Preliminary Quality Guidelines

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Quality guidelines for Content Creators of Reusable Learning Objects for ShikshaLokam – Version 1.0

 

The purpose of this document is to provide preliminary guidelines for content creators and reviewers to ensure that the quality of the content created and uploaded onto the ShikshaLokam platform meets fundamental quality criteria. The document provides an overview of the key quality features that content creators of Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) are expected to incorporate and an overview of the curation and review processes that if followed, could enhance the quality of content and its discoverability on the platform.

This is version 1.0 of the quality guidelines for content creators of Reusable Learning Objects and course creators using RLOs for ShikshaLokam.

Content

1. Overview of the quality guidelines for content creators and curators
1.1 Maturity model for curation guidelines
1.2 Quality of Content – fundamental quality guidelines
2. Quality of RLOs
2.1 Features and characteristics of RLO
2.2 Quality features for RLOs using its Metadata
3. Preliminary guidelines for digitizing content
3.1 An indicative checklist for usability
3.2 Additional visual and instructional design guidelines
4. Fundamental guidelines on inappropriate content and attributions
4.1 Guidelines for content appropriateness
4.2 Guidelines for attributions and licenses
5. Relevance, discoverability and accessibility of content on the platform
5.1 Tagging Framework-Taxonomy
6. Review process on the ShikshaLokam platform
6.1 Checks for creators to do before submitting an RLO for review
6.2 Checks for reviewers
7. Assembling RLOs into courses – preliminary guidelines
8. Glossary of terms used in this document

1. Overview of the quality guidelines for content creators and curators

The quality of the learning experiences on the ShikshaLokam platform is vital for its success and to the contribution that it makes for systematic development of leadership capacity in K-12 education. The quality of the learning experiences on the platform is determined by some of these key features:

1. The quality of learning content available on the platform
   1. Quality of content – both created or curated using the platform
   2. Quality of creation, curation and review processes
   3. Availability – ease of access and discoverability
2. Its relevance and value to the users
3. Opportunities for collaborative learning and participation in different user communities
4. Ease of use of platform, user interfaces, adaptive creator tools etc.

While the totality of the platform experience is important for the user, a fundamental need of the platform is to ensure the quality of the content on the platform, and to put in place processes that enhance the quality of curation on the platform. These guidelines are an introductory set of guides to help content creators think about the quality of the content that they are creating. In particular it focuses on quality aspects related to the creation of Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) and courses built using RLOs. In addition, it provides some preliminary ideas around how content creators can set up and participate in review processes, that help enhance the quality of the content being created. Finally, the document provides some preliminary curation guidelines, to help content creators use the ShikshaLokam taxonomy and frameworks appropriately, so that their content is accessible and discoverable by learners and for reviewers to ensure that preliminary quality guidelines are met.

1.1 Maturity model for curation guidelines

In order to ensure quality of content creation as well as curation, it is important that quality guidelines evolve and mature over time. In the beginning, it is recommended to have simple guidelines with low barriers to entry that encourages users to contribute content on the platform. As the content quantity and quality improves, guidelines can evolve to set standards that maintain the same. This process of creating and curating quality content can be thought of as a maturity model for curation guidelines

 

The current guide^[1] on RLO creation and curation can be viewed as Phase 1 of the Curation Maturity Model.

 

1.2 Quality of Content – fundamental quality guidelines

Content that is well crafted and curated can become meaningful and valuable to learners if it is^[2]:

• Of relevance to them
• Is engaging
• Accessible and discoverable
• Offers a variety of content to suit different learning and learner requirements
• Is expansive and exhaustive enough to allow for learning, practice, reflection, assessment and planning.
• Meeting fundamental requirements of good quality

 

While the overarching quality process includes all of these six elements, this guide focuses on two key areas – the issue of quality of Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) that are constructed by creators and assembled into courses and its accessibility and discoverability – both as resources as well as in the form of courses. The guidelines provided, focus on these two aspects for creators. In addition, the guidelines include a preliminary set of suggestions for how content creators and organisations creating content can develop a process for reviewing and curating their content.

