The document summarizes the SCOOTER project which aims to build an online community around open educational resources (OERs) about sickle cell and thalassaemia using social networking tools. In the first 5 months, social networks referred 30% of over 1,500 visitors to the SCOOTER website and SCOOTER OERs received over 4,000 views on networks like Posterous and YouTube. While the community is currently mostly passive users, the project aims to encourage more active engagement to help sustain the resources beyond the initial project. Both online networks and offline networking are important for building a vibrant community to drive the long-term sustainability of the OERs.

1. SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices Dr Vivien Rolfe & Dr Simon Griffin* De Montfort University, Leicester, UK *Griffin Internet Marketing

2. OER11 Conference, Manchester, May 11 th 2011

11. SCOOTER Online Presence

13. Results – REACH and IMPACT From launch to 18 th April 2011 (5 months)

15. People searching for “ sickle cell”, “sickle cell anaemia” (Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL) Sites, social networks containing SCOOTER URL (back link) People who KNOW the URL already

16. Social Network Referrals No. Visitors en.wikipedia.org / referral 174 sicklecellanaemia.posterous.com / referral 52 hlsweb.dmu.ac.uk / referral 39 heacademy.ac.uk / referral 24 facebook.com / referral 20 ezinearticles.com / referral 17 righthealth.com / referral 12 dmu.ac.uk / referral 11 localhost / referral 11 dmuscooter.wikispaces.com / referral 10 prod.cetis.ac.uk / referral 9 bit.ly/forexmarket / referral 5 en.m.wikipedia.org / referral 5 groups.medbiq.org / referral 5 learnex.dmu.ac.uk / referral 5 twitter.com / referral 5 sicklecellanaemia.tumblr.com / referral 4 sicklecellanaemiaorg.blogspot.com / referral 3 stumbleupon.com / referral 2 others 34

17. Category Unique Visitors Activity Backlink I have submitted 262 One off Posterous network 96 5 minutes per week Ezine 17 1 article per month Others grown organically 80 Nothing

18. Results – COMMUNITY data From launch to 18 th April 2011 (5 months)

20. Follower / Subscriber Comments / Posts Resource Views SCOOTER Website Forum 39 7 Posterous (37 posts) 4 0 3789 YouTube Channel (1 video) 1 0 342 Twitter #DMUViv 29 Facebook 26 3 Blogger 1 0 Ezine (3 articles) NA 0 163 TOTAL 100 10 4294 Jan 1st = 27

26. Twitter #DMUViv Email vrolfe@dmu.ac.uk GO TO http://www.sicklecellanaemia.org/OER/training.html