Orion Meeting - Cork  - 9^th -11^th November 2002
held at the Aquaculture Development Centre

Present: J.Davenport, Cork, G.Mousakitis, Cork, S.Goulala, EKTHE, Athens, T. Elfwing, Sweden

The meeting was opened by Prof. Eleftheriou who tendered apologies from Dr.Papathanassiou, Mr C.Hough and Mrs E.Eleftheriou, who were to arrive later that day, and from C.Hapsiades who was to participate by teleconference, and from Prof. M.T.Dinis.

Professor J.Davenport, Dept. of Zoology of the University of Cork, host of the meeting, welcomed the participants to the Aquaculture Development Centre where the meeting was held.

1. The draft agenda was approved.

2. Progress Meeting, chaired by A.Eleftheriou

Progress of the Workpackages.

W.P.1. Management

The Steering Group had been selected at the previous meeting in Crete, consisting of Prof. Davenport, Prof. Eleftheriou, Dr. Papathanassiou, Mr Hough.

The Management Committee had also been selected at that meeting (Mrs Eleftheriou, Mrs Goulala, Dr. Mousakitis)

The present Progress meeting was being held in accordance with the demands of Workpackage 1.

WP2. Construction of the Distributed network would be completed by January 2003.

The ORION website is to function at two levels: the outer, publicly available shell, and the inner, restricted level with the basic language modules, where the marine science courses will be available to registered users only. The inner level will also house the databases, the new glossary as well as the updated bibliography and some previous course ONEDIN material. The outer shell has been prepared by IMBC, working in conjunction with TEREUS SA, and was presented by Prof. Eleftheriou for approval. Three designs had already been circulated to all partners during the summer and the design chosen by partners had been implemented. The outer shell contained several sections, namely Project profile, Partners, Course Materials, Educational Database, Links and Contacts. The 2nd draft design was approved but during discussion of the content of each section it was decided that the term Educational Database was rather loose and ambiguous and would have to be changed to something more accurate. In addition, the Irish partners pointed out that the use of the British flag to indicate both their participation and the use of the English language was inappropriate. It was therefore decided that the use of flags to indicate language should be abandoned in favour of the actual words. Informal apologies were extended for the lack of the Irish flag on the Website interface.

WP3 Course materials

Unadapted course materials on Age determination had been carried out (Mousakitis)
Course materials on Larval Rearing (Portuguese) had been carried out (Dinis)
Course material on Marine Environment (Greek) was ready (Eleftheriou) but it was felt that this should be expanded. Material should be ready by end of January.
Course material on Biodiversity is not yet complete but should be ready by end of January (Davenport, Mousakitis)
Endocrine disruptive chemicals course is not yet ready and will be written by Papathanassiou and Mousakitis (Greek)
Tropical Ecology materials (Swedish) are not yet prepared but will be ready by end of April.(Elfwing)
Discussion centred around the following points. Should the courses have a standard format? In principle, each course will be designed by the author and the format will follow the needs of the course. However, in order to be inserted into the distributed database, materials will have to follow a template.
Courses should include figures, graphs, illustrations, etc, and should not be simple text. Discussion also raised the issues of how easy it would be for the students and the lecturer to download the courses, and how easy would it be to update the materials, and to insert questions, questionnaires, etc. These questions could only be answered by TEREUS at the teleconference on 11th Nov.

WP4 Language provision

Materials for the self-learning packages have been produced, for English, Swedish and Greek (Annex). However, quite an amount of linguistic preparation needs to be done for the least widely spoken languages. WP5 Glossary
Choice of items from the AQUALEX glossary had been made, and these items had been circulated for all partners to validate. There was wide variation in the partners' choices. It was decided that work on harmonisation should take place during the present meeting.. The list, which had been compiled as agreed at the Startup meeting, was used as the basis for the work to be carried out. There was discussion as to which types of terms should be excluded, i.e., fish species, fish diseases, parts of the body, specific aquaculture terms. It was decided to include oceanographic terms, statistical terms, some genetic terminology as these were all relevant to content and methodology of the marine environment.
Work was to be carried out by the Glossary team using the following works for reference: AQUALEX (Eleftheriou Ed.), Dictionary of the Environment (M.Allaby); Dictionary of ecology, evolution and systematics (R.Lincoln et al) and from the indices of Marine Pollution (R.B.Clark), Marine Ecology (O.Kinne) andPlankton, and Productivity of the Oceans (J.E.G.Raymond); Air and Water, the biology and Physics of Life's Media (M.W.Deny). The list of additions should be complete by the end of November. This list will then be worked on by the University of Cork. The agreed list of terms and definitions from AQUALEX (amounting to almost 1200 terms) will be circulated and translated by the Swedish and Portuguese partners, starting immediately. Since this work is quite demanding, also in financial terms, it was agreed that the Scientific Coordinator should work closely with the Cork team to compile the definitions of the agreed additions to the glossary.