2. Quality of RLOs

The foundational feature of quality of content on the ShikshaLokam platform lies in the quality with which reusable learning objects or RLOs are built on the platform. This section provides an overview of the features and characteristics of RLOs and some quality features to keep in mind while constructing RLOs and assembling them into courses.

2.1 Features and characteristics of RLO

A Reusable Learning Object (RLO) is a piece of meaningful content that:

• fulfils a single learning objective or intent through its composition
• is reusable across multiple instructional contexts
• can be combined in a variety of courses, modules and activities, to provide a rich learning experience to a learner

 

In the context of the ShikshaLokam platform, these RLOs are digital content or in digital formats. RLOs are reusable, accessible, customisable, and self-contained (i.e. each RLO is self-sufficient in fulfilling its learning intent or objective). Since an RLO is focussed on a single learning objective, it doesn’t depend on other learning objects to meet its learning intent. Once created, RLOs can be repurposed to suit one’s needs. It’s characteristics of reusability and interoperability allow it to be used in multiple instructional contexts (for e.g. distance learning, blended learning, self-learning environments etc.), independent of delivery media and Knowledge Management Systems/Learning Management Systems on which these RLOs sit or are uploaded to.

Reusability being a fundamental characteristic of RLO, it is critical to pay attention to this while creating an RLO. The reusaublity attribute is closely associated with the aspects of breadth and depth of the content, making the content generic or specific and in turn increasing or decreasing the probability of its reuse. Though there are guidelines on how to increase the reusability of content, it is a critical choice that the creator needs to make considering various aspects such as: the purpose of the RLO, the depth of knowledge required to fulfil its learning objective or intent, the extent of additional information needed to make the RLO self-sufficient etc.  A detailed exploration of factors that influence the reusability choice is available in the FAQs document on RLOs for better understanding on this topic. (The FAQ is available as resources on the ShikshaLokam platform)

A thoughtful curation approach can bring together RLOs, organize and contextualize them toward a specific purpose. Tagging RLOs with meaningful metadata is therefore fundamental to being able to identify, search and retrieve suitable RLOs.

Metadata describes the RLO and gives information about it.

In addition to metadata, the structure of an RLO recommends that it contains the following three components – clear content, practice and assessment elements.

Content is the core of the RLO that consists of:

• An introduction
• Objective of the content
• Importance of the content
• Core knowledge pieces
• Summary and references.

A simple quality check while constructing RLOs is to see if the content of the RLO contains all of these elements or as many of these elements as possible in some depth.

It is expected that content/RLO creators will have domain knowledge or expertise to ensure that core knowledge pieces fulfil the sufficiency principle – does it provide accurate and expansive knowledge needed to fulfil the learning intent of the RLO; does it reflect current bodies of knowledge; and does it cover key aspects of the domain sufficiently. It is highly recommended from a quality perspective for content creators to reach out to subject matter or domain experts to verify/review content created for the RLO to ensure its validity, reliability and comprehensiveness.

Practice component provides learners opportunities to apply knowledge/skills and can take many forms such as

• Case studies
• Simulation exercises
• Practice questions
• Quizzes
• Short activities etc.

Practice component of an RLO is for the learner to assess themselves on the learning journey and to be able to more effectively use the learning resources provided in the RLO.

Assessment component is a means to assess if the RLO has indeed been able to meet the objective for which it was created. It is meant for course creators to assess if the RLO effectively meets its learning objectives. Assessment components could consist of:

• Multiple choice questions
• Questions and answers
• Short answers
• Short quiz etc.

Though there is no prescribed or mandated length or time duration for one RLO, and the principle of sufficient depth of RLO content is governed by its need to fulfil a clear learning objective, it is suggested that the time required to go through an RLO not be more than 10-15 minutes. This is because an RLO is designed to facilitate microlearning and is intended to help learners engage and absorb content in a short duration of time.

