JORUM Update
The third week in October was ”open access week” so it seemed a good time for me to visit University of the West of England for an update on JORUM, the UK repository of open access learning and teaching materials for FE and HE. JORUM’s actually been around for some 6-7 years now. It’s served as a repository for, among other things, the resources created by JISC development projects, but it’s now in transition to a new phase with the advent of JorumOpen, a new licensing scheme for sharing of materials based on Creative Commons. Just now, much of JORUM’s development is to with the HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resources programme: in the Spring, OER projects will be using the new JorumOpen system to make their materials available.
Here were some key points from the day:
- the new licensing model will be more flexible than the old one, allowing A) an Open Access model based on Creative Commons (anyone can share); B) JorumEducationUK, open to UK FE/HE only; and C) JorumPlus, a restricted option for special cases, eg where third party licensing is involved
- The Open Access content will be discoverable via Google searches, and Jorum will have better search facilities
- the old Jorum used Intrallect repository software, which proved cumbersome, so new options are being tested
- new types of content will be possible e.g. entire courses
- it was stressed that Jorum is part of a much wider landscape of repository development, but it has a distinctive focus, i.e. teaching and learning materials across a wide spectrum of subjects (FE and HE)
- We had a chance to try out the interim OER Deposit Tool currently being used to get material quickly into Jorum. It’s based on the MrCute repository software and only offers limited functionality.
- We experienced the processes of depositing a learning object into Jorum using the existing repository, then creating a simple learning object using a content-authoring tool eXe and uploading it via the OER Deposit Tool.
- It seems that some of the issues that were around a few years ago have still not gone away, for example how much metadata does a learning object require in order to be share-able, and who should provide that metadata.
- One of the new features of Jorum is the Community Bay to exchange experience, questions and ideas around the topic of learning materials repositories. It is Moodle-based and looks useful for getting an orientation to Jorum and repositories in general.
- Some of the key issues for academics considering putting their resources in a repository are: rights clearance; format/presentation; accessibility and useability; shelflife and versioning; futureproofing. It is important to think about these things at the start, as it’s much harder to resolve these things once material is already created!
We had a chance to look at the Jorum resources which were winners or commended at this year’s ALT-C, including University of Glamorgan’s Virtual Pain Manager learning object. If you’re interested in depositing a learning object in Jorum and entering for next year’s prizes (up to £300) then watch out for publicity in the Spring!
Thanks to Matt and Nicola of JORUM for a good day, and commendations to Matt for a nice non-tecky explanation of learning content standards (using Lego) and why interoperability is important (so as not to be like Easter Island statues – beautiful but isolated monoliths).
Jorum will be preparing to do lots of promotion of JorumOpen in the new year, and there was mention of an online toolkit about Open Educational Resources coming in the New Year too. Keep an eye on www.jorum.ac.uk for more details.
Tags: JORUM
