JISC

See the final report

Repositories Enhancement Project

The JISC LXP Student Experiences of Technology project [1] examined undergraduate learners’ behaviour with respect to their use of technology.  It found, in each of the disciplines studied, that learners use public websites and services when seeking to meet educational needs in preference to any facilities provided by their host institution.  The learners demonstrated highly effective independent learning strategies.  Most UKeducational institutions have so far done little to support such strategies, preferring instead to keep all the learning resources they have developed in private locations accessible only to their own students. 

The Open University has however taken a major step towards Open Content through its £5.65m OpenLearn initiative.[2]  Through it the OU are offering free-standing educational resources, developed from their existing portfolio of courses.  These are being made accessible to all under a Creative Commons licence which allows free non-commercial use but restricts commercial exploitation.  To date more than 900 hours of quality assured learning materials have been published on OpenLearn with 4000 further hours due to be published by March 2008. Half-a-million people in 160 different countries have so far made use of OpenLearn.

The University of Boltonhas for some years allowed free access to the content from some modules of its MSc programmes in Advanced Microelectronics and Electronic Product Development, however course content is presented in the context of the programme modules and not as free-standing educational resources.

We believe that learners at HEIs across Englandand the rest of the UKwould benefit from more stand-alone educational resources designed for HE study that can be freely accessed.  In addition the creation of new courses, whether campus-based of distance learning, could benefit from an enlarged pool of Open Content HE-level resources.  

Aims and objectives 

POCKET aims to build upon the OpenLearn approach by extending it to other HEIs.  Specifically it will:

• Capitalise on the investment in OpenLearn to build a wider pool of quality assured HE-level Open Content
• Provide support for learners adopting independent learning strategies
• Explore the potential of Open Content for HEIs, both as providers of it and as users
• Promote effective mechanisms for converting existing course materials into stand-alone educational resources
• Determine the cost of creating Open Content from existing course materials
• Develop a module from scratch with all materials created for it designed as Open Content
• Demonstrate seamless interoperability between Open Content and other repositories
• Add a significant resource to JORUM.

Project methodology  

University of Derby:

Undertake project planning, co-ordination and dissemination.  Specifically UoD will arrange Board Meetings and project communication.  We will also facilitate the documentation process for content development for Open Learn and produce some course content for upload to Open Learn and JORUM.

Open University:

Provide guidance on the production process and support and advice on the Open Learn Platform and XML Scheme.  OU will be responsible for producing guidelines on content development for Open Learn and undertaken evaluation of same.

University of Bolton:

Will produce some course content for upload to Open Learn and JORUM and provide technical guidance re the content development process.

University of Exeter:

Will produce some course content for upload to Open Learn and JORUM. 

 Anticipated outputs and outcomes Project Plan Documents

• Project website
• Process Guide for the conversion of existing materials into Open Learn format
• Knowledge on interoperability between Open Learn, XML Schema and various VLEs and repositories
• Course content from Derby, Bolton and Exeter on Open Learn Platform
• Course content from Derby, Bolton and Exeter on JORUM
• Workshop with ALT/JISC to invite partners
• Additional content on Open Learn/JORUM from additional partners
• Evaluation Report
• Dissemination Workshop
• Final Report

Technology / Standards used

The Project will be based on the Open Learn XML Schema.  However, through close links with CETIS, we will ensure that the content is interoperable with IMS standards to facilitate transfer of content between repositories and different VLEs.

JISC LXP Student Experiences of Technology project [1] Final Report

[2] See more about Open Learn Initiative