More Enrolments on Our Online Course May 6, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentAn important part of our project is staff engagement, not only academic and service staff but admin staff as well. Admin staff within University provide invaluable support to the academic community with respect to delivery of their online content, in addition, they are content creators themselves particularly in the areas of module and programme support material. Hence, it is envisaged that admin staff will also want to use the learning repositories to deliver resources as well. In support of this I have just enrolled a large cohort of Business School admin staff onto our online course so that they can see what NTU’s learning repositories have to offer.
Web Sites of the Week May 6, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentHere are my selection of web sites of the week:
- Karen Fasimpaur: Open Education and Policy : interview with blogger and author on the impact of OER
- MERLOT’s Open Textbook Initiative : MERLOT’s has a collection has over 800 Open Textbooks in a range of subject areas
- Open Access Textbooks : Series of webinars from Open Access Textbooks
- OER has left the building and the API powered dynamically aggregating supersearch - article from Rob Pearce Ice Sculptures blog, provides an overview of the challenges of releasing OER engineering resources produced by the Engineering Subject Centre
- Strategic Content Alliance Digital Content Quarterly Issue 2
- Learning with es: Reflection on the Commonwealth of Learning workshop on Open Educational Resources
- UCT OpenContent : web portal of accessing open teaching and learning content from the University of Cape Town
- Blogger Training Video : a video on how to use the Blogger blog sevice
- Interview with Neil Butcher, South Africa : The Partnership for Higher Education in Africa facilitates the deployment of OER at several universities on the African continent. In this podcast, Neil Butcher, Educational Consultant at the South African Institute for Distance Education, Johannesburg, talks about this initiative, the role of OER in Africa, and how their benefits can be harnessed effectively
Event Successes May 6, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentWe have had three submissions to events successfully accepted this week. We will have a project stand at JIF2010 on 28th & 29th July at Royal Holloway, Egham Surrey. Also, we have had a project poster and a paper “Engendering digital sharing cultures in higher education: a university wide approach” at ALT-C 2010. We are all excited about sharing our project experiences with colleagues from across the sector.
Learning Repository Usage Stats May 6, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentWe have generated stats with respect to who has published to the School and NTU University learning repositories. I have sent each School their individual stats as I do not want to turn this into a competition. Hopefully, we can add to our existing illustrations of use by talking to the people that have published and creating some case studies. It appears that the main reason for staff using the School repositories is resource management, specifically in relation to storing the definitive copy of core and generic documents in the learning repository and staff linking to these from their courses. With respect to the NTU learning repository we are hoping to encourage staff to share subject related learning resources and generic materials with their colleagues, this is already beginning to happen with the publication of academic writing skills resources.
Supporting a Culture of Educational Resource Sharing May 4, 2010
Posted by AngelaTrikic in : Comms , add a commentWe have set up a conference arrangement sub-group to start the planning work for the National Conference that Nottingham Trent University will be hosting next March. The conference date is 16th March 2011 so book this in your calendar.
In choosing the main theme of Supporting a Culture of Educational Resource Sharing we think there is scope for drawing together people involved in repositories designed for usage of learning resources both within VLEs and Open Educational Resource repositories in the public domain. By focussing on repositories for learning we believe there are common issues that we face that are distinctive from research repositories. For instance:
- Learning Repositories are conceived as adaptive with content that can not only be re-used but also re-purposed. We need to consider issues associated with this.
- More attention is needed to the search, retrieval and harvesting functions to render educational resources easy to find and use;
- Learning repositories afford the possibility of engaging communities within and across institutions. Methods of encouraging transitions and cultural change in academic practice we anticipate will be of interest.
We are considering the areas outlined above and are busy working up an outline programme that we’ll be consulting on with colleagues in similar or related projects.
Last Thursday we visited the Nottingham Conference Centre (NCC) http://www.nottinghamconferencecentre.co.uk/ which opened last year. We have booked the second floor of the conference centre, with an excellent room for the plenary session, along with four spacious break-out rooms. We will benefit from new state of the art IT and conferencing facilities and catering services. The NCC is located at the heart of Nottingham and well served by public transport/tram and train services.
We will keep you posted on conference planning and aim to provide a website with information and opportunities to participate so please watch this space!
Introducing Desire2Learn Learning Repository 5.0 May 3, 2010
Posted by YvonneMonterroso in : Comms , add a commentIt is with pleasure that I can share details around the new version of Desire2Learn Learning Repository. For information on the full product suite launch you can see the press release on the Desire2Learn website. As a whole, this release represents the continued commitment to ensure that the tool makes sharing easier and continues to support teaching and learning.
These enhancements and new features support the SHARE project ideas and goals to maximize the effective re-use of learning materials and to improve the capability for sharing those materials. The added ease of finding and sharing objects will aid adoption and promotion of the repository which is very much in alignment with our goals for the SHARE project.
This release takes searching to the next level making it even easier to find the relevant resources available. Features such as auto-complete in the search box and spelling suggestions help users make that first search more accurate. Search stemming support and facets or filters on search terms are there to help guide users and narrow the search. The ability to use full-text indexing will improve the overall ability to find relevant assets in the repository without the overhead of metadata. Sharing through the repository just got even better!
Secondly, a focus on supporting assessment items through the repository will provide a powerful tool for organizing and discovering not only content but related assessment materials in the repository as well. Sharing and re-using quizzes and questions for quizzes, self assessment exercises and even survey questions is an enhancement we have been speaking with clients about and represents a major step forward for the repository. This new ability will allow users to categorize and in turn browse and discover content and assessment in a single search.
