Australia, with roughly 14,000 students, the University of Western Australia is concentrating on the development of a learning resource system. The University recognizes the need for continual improvement of the quality of the student learning experience, and identified “blended” learning methods - both online and face-to-face teaching - as a means of enabling student to gain the most from their time at UWA.
In 2003 the UWA library was looking into ways of providing a digital version of its collection for materials that were recommended by lecturers to their students. However, when the University took their specifications to suppliers, the proposed solutions were cost prohibitive. As a result, the library decided to create its own solution that would allow it to digitize course readings and to make these accessible from the library’s online catalogue. However, the University Librarian, Mr. Arfield, explained that, “This system had none of the management features we wanted and copyright compliance was all done manually. In fact, the whole process of putting items into the system was very labor-intensive.” Another drawback was the fact that the system could not be integrated directly into online learning environments. However, for all its limitations it proved to be very popular with students and a resource that was keenly used throughout the University.
At this time the University realized that the service had severe limitations and wanted to provide a less manual and more sophisticated service to its students. This led the University to begin a search for a commercial learning object repository solution.
Mr. Arfield stated, “We were convinced that the system had to integrate easily with managed learning environments, not just with our current systems but also with future ones.” That meant that the system had to be compliant with existing standards for learning objects, something that most library system suppliers were not able to provide. It was also very important that the repository be independent from any delivery system, to avoid being locked into one supplier. Furthermore, the repository had to be able to deliver material into a number of different contexts and systems.
After a rigorous tender process, that included both Australian and international vendors, HarvestRoad Hive was chosen. A key benefit and point of differentiation was the fact that the system was independent. Mr. Arfield stated, “Keeping the content separate from the delivery was very important. It gives us more control over our intellectual property, that is, who has access to it and how. The commitment shown to adopting and further developing key international eLearning standards was another key consideration in the selection process.”
Apart from the above, the University had a number of priorities that the system needed to meet. Firstly, it had to have the ability to include readings and learning objects in the same system, and not be confined to material that could be searched through the library catalogue. It also had to be capable of structuring lists that would meet the needs of students and that would includ both print and digital material. It had to be able to take advantage of any metadata that might already exist in the library catalogue, and use the library system dynamically to maintain that metadata. And, lastly the system had to provide the ability for lecturers to manage and maintain their own resource lists. HarvestRoad Hive would enable students to browse, search and utilize learning materials and resources online. It would also give academic and library staff the ability to capture, store, share and manage reusable teaching and learning resources, as well as to create customized reading lists for students. In essence, it would form the foundation of the University’s Learning Resource System.
Mr. Arfield explained, “We have migrated all the items that are currently in our Course Materials Online Service onto the Reading List Management System (RLMS). This entailed about 9,000 PDF files and about 15,000 records from the library’s catalogue.” The University has quickly realized efficiency in importing data using HarvestRoad Hive Explorer for RELOAD.
Another key milestone was the implementation of the Content Management System. Brian Poleykett, Project Coordinater at University of Western Australia Library stated, “We imported 19,107 objects, both PDF and HTML, with accompanying metadata stored in XML files. Copyright Works Database records were also created automatically where required. The procedure took approximately 15 hours in total. Without HarvestRoad Hive Explorer it would have taken at least 5 minutes per file to manually create Hive item records, import the XML metadata, and upload the file. This would have been 1,592 hours or approximately one person working 212 days full time.” The Reading List Management System is the system that students will use for their recommended readings.
Rather than opening the service for use to the whole University immediately, UWA decided to limit its introduction to the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, the Faculty that, probably more than any other in the University, shares its learning objects both between units in the same year and across years. This pilot also provided an opportunity for UWA to move the Faculty’s materials across to WebCT and integrate a learning object repository at the same time. One of the observations that UWA made from this exercise was that it encouraged new models of collaboration. Mr. Arfield said, “An interesting new situation is emerging as we move through this project. It is not just about the sharing of skills but the sharing of technologies that draws upon the distinctive strengths of various kinds of systems - in our case, a learning management system, a learning objects repository system and a library management system - to provide a truly integrated learning environment that works for both students and staff”.
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