All set for JorumOpen*

The past few months have seen much attention surrounding the work of the projects involved in the UK Open Educational Resources (UKOER) programme, created by JISC and The Higher Education Academy.

In support of this, Jorum, the UK's national learning and teaching resources repository, run jointly between the EDINA and Mimas national data centres, will be offering a new service to store and showcase the work, not only from the UKOER Programme, but also for anyone who wants to share resources openly.

From 19 January 2010, Jorum will be opening up the sharing of these learning and teaching resources through a Creative Commons (CC) licence, under the banner of JorumOpen. This allows access free to the web, for all to benefit worldwide, providing even more content to assist and enhance teaching.

Members of UK FE and HE Institutions (using the UK Access Management Federation to authenticate) can deposit, but anyone will be able to search, browse and download the materials deposited via JorumOpen.

Jorum is accepting deposits now via the simple-to-use Jorum OER Deposit Tool. Simply upload the resource, submit metadata and then indicate your choice of CC licence to authorise reuse, so that your resources are ready for JorumOpen. All deposits will be available as open content, adding to content already being deposited by projects in the UKOER Programme.

Entries submitted to the Jorum Learning and Teaching competition will also be available for download through JorumOpen. The winning resources are available to preview at the Jorum Community Bay, with podcasts highlighting the importance of sharing open-access resources, and the value of sharing through Jorum.

Other activity surrounding the release of JorumOpen has involved a small group of project partners in the initial testing phase. Feedback indicated that depositing resources was "straightforward", or "really easy". Opinions have also been sought from these partners on the proposed interface and metadata requirements, alongside comments from the community.

Training days were scheduled, aimed at staff from FE and HE institutions involved in producing learning and teaching resources. Thirty participants, representing 26 institutions, attended the two sessions and valued the opportunity to learn about JorumOpen and future plans from the Jorum team. Comments from those who attended were encouraging, including a blog post from Lisa Parcell from RSC Wales, covering the main points from the events.

Further support for the UKOER programme has come through the Jorum Community Bay. An area has been set up dedicated to supporting projects engaged in OER, answering questions through the forum, and giving guidelines on using the Jorum OER Deposit tool.

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JorumOpen will run alongside the current service, JorumUK, for members of UK FE and HE Institutions who need to deposit under additional restrictive licensing.

There are further plans set for 2010, so keep up to date by joining the JISCmail list, or look out for announcements on the Jorum website.

* Taken from the article in Edina Newsline Dec 09, Vol 14, Issue 4