Tracking OERs: Comment aggregation

This page is one of several describing technical approaches to tracking the use of OERs.

Many platforms used for the dissemination of OERs, especially the Web2.0 or social sharing websites, allow users to rate a resource, select it as a "favourite" or make comments about it. Many of these sites also allow API access to these ratings and comments. So, where a resource is available on more than one such site it is possible, at least in principle, to harvest those ratings and comments from the host sites and aggregate them elsewhere, providing a richer picture of how the resource has been used and what the user reactions to the resource are.


 * In order to aggregate comments about a specific resource it is necessary for one to be able to identify the copies of that resource on the various host sites.


 * A judgement has to be made about when two copies of a resource are similar enough for the comments about them to be combined, for example, is it enough that a video of a lecture and a sound recording of the same lecture convey the same academic content?


 * Some context to the comments will be lost; this may include the identity of the commenter or issues relating to functionality of the host site.


 * We would be interested in hearing about examples of this idea in practice.