Jorum represented at Online Educa, Berlin

The annual Online Educa Event, held in Berlin took place on 3-5 December 08 and describes itself as the largest global e-learning conference attracting experts from around the world.
http://www.online-educa.com/

Rachel Bruce the Programme Director - Information Environment at JISC - joined a panel of presenters at a plenary session to discuss ‘Open Educational Resources’ (OER) the issues surrounding them and possible future trends.

Rachel's presentation Sharing Nationally: Is It Any of Your Business? (see below) which was written jointly by Rachel Bruce and Jackie Carter (Jorum’s Co-Director) addressed the future and sustainability of Open Educational Resources. She also covered funding for the future and the important role of Jorum.

Part of JISC’s mission highlights the desire to be the leader in supporting the educational world through the use of technology and of course Jorum.

Mission: “to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of Information and Communications Technology to support education and research.”

Rachel argued that sustainability is about money but more importantly it is also about people and cultural change.

JISC are now making funding available to encourage, enable and support the UK to engage with OER.

She went on to talk about Jorum as part of the infrastructure to support the cultural change and a showcase for learning materials in the UK. The Jorum service of course highlights the increased requirement for an open learning resource that can be accessed all from one source.

“We now have a technical means for distribution of content and this offers an opportunity to share and use content in innovative ways."

The Jorum team encourages the sharing and repurposing of teaching and learning materials within the community to expose the benefits and perceived barriers to sharing. Not only is the Jorum website and repository available now but the new Jorum Community Bay (available in 2009) will provide even more support. This discussion based online site will encourage Jorum community members to engage in discussion forums, find out news about Jorum and the educational environment and much more. The Jorum team is hoping this should help to engage the community even further to the benefits of Jorum and will go along way to breaking down the perceived barriers of sharing valuable resources openly within the OER movement.

Rachel concluded by saying that we will sustain OER if they become part of the education workflow. If they offer up benefits such as time saving, better resources, contributor recognition and policies on IPR, quality and support, OER and the future should be one of rapid growth and sustainability.

Additional information:

Image of Rachel taken from the Online Educa website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Germany License. Photographs by Peter Himsel. All copyrights by ICWE GmbH.


Bruce_Carter_plenary.ppt