Project Activities
The project team canvassed opinion across the Cambridge Conference community and identified a list of potential education evaluation projects for inclusion in the archive. These include examples from the UK, Ireland, the US and Australia.
Existing 'paper archives' were reviewed and – depending on the size and scope of the study – materials were selected for inclusion in the electronic archive. Projects range from single case studies with only small sets of data and associated documents to the Boston Bilingual Schooling Evaluation undertaken by members of the Centre for Applied Research in Education at UEA in 1980-1981, the paper archive of which extends to over 6000 documents.
The electronic archive was constructed using the Fedora Digital Repository Archive platform following a systematic review of available software platforms. This open source platform allows a flexible and extensible collection structure with multiple metadata streams and complex relationships between items. It also allows the generation of an Open Archive Initiative (OAI) metadata feed so that the contents and metadata can be selectively exposed and 'harvested'.
Key participants in the original evaluation projects were interviewed and 'walkthroughs' of the project archives developed to guide users and draw attention to key features of the projects.
Key Project Outcomes
- An electronic archive of significant educational evaluations representing a range of approaches and educational, political and methodological contexts.
- A series of reflexive interviews and other accounts by key participants in these evaluations.
- A specially developed metadata vocabulary to describe the rich range of data, research instruments, interpretative and analytical strategies and other documentation.
- A systematic comparison of alternative digital repositories and their application to different models of research archive.
- Technical tools designed to: assist in data collection and description; ingressing data and metadata into archives; disseminate contents; and embed the archive in a Virtual Collaboration Environment.
- Guidelines and examples for individuals and groups planning to establish electronic archives.
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