scooter: building an online community to sustain open education practices

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SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices Dr Vivien Rolfe & Dr Simon Griffin* De Montfort University, Leicester, UK *Griffin Internet Marketing

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SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices. Dr Vivien Rolfe & Dr Simon Griffin* De Montfort University, Leicester, UK *Griffin Internet Marketing. OER11 Conference, Manchester, May 11 th 2011. SCOOTER - OERs for Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia education - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open

education practices

Dr Vivien Rolfe & Dr Simon Griffin*

De Montfort University, Leicester, UK*Griffin Internet Marketing

Page 2: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

OER11 Conference,Manchester,

May 11th 2011

Page 3: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

•SCOOTER - OERs for Sickle Cell andThalassaemia education

•JISC/HEA OER Phase 2

•Website launch November 2010

Page 4: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Introduction

• Driving forces for the future of OERs and open education practices are discoverability and sustainability – how can individuals and institutions ensure that their resources thrive and not gather dust?

Page 5: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Importance of Community

• Central to sustainability is growth of a critical mass of interested individuals, and it adopting technologies and approaches to create networks (Dholakia 2006).

• Need to facilitate productive sharing whether as one-off transactions, or within on-going collaboration (Chris Pegler OER2010).

• Identify emergent champions who serve as informal leaders in inspiring new OER communities (Cynthia Jimes OER2010).

Page 6: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

How to Build a Community?

• HumBox Project supporting humanities subjects – repository launched Feb 2010.

• Project has produced new registered users and deposits beyond duration of initial project.

• HumBox uses a comment box for each resource to build dialogue - championed by HumBox project team (Borthwick & Dicken 2010).

Page 7: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Other Online Strategies?

• Use of social networking tools (YouTube, Twitter) promoted OERs on web and was linked to increased in course intake (Russell Stannard, OER2010).

• Their website has grown to 15,000 visitors per month!!

Page 8: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

SCOOTER Project Aims

• Building a community of online users using social networking tools.

• Understand which networks are effective tools?

• What is their impact in terms of discoverability and sustainability of OERs and OEP?

Page 9: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Methodology

• Establish social networks e.g. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Posterous.

• SCOOTER has produced 26 “new user” registrations in total!!

Page 10: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Methodology

• Track web traffic using Google Analytics, and using additional indices from social network tools.

• Evaluate REACH (visitor demographics) and IMPACT (return visits, reuse, change in behaviour, loyalty) (Rolfe EDULEARN 2010).

• Evaluate type of community engagement - PASSIVE or ACTIVE (comments, dialogue, evidence of collaboration).

Page 11: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

SCOOTER Online Presence

Page 12: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices
Page 13: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Results – REACH and IMPACT

From launch to 18th April 2011 (5 months)

Page 14: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

•Visits from 66 countries•1,153 unique visitors•30% returned 2 times or more (reuse)

Page 15: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

People searching for“sickle cell”, “sicklecell anaemia” (Google, Yahoo,Bing, AOL)

Sites, socialnetworks containingSCOOTER URL(back link)

People who KNOWthe URL already

Page 16: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Social Network Referrals No. Visitorsen.wikipedia.org / referral 174

sicklecellanaemia.posterous.com / referral 52

hlsweb.dmu.ac.uk / referral 39

heacademy.ac.uk / referral 24

facebook.com / referral 20

ezinearticles.com / referral 17

righthealth.com / referral 12

dmu.ac.uk / referral 11

localhost / referral 11

dmuscooter.wikispaces.com / referral 10

prod.cetis.ac.uk / referral 9

bit.ly/forexmarket / referral 5

en.m.wikipedia.org / referral 5

groups.medbiq.org / referral 5

learnex.dmu.ac.uk / referral 5

twitter.com / referral 5

sicklecellanaemia.tumblr.com / referral 4

sicklecellanaemiaorg.blogspot.com / referral 3

stumbleupon.com / referral 2

others 34

Page 17: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

CategoryUnique Visitors Activity

Backlink I have submitted 262 One off

Posterous network 96 5 minutes per week

Ezine 17 1 article per month

Others grown organically 80 Nothing

Page 18: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Results – COMMUNITY data

From launch to 18th April 2011 (5 months)

Page 19: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices
Page 20: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Follower / Subscriber

Comments / Posts

Resource Views

SCOOTER Website Forum 39 7

Posterous (37 posts) 4 0 3789

YouTube Channel (1 video) 1 0 342

Twitter #DMUViv 29

Facebook 26 3

Blogger 1 0

Ezine (3 articles) NA 0 163

TOTAL 100 10 4294

Jan 1st = 27

Page 21: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Who is using, why and what purpose?

• Facebook - general public• Twitter – academic, professional• Forum - healthcare professionals, students

• Comments include general positive feedback and requests for resources and suggestions for weblinks.

Page 22: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Summary• Social networks are effective in “referring traffic” to

SCOOTER, producing 30% of the 1500+ visits in the first 5 months.

• Social networks (Posterous, Youtube) are useful repositories for OERs, with a recorded 4000+ views of our OERs on these sites.

• Posterous is very quick and highly effective social networking tool.

Page 23: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Summary• SCOOTER community presently is largely PASSIVE –

OER users, viewers, readers.

• ACTIVE users are few and this can be enhanced for a truly sustainable approach.

• But, conferences and off-line networking is also essential for building the SCOOTER community and will sustain interest beyond the project (including universities, hospitals, charities and commerce).

Page 24: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Conclusion• Creating a community using social networking tools is

relatively simple and makes OERs DISCOVERABLE on a global level to a wide range of audiences.

• Creating a vibrant ACTIVE community as a means to drive SUSTAINABILITY takes effort, and building off-line communities is also important.

• We need to evaluate community dynamics - who is using, and for what purpose? Also who is NOT using the resources and why?

Page 25: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

• Borthwick K 2010. HumBox Tracking Reports 1 and 2. http://www.llas.ac.uk/resourcedownloads/3233/humbox_tracking_report1.pdf

• Dholakia UM, King WJ & Baraniuk R (2006) What makes an open education programme sustainable? The case of Connexions. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/3/6/36781781.pdf

• Jimes C (2010) Building Communities to Support Teacher Use, Localization and Sharing of OER. OER10, Cambridge.

• Pegler C (2010) Reuse: the other side of sharing OERs. OER10, Cambridge.• Rolfe V (2010) How to monitor the use and reuse of open educational resources using Google

Analytics. EDULEARN10, Barcelona, p2320. http://library.iated.org/view/ROLFE2010HOW• Stannard R (2010) OER and Marketing Opportunities. OER10, Cambridge.

• SCOOTER Project Website http://www.sicklecellanaemia.org (Including OER Training, and HOW TO SET UP POSTEROUS)

• Online Marketing Services and Advice http://www.griffininternetmarketing.co.uk/

References and Useful Resources

Page 26: SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Twitter #DMUViv

Email [email protected]

GO TO

http://www.sicklecellanaemia.org/OER/training.html