Jorum Blog

UKOER Phase-3 Projects

Posted by Frank Manista on 17th November 2011

UKOER: The New Beginning

On 14 November 2011, Phase-3 of the new UKOER projects had its start. The meeting was co-chaired by David Kernohan from JISC and Dave Mossley from the HEA. There are 13 new thematic projects, which include:

• The University of Oxford: "Great Writers"
• Southampton Solent University: "Opening Up a Future in Business"
• Doncaster College: "3D Resources for the Built Environment"
• De Montfort University: "HALS OER"
• University of the Arts, London: "ALTO UK"
• University of Nottingham: "PARis"
• University of Oxford: "Sesame"
• Coventry University: "COMC"
• Newcastle University: "PublishOER"
• University of Southampton: "FAVOR"
• University of Cambridge: "ORBIT"
• Sheffield Hallam University: "Digital Futures in Teacher Education"
• University of Liverpool: "CORE-SET"

In addition to the themed projects, there is also an additional OMAC stream, which includes projects coming from:

• Teesside University, which "will exploit 10 years worth of built environment materials for staff, including a rough guide to employability and assessment information."

• University of Bedfordshire, which "includes an online module of 30 credits for CPD, using OERs focused around creativity."

• University of Bath, which "has GPS tracking for experts and novices doing geographical studies in the field."

• London Southbank University, which "is working on education for sustainability, and on a meta-level, asking 'how do people find and work with real problems for introducing collaborative work?'"

Each of the project representatives had a 2 minute pitch to present the basic premise (with no Power Point or Prezi!). More information on these projects will be forthcoming on the JISC website.

In addition, there were presentations from all the support mechanisms for the projects, including JISC Legal, Web2Rights, and CETIS, along with exercises focused around the OER InfoKit, the recently released Synthesis and Evaluation Report, and the Accessibility Passport Generator, which is designed to lead developers through a series of questions concerning the production of accessible learning objects.

Jorum also had an opportunity to present and speak briefly about what we have been up to, including:

• developing a Featured Collections section, currently called Jorum-Beta which will be resources featured from either a particular institution, individual, or a specific subject category

• creating a Jorum Dashboard, which will allow for clearer views of different statistics, including uploads, downloads, and views

• setting up two User Groups -- for "Power Users" and "Occasional Users" -- who will assist in further developments and improvements of the repository. An initial invitation to attend a virtual meeting with be sent out soon.

• further investigation and trial of different methods for bulk upload, including RSS

• re-licensing to a Creative Commons licence those resources which previously were uploaded using more restrictive licences.

Information and announcements about these roll-outs will be posted on our website and via Twitter.

The start up meeting showed that the spirit of creative collaboration remains, and there is an added emphasis on fostering connections among the projects themselves; to assist with this intent, each project must have a partner, from either the themed or OMAC undertakings. It was also great to note that many of the projects are related to work done from the previous two phases and to see that continuation of good work; however, what marks this phase as distinct, in my opinion, is the a priori reaching out to each other and building on the connections the UKOER programme is so capable of providing (and the projects have only just begun!).