Tuesday 6 April 2010

OER10 – spreading the word*

Members of the Jorum team had a strong presence at the recent OER10 conference in Cambridge (22 – 24 March) through presentations, sponsorship, chairing, and participation in the final plenary session. Over 100 delegates attended the event, which began with a keynote presentation from Dr Malcolm Read, JISC Executive Secretary.

Lively discussions, demonstrations and presentations ensued over the three days.

Jorum ran two sessions at the conference. The first, a Jorum demonstration - ‘JorumOpen - DSpace as an OER Repository’, took place on Monday afternoon, presented by Peter Burnhill (Jorum Co-Director). He presented a detailed look at the technical changes made to the DSpace repository platform that supports the JorumOpen collection, highlighting the various ways resources can be found.

The Jorum symposium - ‘What has Jorum ever done for us?’ held on the Wednesday morning and chaired by Nicola Siminson (Jorum Community Enhancement Officer), presented a range of stimulating papers, addressing all three conference themes - open educational content; OER designs; and open educational communities. Participants heard what motivates individuals, institutions and communities to share learning and teaching resources, and how Jorum supports these activities by adding value.


A range of partners, organisations and initiatives linked with Jorum showcased their work, and described the importance of sharing learning and teaching resources. Time for discussion and questions provided some extremely valuable feedback.

A gala dinner, sponsored by Jorum, took place on the Tuesday evening, in the impressive surroundings of the 17th century Great Hall at Clare College. Delegates were treated to a wonderful after-dinner speech by Nick Poole, Chief Executive of the Collections Trust.

To see all Twitter feeds for the conference - search for #oer10.

*Taken from the March edition of Jorum Update

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