OL3C: Building a Comprehensive Infrastructure for the Support of Local Learning
It is axiomatic among practitioners that effective and sustainable development must be participatory. Yet ethnic and linguistic minority communities are rarely able to participate in the creation of teaching and learning materials in their own language and cultural perspective. This disability has the most detrimental impact among women and children learners in thousands of extremely diverse and marginalized language communities. Unless and until these communities are empowered to localize education and development materials of all types, these left-out learners will remain among the most disadvantaged in the world. They will be effectively excluded from participation in the most basic processes of their own development.
Since 1989, the shell book method has proven to be an effective, community-based process for the localization of teaching and learning materials in thousands of communities worldwide. For instance, in Papua New Guinea alone, Elementary Reform (K-2) shell book materials were localized in 435 languages between 1993 and 2003, according to a study by the PNG National Research Institute. In Africa, a series of shell books, Kande’s Story, about a 10 year-old AIDS orphan-parent, have been localized in over 130 languages since 2004.
All of these first generation shell books used off-the-shelf desktop publishing software. But trying to achieve reusability on a large scale has highlighted the need for a custom localization management system to handle bundling of all the components of a shell, tracking the genealogy of derivation, preventing needless duplication of common content (especially graphics) from the parent version, managing the intellectual property rights of new and derived content, and embedding the multimedia training components which make localization so highly cost-effective in practice.
An XML-based Shellbook format that addresses all of the localization management issues has been developed and is supported by functioning Shellbook Maker software. Since 2002, over $2 million has been invested in the development, testing, and refinement of Shellbook Maker in more than 40 countries.
The Shellbook technology exists and has already proven to be an effective tool for creating localized literature. But what will it take for localization to take off on a global scale and become the ready solution for all education and development agencies to use with all kinds of learning in all local communities?
Comprehensive use of localization in development is going to require more than just a software tool; it requires the support of a comprehensive infrastructure. We have identified four key ingredients that are missing at present. These define the four key areas of need that will be addressed in the project:
· The participating agencies have hundreds of existing shells with content to be localized, but they are in a variety of formats. They all need to be converted to the Shellbook format that inherently solves the problems of embedding training, tracking ancestry, and managing rights. Thus there is a need for Shellbook Creation.
· Any shells and local editions that currently exist are scattered in multiple locations, and are essentially inaccessible to people who do not already know about them. There is currently no single place where local communities can go to find all of the shells that are available to be localized. There is no single place where learners can go to see what materials are available in their language. There is no single place where agencies can go to display and organize the shells and local editions that they have sponsored. Thus there is a need for a web-based Library System that allows individual agencies to organize libraries of the materials they have sponsored, while permitting users to also see the combined resources of all the agencies as a single library that is indexed by language and by subject matter.
· Education and development agencies need to know how to convert the content they work with into resource shells that can be localized and how to put them into the library. Local communities need to know how to find available resource shells in the library, how to make localized editions from them, and how to put localized editions back into the library. Thus there is a need for Training Development.
· In order for localized learning to spread and thrive, agencies who are successfully facilitating it need to band together for mutual support and for encouraging those who would like to do the same. They need to work together to share case studies, to articulate best practices, to establish common standards (such as for data formats and for training certification), and to make decisions regarding future directions of the Shellbook software, the library system, and the localization training. Thus there is a need to establish a Community of Practice.
In short, the primary objective of the project is to build a comprehensive infrastructure that will make it possible for any local community (regardless of its language) to become a learning community. The infrastructure will be comprehensive both in terms of its global reach and in terms of integrating solutions to all four of the key areas of need. By the end of the three-year project, the following outcomes are planned with respect to each of the four:
· Shellbook Creation. Hundreds of resource shells are available in Shellbook format for localization by local learning communities, and thousands of localized editions are available to demonstrate the success of the approach.
· Library System. Education and development agencies and local learning communities alike are using the Open Library for Local Learning Communities (OL3C) to share both resource shells and localized editions.
· Training Development. Education and development agencies and local learning communities have access to the training they need for creating resource shells, making localized editions, and using the Open Library.
· Community of Practice. A consortium of all the agencies participating in the OL3C is functioning as a community of practice to share results, promote best practices, establish standards, and make strategic decisions regarding the future of the OL3C.
When these outcomes are in place, the following impact can result:
· Local communities are participating more actively in critical processes of their own development by taking advantage of localized learning.
This proposal calls for a three-year funded project in order to create an operational OL3C and bring the OL3C Consortium to the point of becoming self-sustaining. The logic of the project plan follows Diffusion of Innovations, by Everett Rogers (1962, Glencoe: Free Press; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations). In the first year, innovators among the agencies that are putting forward this proposal will lay the foundations and establish the OL3C and the Consortium. In the second year, these will be operational and will be opened to the participation of early adopters (both within the founding agencies and within additional agencies who choose to join the Consortium). By the third year, there should be an impressive collection of materials in the library and the kinks should be worked out of the operations so that the OL3C and the Consortium will be ready for the participation of the early majority. At this point, it is anticipated that participating agencies will be realizing tangible value from the OL3C and thus that the operations can be made financially self-sustaining through membership dues contributed by the agencies. A summary of project activities addressing the four areas of need by these project phases is as follows:
Phase 1: Foundational (Year 1)
· Shellbook Creation. Create model collection of resource shells and derived local editions to put in the library for the grand opening.
· Library System. Build the OL3C web site and instantiate the libraries of the charter members of the OL3C Consortium.
· Training Development. Create and test the needed training materials.
· Community of Practice. Found the OL3C Consortium, establish the process by which it will make decisions, and gather change requests from the early experiences of project participants.
Phase 2: Operational (Year 2)
· Shellbook Creation. Education and development agencies continue creating resource shells and put them into the OL3C, while local learning communities begin to create and deposit local editions from shells they have accessed from the OL3C.
· Library System. Implement improvements to the OL3C (and Shellbook Maker) that are requested by the community of practice.
· Training Development. Implement improvements to training materials as requested by the community of practice and begin certifying trainers.
· Community of Practice. Expand agency participation to early adopters; publish case studies and best practices; establish certification standards; process change requests.
Phase 3: Sustainable (Year 3 and beyond)
· Expand participation to the early majority and beyond.
· All four areas of the infrastructure are operating and responding to change requests coming from the community of practice.
· Operations are self-supporting through Consortium membership fees.