JorumOpen - opening up the world of sharing

Two weeks on from the release of JorumOpen, we review some of the feedback received, and at the growing collection of open educational resources available. There are currently over 1000 resources in JorumOpen, all offered for search and download under a Creative Commons licence._This collectiob

"Just want to congratulate you all on the launch of JorumOpen – it’s looking fabulous!" Catherine Bruen, NDLR)

"Jorum has gone open! Looks great - really clear and easy to use" Sarah Darley, MBS (UoM)

Anyone can search for and download resources from JorumOpen, providing the terms and conditions of use as specified in the resource’s Creative Commons licence, and Jorum’s Terms of Service are respected.

"Downloading and previewing learning packages (and uploading them too, if you have Shibboleth Access) is much easier than in the past" Richard Goddard (Learning Objectivity UK)

Depositing resources in JorumOpen

The collection already contains a range of learning and teaching resources, but we encourage further deposit of open materials, to feature alongside resources such as the entries submitted to the 2009 Jorum Learning and Teaching competition.

Further content will also be deposited from the UKOER Programme, as JorumOpen will either contain, or point to, all of the resources released by these projects upon its completion in April 2010. All resources deposited via the UKOER programme will be tagged as ‘ukoer’.

Sharing your work under a Creative Commons licence through JorumOpen can bring many advantages. Your learning and teaching resources can benefit those who teach anywhere in the world, and allows others to learn from your expertise. Open educational resources can also act as a showcase for you and your institution and by depositing resources in JorumOpen, the collection is enriched, making it more attractive to other users, and encouraging them to share.

"Submitted the 5 guides (video & print) we’ve produced [for the JISC web2practice project] so far. The process was surprisingly easy and quick!" Steve Boneham (NetSkills)

Anyone from UK Further and Higher Education Institutions, using the UK Access Management Federation to authenticate, can deposit resources into the JorumOpen collection.

JorumOpen will also be made available for indexing by search engines such as Google later this year, making individual resources in JorumOpen discoverable in other ways.

Ready to deposit?

The simplest way to deposit resources into either of Jorum's collections, is to access the new Jorum Deposit Chooser, which will guide you through a step-by-step process to help you determine which Jorum collection is the most suitable for your needs.

Need further guidance?

For further help on how to get the most out of JorumOpen, a series of vidcasts have been produced to take you through some of the key features of using the collection. These include how to search for and deposit resources, and are available at the Jorum Community Bay, or for download in JorumOpen and YouTube – search for ‘JorumOpen’ in the keyword search.