OER’s, DL’s, Reuse and Culture
its about being a phd student researching digital resoures in a multicultural world.Archive for May, 2007
no, it’s not the final answer
10 May 2007 at 12.38 pm · Filed under culture, localization, metadata, reusability
it seems to me as though if we could do a few things as far as metadata around culture that could help with reuse for that particular element.
- define how much cultural context is embedded within an object
- define the specific cultural context of the material, and – at this point – limit that definition to the major sub-cultural groups within the united states (euro-american – the dominant one, hispanic, asian american, african american, native american), with an understanding that, yes, there are more cultures in the united states.. and also with the understanding that just like there are languages with different dialects, there are different expressions of culture based on a lot of factors that i won’t go into here. {edited to add.. throw in the folksonomy work here.}
- define the size of the object.. by doing this the finder of the object has an idea of what kind of task they have ahead of them as far as reusing the object.
yes. its just a beginning. i’ll test the ideas around here, see what people think.
i think.
9 May 2007 at 4.13 pm · Filed under culture, metadata, reusability
i think that the case could be made that within context metadata that there should be a subset for cultural context.. i think that it would be difficult to create a standard of what to call the cultural context, but i do think that it would be possible to make a case for data about how culturally laden material is. material that is more culturally laden is going have a greater need to have that changed if it is being taken to a different culture. yes. and i think it would be necessary to have that piece in there. but one problem that comes with that is getting the dominant culture to realize that yes, they are a distinct culture, even if they are the dominating one.
so, then, the next obvious question that comes up, for me at least, is what is the determinant of the amount of cultural context? there are other questions too, that have to do with adaptability, but i’ll think about that later.
metadata and culture
7 May 2007 at 3.07 pm · Filed under culture, localization, metadata, reusability
is it possible to create metadata around culture? or is culture such an individual thing (according to two different definitions of culture, one by Nuelep, as quoted by Bentley, Tinney, et. al (2005), and another by Serrano and Hou, as referenced by Murray, Smith, and Hill (2001) culture is, essientally, an integral part of a person’s life, a way of interpreting the world), that to create that metadata makes so many assumptions based on a large, not homogeneous group, that the attempt to do so is just a complete waste of time?
I'm Brooke, a second year PhD student at Utah State University in Instructional Technology. My interests include digital resources, reuse and localization. Specifically I'm interested in the interplay between culture and reuse of oer's (open educational resources). How can we reuse instructional materials so that they are culturally relevant to users. What is culture? How do we define it in an educational setting? Is making something more culturally relevant more motivating and will that make it more instructionally effective? How can we quantify culture so that we can create processes to more easily adapt instructional resources for the complexities and depth of culture? It's a lifetime of work. 