These attributes indicate that creators are encouraged to think of the following guidelines to design  and construct RLOs that are of high quality:

• Easily accessible and discoverable
  • Has all its metadata elements clearly defined
  • Calls out references/citations
  • Can be adapted (able to make minor modifications) for cohesiveness when the RLO is brought into a course structure along with other RLOs or resources
  • Is organized, has a purpose and is complete in its structure – core, practice and assessment components are all available and contribute to the richness of RLO content
  • Contains alternatives to text and non-text content to make it accessible to diverse learners
• Relevant and of value to learners and creators
  • Has high potential for reuse and is created in a manner that meets needs of different curricula
  • Has text that is clear and has the potential to be translated or repurposed into multiple languages
  • Has a clearly stated learning objective and content that meets the defined objective
• Engaging content
  • Has text that is clear and crisp
  • Is visually appealing, engaging and interactive
  • Includes activities and interactions that are functional and purposeful and supports active learning
  • Is bite-sized and not longer than 10-15 minutes

 

The above is a summary set of guidelines. Additional details can be found in the following section as well as Sections  3, 4 and 5.

2.2 Quality features for RLOs using its Metadata

Carefully reviewing some of the metadata requirements of an RLO is a step in ensuring the quality of the RLO itself. Given below is a table that identifies the various metadata requirements of an RLO and indicates the relevance of these metadata features to both the quality of the RLO as well as to is accessibility:

 

Criteria	Description	Relevance to quality	Relevance to accessibility/searchability
Clearly articulate the type of RLO through the metadata fields ‘Learning object type’, ‘Name’ and ‘Description’	●      The type of RLO that is being created should be clearly identified from any one of the following types – Concept, Fact, Process, Procedure or Principle. ●      The name of the RLO should be precise,with no spelling errors and should clearly indicate what the RLO content is about. ●      The description of the RLO should provide a high level summary of what the RLO is about.	●      Ensures that content that is created is purposeful and focussed around a particular type of knowledge/information. ●      It allows content creators to examine content that is being created for precision and sharpness, and allows creators to identify what to include and exclude. ●      It also provides an easy frame of reference to course creators as they consolidate RLOs for the course. ●      Providing a meaningful name to RLOs makes the tagging of content to the taxonomy framework more clear and explicit. ●      The description of the RLO is visible to users on the platform. It should therefore clearly communicate what content it contains, such that users (creators as well as learners) find it meaningful.	●      Ensures that content creators can find content specific to a type of theme/topic, maximising reusability.
Explicitly state the learning objective of the RLO.	●      The learning objective of the RLO should clearly define and articulate its intended learning outcome.	●      By calling out the learning objective, the content creator is constantly aware of the purpose for which the RLO is being created and self-assesses whether the content of the RLO is meeting its intended learning goals. It helps creator to cover the learning objective comprehensively. ●      For example, learning objective can be phrased as ‘At the end of this RLO, the learner will be able to distinguish between participatory and non-participatory methods of school mapping and their relevance in the indian context’ or ‘At the end of this RLO, the learner will be able to comprehend the concept of participatory school mapping and its relevance for schools in India’..	●      Enables content creators to assess more clearly whether a particular RLO meets their requirements and can be reused or repurposed. ●      It also enables learners to quickly judge if the RLO meets their learning needs.
Thinking about the primary audience	●      If the RLO is designed keeping in mind some specific learners / roles, mentioning the same would be useful.		●      Explicit mention of Primary audience (for whom the RLO is designed), if any, helps users (learners/creators) choose appropriate RLOs for their needs.
Language considerations	●      Clearly articulate the language in which content is being created. ●      Keep  in mind that the essence of the content isn’t compromised during translations. Ensure that the content is created using unicode format.	●      By ensuring that the language font used is in unicode format, the content’s interoperability is ensured (the content is clearly visible, both on the app as well as the platform). ●      Ensuring the essence of the content isn’t lost during translation ensures the content meets its learning objective and is of value to learners.	●      Allows users on the platform (content creators and learners) to easily search for content that has been created in language of their choice.
Keywords	●      Carefully mention all possible relevant words which can describe the content as comprehensively and meaningfully as possible.		●      By describing (the content of) the RLO using appropriate set of keywords, the RLOs discoverability is ensured. ●       Helping users search suitable content easily and faster.
Dependencies for this RLO	●      It is necessary for the users of the RLO (content creators) to understand which other RLOs (or resources) are required to be able to use the RLO in the most meaningful /appropriate way.	●      This ensures comprehensiveness (quality) of the RLOs by helping users (creator and learners) understand related ideas and their connection/relationship with the idea of the RLO.	●      By making the dependencies explicit, the RLO increases its accessibility/usability

