Call for teachers to share resources

At the start of a new academic year, JISC is encouraging lecturers and trainers to share their teaching materials - as a competition highlights useful resources from across the UK.

David Kernohan, programme manager at JISC, said: “We are fortunate in this country to be developing a community of people willing to share their teaching resources, but what we lack is a coherent way of highlighting the best examples of such collaboration.

“Competitions like this one show what we all know instinctively – that sharing can benefit not just your colleagues but also your own teaching reputation and that of your university or college.”

The competition was run by JorumOpen, the UK’s national repository for educational materials created under a creative commons licence.

Louise Egan, Jorum communications officer, said: "This competition aims to champion learning and teaching resources from all backgrounds and subject areas. We were delighted to have received a great number of entries, and see the high standard of resources being shared amongst our community of users."

The resulting winners of the competition are all excellent examples of how to make learning more interactive and are available alongside the other entries at Jorum for anyone to re-use.

First place went to a resource that explains photosynthesis using 3D models of the key molecules involved. Its author Katy Jordan has used the kit to teach undergraduates at the University of Cambridge.
http://open.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/7023

An interactive module from the Open Dementia E-learning programme, funded by the Department of Health, came in at second place.
http://open.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/7022

The University of Wales Institute in Cardiff claimed third prize for a resource called ‘Making the creative process visible’, a series of films documenting how ceramics students develop their ideas.
http://open.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/2027

Contributing to open repositories helps resources to be discovered more widely. Currently over 80 UK universities are involved in the pilot open educational resources programme run by JISC and the Higher Education Academy with all outputs made available via JorumOpen.

Explore what we’ve learned and how sharing resources can benefit your organisation through our dedicated briefing paper at

To contribute to Jorum or find resources, visit http://www.jorum.ac.uk

Jorum Learning and Teaching Competition 2010 – now accepting entries

Do you create open educational learning and teaching resources? If so, the Jorum Learning and Teaching Competition is for you.

Following on from last year’s successful competition, which resulted in six highly creative and valuable resources winning places, we are pleased to announce that the 2010 competition is now open and accepting entries.

The competition runs again in conjunction with the ALT-C conference in Nottingham, 7-9 September, and the six winning entrants will have the opportunity to present and showcase their resources at the conference.

The panel of judges will be looking for exciting and innovative resources created under a creative commons licence, and entries will be judged against a set of criteria - appropriateness, engagement, effectiveness and reusability.

We have engaged another great range of judges this year, including Russell Stannard and James Clay, who are both advocates of sharing resources openly.

Final judging will also take on a new twist this year, as the judges will be asked to rank their top ten resources, which will then be placed on the Jorum Community Bay to allow for a public vote - so never mind The X-Factor – vote for your choice of resource to win!

You will be able to vote from 19th August, and details on how to vote will be announced nearer the time.

There are three cash prizes up for grabs, along with three commended awards.

Closing date – Friday 25th June 2010

Full entry details on the Jorum Website.

The Association for Learning Technology’s Open Access Repository

The Association for Learning Technology’s Open Access Repository was formally launched at ALT’s annual conference ALT-C in September and is now available. The repository represents a long-awaited development in ALT’s work and services as it allows users to contribute assets and make them available via the repository. Since it went online the repository has had about 10,000 visitors, browsing, searching for and downloading journal articles, conference presentations, links to webinar recordings and similar content.

The repository currently contains post-prints from the ALT’s peer-reviewed journal ALT-J from its inception in 1993 to Vol. 16 (2007) and will be updated periodically with new volumes 18 months after publication by Routledge. The repository also contains items relating to:

• ALT-C conference
• ALT events and webinars
• Learning Technology topics, events or publications
• ALT Members
• ALT’s Certified Membership Scheme – CMALT
• ALT Special Interest Groups such as the recently established Learning Environment Review SIG (LERSIG)

It will be extended further to cover:

• exemplars of best practice
• guides for good practice in design & use of education technologies
• research papers
• sector reports related to e-learning
• wiki-based content that can be added to and extended by practitioners

For further information or if you would like to contribute assets visit
http://repository.alt.ac.uk
You can also create your own user account on the repository homepage.