ICE @ !dea 2006

Presented by Peter Sefton

Technical Manager, RUBRIC project

sefton@usq.edu.au

Mind the gap!

Photo by Leonard Metcalf

http://www.komung.com/Leonard-Metcalf/why-dont-we-do-it-in-the-road-canyon

Susan Gibbons reports:

http://www.apsr.edu.au/successful/gibbons1.ppt

“

• Research, writing and “publishing” cannot be pulled apart

• Lots of time wasted with authoring issues

  • Backups

  • Versioning

  • Multiple access points

• Mistake repositories for authoring system

”

Enter ICE

• Standards based Content Management System

• Outputs HTML and Print (PDF)

• Cross platform (Mac, Windows, Linux)

• Free, GPL licensed

• Integrated with popular word processors

• Manages distributed, version controlled content

But ICE is more than a software application

• It's “glue”

• It's procedures and policies

• It's a comfortably furnished workplace

• It's a well-oiled machine

• It's PVC plumbing for the web

ICE is a lifestyle

Architecture

ICE for courseware

• Makes IMS packages

  (not tested for interoperability at this stage)

• Reduces re-work and re-formatting costs

• Print

• ICE is mainly non interactive, so far

  (but interactive elements such as Flash objects can be incorporated)

  Your Name.

Other uses

• Intranets

• Public websites

  http://ice.usq.edu.au

  http://rubric.edu.au

• Emailing newsletters

• e-Journal

  http://www.usq.edu.au/e-jist/

Flexibility

• Built on generic yet extensible styles

• Template based

• Multiple outputs from single source

• Modular authoring

ICE for research and scholarship

ICE-RS is supported by the Systemic Infrastructure Initiative as part of the Commonwealth Government's Backing Australia's Ability - An Innovative Action Plan for the Future (http://backingaus.innovation.gov.au)

ICE for research and scholarship

• Will tackle theses, articles and books

• Recommend best practice reference management

• Demonstrate integration with institutional repositories

• Add annotation and 'rating' systems

• Provide 'dashboard' views of workgroup content

There are three main issues to be addressed

1.  Ending the 'PDF only' nature of institutional repositories and expanding them to allow more flexible delivery.

2. Promoting document sustainability.

3. Increasing efficiency for researchers writing-up their research.

Establish pilots at USQ and across the RUBRIC partner network:

1. At least five each of honours, masters and PhD theses, with infrastructure enabling them to go from authoring to examination to ingest into the institutional repository.

2. At least ten research articles for peer review, including both journal and conference papers, and associated presentations.

3. At least two books.

Future features

• Annotations for inline-commenting on content

• Document rating / approval systems to support review processes

• Automated 'dashboard' reporting across a project or workgroup

  • How many words  / citations / links?

  • When is the paper / thesis / draft due?

  • How many overdue conference papers in my department?

  • How 'good' is my latest draft?

To try it out and get involved

• Go to http://ice.usq.edu.au

• Talk to us about becoming an ICE-RS partner

• Or just download ICE and try it ...

• ... join our mailing lists and give us feedback