University College Falmouth

openSpace
Interim Report
For the period 11 August 2010 - 10 December 2010

sharing is good

Creative Commons
 Highlights

For more information, visit:

openspace.falmouth.ac.uk

Highlights
User highlights from April 2010 - August 2010

Podcast RSS feed views openSpace repository website performance

5,871
56.39% growth
 2,241 visits came from 87 countries/territories (up from 51 countries in the previous
period). 1,842 (82.20%) were new visitors ; 399 (17.80%) were returning visitors.

 Visitors were predominantly English speaking, accounting for

2,084 (93%) of the overall visits, the % of English speakers is flat.

 On average, visitors spent an average of 2.57 minutes, viewing an average

Podcast downloads of 2.53 pages. 26.21% had visits of more than 6 minutes.

26.37% of traffic came via a direct link; 46.18% from referring sites and

576

27.41% from search engine results. Search engine traffic rose 309.87%.
Direct traffic fell by 17% and reffering site traffic fell by 22%.
87.62% growth
 311 users have become members, accessing the full suite of features
within the repository. Membership has risen 69.95%.
 Traffic from OER Repositories (e.g. OER Commons) has largely driven
RSS Feed subscribers
traffic from North America (63%), followed by Northern Europe (16%);
Eastern Europe (5%); and South East Asia (5%).

589
425.89% growth
Operational highlights

 Our podcast platform continues to overtake our OER repository and

search engine results as a medium for accessing University College
Falmouth’s open education resources.
 “Pushing” in the previous period directly correlated with increased traffic
Full play streaming multimedia
to the repository and usage of OERs. Unprompted “Pulling” in this reporting
period has resulted in sending a significantly increased amount of traffic.

1,319
50.57% growth
 There has been greater usage of our repository and OERs in
North America and the UK. This is most likely due to the OER subject
matter (English-centric writing, requirement for high level of English
comprehension).
 Putting information about OERs into the public domain via Twitter, Digg,
Unique website visitors Facebook, etc. has resulted in higher rates of access and use.

2,241
 Social network marketing to OER subject related industries,
professionals, websites, bloggers, academics, etc has resulted in
positive reviews and higher levels of access and use.
102.44% growth
 94% of users had access to broadband connectivity. 6% used dial up
connections.
*Figures compared against 01 April 2010 - 10 August 2010

openSpace Interim Report - December 2010 1

 Reporting

Visits to www.falmouth.ac.uk 11 August2010 to 10 December 2010

Previous: Visitors Visitors

50 50

25 25

0 0

Aug 16 Aug 27 Sep 7 Sep 18 Sep 29 Oct 10 Oct 21 Nov 1 Nov 12 Nov 23 Dec 4

Country/Territory Visits Pages/Visit Avg. Time on % New Visits Bounce Rate

Site

United Kingdom 1,623 2.68 00:01:48 82.50% 69.50%

United States 165 1.80 00:10:53 92.12% 66.06%

India 34 2.44 00:01:54 79.41% 55.88%

Malaysia 34 1.50 00:01:17 35.29% 85.29%

Pakistan 30 2.60 00:02:02 73.33% 66.67%

Australia 27 3.74 00:05:53 70.37% 48.15%

Chile 25 1.24 00:00:26 8.00% 92.00%

Philippines 24 1.21 00:00:02 95.83% 91.67%

Germany 19 2.05 00:03:12 94.74% 73.68%

Netherlands 18 1.00 00:00:00 94.44% 100.00%

Denmark 17 1.00 00:00:00 58.82% 100.00%

France 13 2.08 00:01:18 100.00% 69.23%

Poland 13 4.85 00:03:03 69.23% 53.85%

Visits
Canada 12 2.75 00:00:59 100.00% 58.33%
0 1,623
Nigeria 10 3.70 00:01:56 10.00% 50.00%

Performance platform. It also led to launching additional channels on Twitter, Facebook

 There is little verifiable use of our OERs by other HE institutions,
academics or researchers. However, they continue to be steadily accessed
and used by the wider public, students and prospective students.
 Our continued SEO optimisation programme, integrated communications
programme and launch of new media channels will continue to attract
student and non-academic users - and enhances discoverability of the OERs.
Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is a strategy that integrates
and coordinates a variety of marketing communication tools, avenues,
functions and resources into a seamless programme that maximizes the
impact on consumers. It’s a process that manages customer
relationships and drives brand value. As a strategy-led process, it
creates and enriches profitable relationships with stakeholders by
strategically influencing the messages sent to these groups and
encouraging data-driven, purposeful dialog with them. As a function, it
acts across all marketing channels seamlessly, using tools that provide
user metrics, ROI, user profiling, objectives and data analysis.
It is a process built on relationships through two way dialogue between
a company/organisation and its customers. It’s not enough to broadcast
a product or service through traditional one-way marketing
communications. The online paradigm has produced savvy consumers
who want to have their say on goods, products and services. Nowhere is
this more apparent than in education.
openSpace’s Project Manager (PM) developed an integrated
communications programme based on the classic push-pull model.
The PM, along with the Project Director (PD), understood that with little
to no public and academic awareness of the existence of open education
and OERs, that it would be unlikely that end users would pull openSpace
OERs of their own accord. As a movement, open education remains
outside the public’s consciousness. Academics are slow to realise the
existence of freely available learning and teaching resources that are
available for use and re-use. Hence the PM’s understainding that in
order for the openSpace OERs to be accessed, he would have to push
knowledge about them to the wider public in environments they would
be more likely to discover them.
The PM spent from April to the middle of August pushing the OERs.
This included creating a podcast on an internationally popular podcasting pushing its OERs into the public domain in the next reporting quarter.
and Digg. Twitter continues to go from strength to strength, with a steady
number of followers. The Facebook group is popular in terms of weekly visits.
Digg has only started to be significantly accessed within the past month.
The number of users joining openSpace, in order to gain free access to a suite
of options, continues to increase week on week. The course which released the
OERs has recruited two students as a direct result of the OERs.
The success of our podcasting channel will lead to additional channels being
created on YouTube, Blip TV and other popular online media destinations with
robust metric analysis capabilities.
The PM ceased an active push strategy from mid August through to December.
This was to assess what consumer pull dynamic would occur, if any. Data analysis
gathered from the push phase served as benchmarking data to measure
consumers’ pull activity. There was a significant level of consumer pull activity.
Overall use of the OERs was less than there would have been if the PM
had continued to push. However, the pull dynamic that has been recorded has
proven that our OERs are ‘out’ in the public domain. Our audio and video widgets
are played and documents are downloaded.
SEO has significantly enhanced online OER discoverability.
Re-use remains virtually non-existent. Audio and video widgets allow for tracking
through web tracking tools. Through these tools, we are able to track third
party sites that embed our widgets. At present, they have not been embedded on
any third party sites. Whether re-use is an issue through lack of knowledge that
people are free to re-use/embed OERs– or because there is a perception that our
widgets need to be accompanied by the assignments and reading material that
accompany the lectures – is unclear. We also lack verifiable proof that our OERs
have been re-used or re-purposed by other academics and/or HEIs. This could be
due to the lessons’ subject matter, which is specialist in nature. Another
consideration is the level of knowledge other academics and HEIs have regarding
open education, OERs and thier re-use.
The PM’s goal was the creation of a creative marketing mix to the general online
public, specifically those interested in the various forms of professional writing.
The initial aim has been successful and the team will continue a programme of
openSpace Interim Report - December 2010 2