WP6 Reference Resource Centre

Work had been carried out to construct this by TEREUS, who had also been working on the bibliography, as well as the Mersitics unit.

WP7 Dissemination

No Newsletters had as yet appeared, which was a major delay in the progress of the project, which was partly due to the lack of a dedicated website. C.Hough (FEAP) agreed that the first Newsletter should be hosted on the AQUAMEDIA News site in electronic format, and A.Eleftheriou agreed that the 1st print edition would be carried our by IMBC. Content and layout were approved.
The Progress Meeting ended at 2.30 pm.
Work then started on the finalisation of the selection of the items for the new glossary.

Day 2

The Project Manager, Mrs Eleftheriou, gave a brief overview of the aims and objectives of the Language Competency Strand of the LDV Programme, with a view to showing how the ORION objectives fit very well with the EU Working Paper on Promoting Language Leaning and Linguistic Diversity. The scientific partners had not participated previously in this kind of project and were quite unfamiliar with the pilot project concept and the type of deliverables envisaged. There was a lively discussion on open learning methodology and the ways in which it could be harnessed to the objectives of the project. Some basic misconceptions regarding the design on online course materials were described (for instance, that an online course is not simply a matter of learning basic html and then producing lecture notes in html). It was pointed out that online flexible learning materials had to be designed and then programmed in such a way as to enhance student learning. The intention is to produce material that will use the delivery method (ODL) to its potential, and not to use it as a poor substitute for printed materials. There was further discussion on intellectual ownership issues, a subject that had already come up during the Progress Meeting. The new regulations concerning copyright and intellectual ownership were explained. Ownership of tools created during the project belonged to the consortium as a whole, while intellectual ownership of materials previously devised and used remained with the creator, who, for the purposes of the project, allows the other partners unrestricted access to and use of the materials. It was emphasised that the Course materials part of the website would not be open to the general public, but only to registered users of ORION. It was envisaged that these should registered students only, and that all enquiries for course participation should be directed to the contact person for the university running the course. Since the courses will be in the restricted part of the website which will be protected by firewall software, and since the website would also have a copyright notice, it was felt that this was for the moment sufficient precaution. A short presentation on the European `higher Education Area was postponed, in the light of the lengthy discussion on the previous subject. This however, is attached to these minutes as an annex.

Dissemination Plans

Ms Goulala (NCMR) gave a comprehensive presentation on the latest copyright issues with regard to online presentation of information, including abstracts, and set out her strategy of information dissemination. Her presentation on copyright issues and her extensive documentation form Appendix 1 to the EU submission of the present document. Within the Reference Resource Centre, Ms Goulala will carry out research on the possibility of a joint use of partner libraries. Registered ORION users might be able to qualify for user privileges, etc. She would also enquire as to the possibility of obtaining a licence from certain publishers, and in that way she would be able to make a small onsite collection of useful articles, abstracts, etc. She recommended that the UNESCO ocean portal be utlised as it contained some very useful and relevant material. (This has since been included in the open ORION website.)
Mr Courtney Hough (FEAP) presented his plans for the dissemination of the ORION Newsletters, none of which had appeared at that time. One problem concerns the fact that the ORION website is not yet online, and therefore the online version of the Newsletter could not appear. Mr Hough said that he would host the first edition of the Newsletter (which existed in draft form) on the aquameedia.org News page. The Newsletter content was therefore edited for online transmission. (The Newsletter appeared online on 15th November. It was then re-edited back into print format and circulated to all partners by the first week in December.) The question of suitable outlets for ORION was also discussed. A comprehensive mailing list and list server should be established. A press release for interested parties should be prepared. Mr Hough undertook this task. Marine science Newsletters could be targeted (EAS, AQUAMEDIA, MARS, MARIS, EELANZUAL) as well as ICT and language ones (HERMES, PROACTE) as well as national ones.
The Glossary team continued work on the glossary.

Day 3

Arrangements had been made to conduct a teleconference with the technical partner, TEREUS of Athens, who could not be present. Items for discussion were therefore prepared in advance, so that time should not be lost.