 

 

3. Preliminary guidelines for digitizing content

It is expected that content creators of RLOs and courses will be familiar with e-learning, instructional design and digitizing content to create engaging learning experiences. Digitizing content is also dependent on the features available in external authoring tools such as H5P or HTML and the internal authoring tool available on the ShikshaLokam platform. The following guidelines provides some basic suggestions to help content creators visualise the digitization and design processes.

3.1 An indicative checklist for usability

The following is an indicative list to check the usability of the content that has been created.

1. Visual Clarity

Text Size and font should be readable on screen. No overlapping of text and images/ lines are being cut by phone edge. Text is not getting covered by image/ navigation or submit buttons, is legible. Not too much text in one screen.

1. Technical Experience:

Audio/video plays in the content. Easy to navigate through. Does not hang/free from technical glitches. Content is downloadable easily.

1. Language

Language used in text, audio, video must be appropriate, simple and easy to understand and conveys the message.

1. Completeness

No blank pages. No missing images in pages and questions.

3.2 Additional visual and instructional design guidelines

The following table provides additional visual and instruction design guidelines for creation of quality content:

Quality Criteria	Description	Relevance
a) Consistency	●      Ensure that the learner becomes familiar with the layout of the learning object – within a few slides. Make sure that there is consistency in fonts, navigation icons, cues (audio and video formats etc.) consistency in both style and function. For e.g. you can use master slides and some common templates throughout the course. ●      Ensure images are presented correctly and are not so highly compressed that they appear fuzzy. Level the volume of the videos. Check that all videos are the same resolution. ●      Ensure content is not cluttered, should include white space, effective use of colour, and graphics where appropriate, and text colours are clearly legible over background colours. ●      When choosing a colour scheme for the content, it’s important to   choose a colour that is both complementary to the content and the other design choices made in the learning object. ●      Use a standard web viewable font for the entire content (for e.g. Arial, Times New Roman or Verdana). Spelling and terminology used should be accurate and consistent throughout the learning object and abbreviations should be defined in full. ●      Ensure that the learning object uses numbers in a consistent manner to identify steps in a process. ●      Ensure the learning object has a consistent tone, readability look and feel. ●      Ensure that you align your content meaningfully and properly. Unintentional misalignment is not only sloppy but very distracting to users. Intentional misalignment, if done properly, can be not only visually interesting but also draw the user’s gaze from one element to another	●      Layout and navigation considerations are required for a consistent look and feel.
b) Instructional Design and Andragogy	●      Think about instructional design principles that are embedded in the content that is being created. ●      Ensure the learning object activities offers the learner ideas to comprehend, apply, analyse, synthesize and evaluate new knowledge and provide opportunity to practice and transfer learning in a variety of ways. ●      Wide range of learning styles is supported (i.e. visual, auditory, kinaesthetic). ●      The learning object provides examples of activities, assignments and reflections. ●      Content is presented in a logical sequence based on the learning outcomes. Consider your content first and then determine how best to present it on the screen. Often times, people make the mistake of deciding on a presentation format first and then shoehorning the content into it. This frequently results in very poor design. This way – You are not limited by the number of pages or slides in your content, so don’t try to limit the number by crushing them full of content. ●      Summaries are provided frequently, particularly at the end of topics or modules. ●      Activities develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. ●      When the basic community features are incorporated, on the platform, ensure course design promotes interaction and collaboration. ●      Participants and instructors of courses should be encouraged to introduce themselves and are encouraged to respond to fellow participants interactions	●      Considering how to represent and design content in a learning object is important to capture the learner’s attention, motivate them and foster a supporting learning environment
c) Assessment   Internal review and assessment methods in the learning object	●      Ensure assessment methods are constructed to measure learning on a variety of levels (i.e. fact, concept, process, critical thinking, problem solving) ●      Ensure the assessment somehow ignites prior knowledge of the learner or makes an assumption of the prerequisite knowledge of the learner. ●      Ensure that the learning object incorporates a variety of methods of learner assessment (i.e. quizzes, matching activities, reflection, discussion questions, Essays, on-the-job activities, etc.) that can be both formative and summative. ●      Ensure meaningful, useful and relevant feedback is provided to the learner if electronic quizzes or tests are used (i.e. not just saying “incorrect”). This feature is correctly supported on H5P authoring tool. ●      One way to assess learners is to provide open ended questions. They allow for the most creative freedom. There is no right or wrong answers, insead the learner should be allowed to reflect on topics and draw their own conclusions. They may also discover how their current assumptions are holding them back. ●      Problem-Solving Case Studies is another technique, where the learner is encouraged to solve a problem. It showcases a case study with a missing end… and ask learners to brainstorm solutions. It’s not about the solution, itself, but the thought process. Which skills did they use in their strategy? How did they put their knowledge into action? that becomes important. ●      Once the course is ready,, make sure to pilot it amongst  colleagues or a small target audience and obtain both detailed and high level feedback on design and interactivity before rolling it out to a large audience.	●      Evaluation is important to measure progress and learning on the platform. For the creator it is interface to assess the potential of the digital resource and make necessary changes if required

