“Mighty things from small beginnings grow” - The History of Jorum

The History of Jorum

As the Jorum team steps up plans for 2009 and beyond, due to secured funding from JISC for the Jorum service, it has been a good time to reflect on the history of Jorum which has shaped the service we see today. Jorum’s plans include offering open educational resources through ‘JorumOpen’ to provide easier access to a wide variety of learning materials not only in the UK but to new international audiences worldwide.

Rachel Bruce, JISC programme director, said*: "Jorum is an example of innovation at its best. It has already contributed a great deal, demonstrating that the sharing of learning resources is both viable and desirable, but these plans will allow it to develop and to innovate still further. We look forward to these further developments and to Jorum's continued growth in the future.”

The Jorum repository service which was established in 2002 is jointly run by the two National Data centres, Mimas at The University of Manchester and EDINA at the University of Edinburgh.

Background

A Learning Objects Repository for UK Higher and Further Education to be set up by the UK National Data Centres (NDCs) was commissioned by JISC in 2002. JISC’s driver was to provide ‘secure and convenient access’ to scholarly and educational material.

Jorum emerged as the place that UK FE and HE institutions can access, share and contribute resources that are suitable for use in any post-16 educational environments.

Since Jorum’s inception, the environment in which it operates has changed dramatically. Creative Commons released its first set of copyright licences for public use in 2002, resulting in the widespread phenomena we see today such as Flickr and YouTube. Social networking which allows and encourages the sharing of information is now common practice.

Jorum’s metadata tagging has also ensured that resources can be found easily through a simple search tool.

It has become apparent that users of the Jorum repository see the service as a valuable tool to enhance their daily teaching environments.

Overall, Jorum has embarked on a steep learning curve but by listening to its community the Jorum service has grown, along with its team. It has proved to be a success which continues to develop and gather momentum as it moves forward throughout 2009 and beyond.

To see the full Jorum History document (2002 – 2008) click here:

Final_20Jorum1_History_Nov08.doc

* Source taken from: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2008/04/jorumopen.aspx