1. The edit function to be programmed within the distributed network was much discussed and questions were put to Mr Hapsiades concerning its use.
   - There are several different kinds of software which are suitable, Windows Edit-Pro, costs 500 dollars for 110 concurrent users. The mirror sites will be `Linux-based and user-friendly tools will be available. Templates will be provided so that course materials can be input directly by the user. The template will have a common structural format. It is not envisaged that pdf format should be used, although such a format does of course protect the original creator. Each user will have a password which will enable him/her to input and to edit materials. Students will be able to answer questions but will not have any kind of editorial function.
2. Creation of online Newsletter - how should this be done?
   - This issue had been tackled on the previous day, so questions concerning user online registration were posed. Reassurance was given that once the ORION site is operational (early March) this function would be incorporated.
3. What has happened to previously submitted materials, ie, from NCMR and IMBC?
   These have been used as tests for programming items. The first version of the NCMR materials on Oil Pollution was not good and had to be changed. The bibliography and the Meristics material from IMBC was being programmed now. Some bugs had already been found in the bibliography, and 750 new items had been included. The bibliography can now enter the Reference Resource Centre, and it can also be edited by a registered editor which will allow inclusion of new items.
4. What type(s) of password will be necessary in order to ensure site security?
   - There will be different levels of privilege, ie, editors, authors, tutors, students, system administrators, etc. Each will be allowed to carry out a specific function only, although some individuals may have more than one function within the system.
   What about cookies? There will be cookies for the privileged user.
   What about digital signatures? These can be used in two places on the site.
   What about the problem of different fonts? This is something that derives from the different web browsers used.
5. When will the management tool be ready?
   -It is ready now but can only be used when the website is operational
6. What hardware and software has to be bought for the mirror sites?
   - a computer of 1 gigabyte, with 40 gigabyte hard disk.
   A server, Apache 2 or Server MYSQL.
   Linux or Windows 2000 can be the operating system.
   

The afternoon session continued with work on the glossary. Dr. Mousakitis produced a final list of words from the AQUALEX glossary, together with their AQUALEX dictionary index number. This Word document will be rewritten as an Excel file, with Mrs Eleftheriou supplying all the definitions from the AQUALEX master.
A second list was drawn up, of terms for which the definitions could be found very easily, from the works of reference which had been brought or which had been supplied. A third list of terms was drawn up, whose definitions would have to be written by the team. It was formally agreed that the Swedish and the Portuguese partners were responsible for the translation of the List 1 terms into Swedish and Portuguese, as they had been given extra funds to cover this cost. Dr. Eleftheriou and Dr. Papathanassiou were to be responsible for providing the definitions for List 2, and Professor Davenport, along with Dr. Mousakitis, was to be responsible for providing the definitions in List 3.
The meeting ended with a Steering Group meeting, with Professor Davenport, Professor Eleftheriou and Dr. Papathanassiou, who drew up a timetable and Action Plan.

Action Plan

1. The 1st Newsletter should be put online by mid-November.
2. The Copyright materials should be sent to all partners by mid- november
3. Guidelines for production of ODL material should be circulated by mid-December
   (Basic Techniques online version to serve as an example)
4. Language module. Translations of User instructions to be completed by end of November. (Level 1) Level 2 lessons to be sent by mid-December, to be translated by end of January. Level 3 lessons to be sent by end of December, to be translated by end of March.
5. Website. Open website to be modified according to suggestions from the meeting, especially with regards to flags as icons, Languages/Resources, Courses/Resources, all seven demonstrated pages to be redesigned.
6. Buying of equipment for distributed network and website by end of January
7. Course materials
   • Age Determination (Cork) ready in May 2002
   • Larviculture courses in Portuguese ready in November.
   • Biodiversity material with 4 subsets to be ready by end of January
   • Marine Environment in English and Greek - mid February
   • Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (Fresh water Cork - end of February
   • Marine water (NCMR - end of February)
   • Tropical Aquatic Resources ( 5 units) by mid-March
8. Glossary
   List 1 AQUALEX definitions: to be drawn up with definition by end of November, to be circulated to translators who will deliver translations in a steady stream, letter by letter, to Mrs Eleftheriou
   List 2: to be drawn up by end of November. Definitions to be agreed by end of January
   List 3: to be drawn up by end of November, to be completed by end of April.
9. Draft internal evaluation questionnaires had been circulated and agreed. These should be circulated by end of February.
   
   The date of the next meeting was not decided but should take place around the end of April.2003