 

4. Fundamental guidelines on inappropriate content and attributions

Given below are some fundamental guidelines that all content creators must adhere to while creating content for the ShikshaLokam platform. These guidelines will be reviewed by reviewers for adherence.

4. 1 Guidelines for content appropriateness

An indicative Checklist:

1. Hate Speech

By words either written or spoken or by signs or by visible representation or otherwise promotes or attempts to promote feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will against persons -Caste, Class, Tribe, Race, Ethnicity, Sex, gender, or gender identity, National origin, Religious affiliation, Sexual orientation, or Disabilities or diseases

 

2. Sexually explicit content

Pornography, Explicit text/images/illustrations/sounds of sexual content, Descriptions of sexual acts

3. Sexual violence and exploitation

Includes sexual exploitation of minors, and sexual assault. Or Photographs/ Illustrations/videos depicting incidents of sexual violence

4. Nudity and Vulgarity

It would mean displaying genitals, breasts or focusing in on fully exposed buttocks. May allow depiction of body parts if it isn’t gratuitously graphic and if it is educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic – paintings, sculptures, and other art that depicts nude figures if that content is posted for educational purposes. Providing context will help users determine the purpose of the content/asset. Degrading or denigrating women in any manner. Vulgarity, obscenity or depravity. Dual meaning words as obviously cater to baser instincts.

5. Violence

Promoting, encouraging, supporting, praising, or condoning violent actions, activities and behaviour – verbal, physical or emotional. Threatening or inciting others to commit acts of violence. Expressing support or praise for groups, people that are involved in the violent or criminal behaviour.

6. Discrimination and Bullying or encouraging such behaviour .

Targeting individuals with the intention of degrading or shaming them. Illustrations or Images altered to degrade individuals. Photos or videos of physical or verbal bullying Sharing personal information or harassing people Repeatedly targeting other people with unwanted requests or messages.

7. Harmful or dangerous content

Content that intends to incite violence or encourage dangerous or illegal activities that have an inherent risk of serious physical harm or death. Encourage dangerous or illegal activities for instance – performing stunts, high risk activities, choking games, drug use, or other acts where serious injury or harm may result. A content that depicts dangerous acts may be allowed if the primary purpose is educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic (EDSA), and it isn’t gratuitously graphic.

8. Involvement of children

Involving children in violence as victims or perpetrators or as forced witnesses to violence, or showing children as being subjected to any form of child abuse. Depiction of violence, cruelty and horror, scenes of violence primarily. Cruelty to, or abuse of animals.

9. Substance Abuse

Images/text/ illustrations have the effect of encouraging, justifying, glorifying, glamorising alcohol drinking, drugs and substance abuse; consumption of tobacco or smoking.

10. Defamation

Visuals or words contemptuous of racial, religious or other groups. Visuals or words which promote superstition, communal, obscurantist, anti-scientific attitude. Visuals or words involving defamation of an individual or a body of individuals. Abuse or ridicule of people with disabilities (physical or mental).

11. Sensitive to Environmental Concerns

Visuals or words encouraging, justifying, glorifying, glamorising environmental damage or lack of sensitivity to environment.

4. 2 Guidelines for attributions and licenses

Content creators on ShikshaLokam can be individuals or organisations. The content creators are owners of the content. All creators should ensure that their work does not violate any rights and possible claims of third parties. They are solely responsible for any violation of third party rights. ShikshaLokam is not responsible towards any third party for actions or inactions of ShikshaLokam users.

 

ShikshaLokam is set up as an open societal platform. Content published on the platform is licensed under the creative commons license framework as an open educational resource. To make learning content for education leaders free and openly available, and to make it widely accessible in varied languages, ShikshaLokam follows the creative commons license framework and all content uploaded on ShikshaLokam is licensed under CC-BY 4.0. For details on Creative Commons License, refer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license

 

When you create or upload content, you can specify the name of the author and any other contributor as part of its metadata. (This metadata is not currently available on the platform but will be available soon).

5. Relevance, discoverability and accessibility of content on the platform

The following section provides some preliminary guidelines on how content can be curated on the platform by content creators and key points for reviewers to look out for while reviewing content to ensure that content created and uploaded on the platform is discoverable, meaningful and relevant to users of the platform.

 5. 1 Tagging Framework-Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the overarching infrastructure for tagging and categorizing knowledge in a domain.Taxonomy helps us tag a large range of content. This tagging helps organize content and makes it easy to find relevant content for users. It implies making it easy for the user to navigate to the relevant content or search and find it on the basis of their context and need. The aim is to provide sufficient information for each content to ensure the same (refer diagram below).

 

Currently the ShikshaLokam taxonomy consists of two interconnected frameworks:

 

 

It is important that new content that has been created is tagged to the appropriate framework(s). In the current taxonomy system of ShikshaLokam, it is possible to tag new content to both the Leadership Professional Development as well as the School Improvement frameworks. Enhancing the searchability and discoverability of the new content can be done by ensuring appropriate keywords are entered and the description of the content is clear and concise. For example, content on “How develop school improvement plans” can be tagged both to sub topics or themes in Framework 1 and to sub topic and themes in Framework 2 as may be appropriate to enhance its discoverability. Additional key words to tag this content could be “School development, school development plans, planning for school improvement, school planning, participatory school planning, mapping school resources” etc. as may be appropriately decided by the content creator.

 6. Review process on the ShikshaLokam platform

One important requirement to ensure quality of content on the platform, is the strength and quality of the review processes on the platform. The following section describes two review processes: the first for content creators to keep in mind before submitting their content for review and the second for reviewers to keep in mind while reviewing any content on the platform.

6.1 Checks for creators to do before submitting an RLO for review

 

Once RLOs are created, it is recommended that the creator does the following checks prior to submitting the RLO for review on the ShikshaLokam platform:

 

6.2 Checks for reviewers

 

Once an RLO is uploaded into the ShikshaLokam platform, it is reviewed by reviewers. These reviewers can either be individuals identified by organisations themselves, or they can be reviewers from ShikshaLokam. In general, reviewers will review the RLO to check for appropriateness of content, to ensure that the metadata tags for the RLO is complete, that the RLO runs on both the portal as well as on the App, is free of editorial errors, spelling mistakes etc and all its visual elements are clear and uncluttered. The reviewer can either publish the RLO or can send it back to the creator with review comments for modifying/editing the RLO. If the RLO is published, it appears on the platform’s library. If the RLO is rejected (requesting for modifications or changes) it once again appears in the creator’s work space as draft RLO, allowing for changes to be made and re-published after review.

Organisations are encouraged to identify reviewers within the organisation itself who have deep content and domain knowledge and are able to verify if the RLO meets its intended learning outcome and has accurately identified and presented bodies of knowledge required to fulfil the learning objective. These reviewers can also review the RLO to ensure that the components of Content, Practice and Assessment are present and that the RLO is as self-contained as possible. Seeking internal review with peers is an important step to ensure good quality RLOs on the platform. The reviewer can either publish or reject the RLO. If the RLO is rejected, it is sent back to the creator for rework. If the RLO is published, it is made available on the platform’s library.

7. Assembling RLOs into courses – preliminary guidelines

The careful assembly of RLOs into useful courses is an important quality feature for content creators and reviewers to consider. The creation of RLOs provides flexibility to course creators to search for and discover RLOs that are already available on the platform that can either be re-used as is to be part of a particular course or can be repurposed with minor changes to suit the specific contextual requirement of a course.

Unlike RLOs, courses are context specific, intended for a very specific audience. Therefore, in the process of assembling RLOs to create a course, it is recommended that the course creator think of the following:

1. Clarity about the intended audience for whom the course is being created
2. Articulate clearly the overall learning objectives of the course
3. Embed instructional design principles at the course level such that the overall course is engaging, assembled coherently, adheres to adult learning principles and provides opportunities for learners to interact with the facilitator as well as other learners online
4. The transitions from one RLO to another is smooth and well directed
5. Additional assessment RLOs to assess whether the course in totality meets its learning objectives need to be designed and uploaded. These assessment RLOs have very low reusability as they are specifically constructed by course creators to meet the learning objectives of each of the RLOs that have been assembled together to form that particular course.
6. The overall look and feel of the course is consistent
7. The course is tagged accurately to the taxonomy/framework
8. Appropriate keywords for the course are provided so that it can be discovered by learners
9. The course has a clear title and concise description such that it makes sense to the learners

8. Glossary of terms used in this document

Content –  is a meaningful learning unit that can be used by any user. The term content and resource are used interchangeably within this document. In the ShikshaLokam platform,  RLOs or reusable learning objects is a key kind of content.

Resource Type – Content can be of different types, based on intended usage and audience for the content. Content creator has to choose a resource type from a list of values for each resource. Few examples – Course, Storyboard, Case study, Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs),Worksheet, Simulation, Course, Book, Article, Study material, Reference material, Activity, Quiz, Assessment, Reflective Journal, Resource, Video, Template, Tools, Image, Audio, Feedback form, Learning content, Reference Model, Research Paper, White paper, Report., etc.

Domain – Subject area for K-12 education Leadership, such as School Leadership, School Improvement, Educational Change..etc. Different domains have their own set of topics and concepts that learners should acquire to achieve proficiency in that domain.

Framework – Framework is a structure designed to define scope of something. In the context of ShikshaLokam, the framework is defined through a string of vocabulary, arranged to achieve a learning outcome. ShikshaLokam has two frameworks: A Leadership Professional Development framework and a School Improvement Framework.

Keywords– any other relevant words that help make the search and access to content easier are covered here

Metadata – These tags enable describing additional details about the content/RLO such as the nature of engagement, or the purpose for which the content/RLO should be used. ShikshaLokam enforces users to add metadata for each piece of content created or uploaded on the platform. These are a set of fields that must be entered by content creators prior to submission of content for review. While creating content using authoring tool or uploading content, content creator needs to identify the resource type that is applicable for the content.

 

Tags – Keywords that provide additional detail to content, community or people, to enable search and discovery. E.g. all content tagged with the term “SDMC” can enable users to discover content that is tagged as SDMC.

Taxonomy– Taxonomy is the overarching infrastructure for tagging and categorizing knowledge in a domain. Taxonomy makes it easy to search, navigate and discover content in the system using different types of categories and tags.

 

© 2018 ShikshaLokam . This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

 

 

^[1] Adapted from curation guidelines of DIKSHA, 2018

^[2] Modified and adapted from DIKSHA, 2018