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

Lunched and Learnt

Lunch was eaten (very nice crisps) and things were learnt at today's Lunch and Learn session in Staff Development.

Katrina Dalziel and Lori Havard talked about how they have used a variety of e-learning tools and processes in teaching information literacy skills - storyboarding, clickers, Blackboard, Course Genie

On the subject of storyboarding, it was suggested that using a wiki to facilitate the storyboarding process would be useful for busy academics. An excellent idea Geertje.

Chris Jobling talked about ‘The Blackboard Quest’ - how to encourage students to explore the various features of Blackboard while at the same time getting them to actively review your course materials. You can find his presentation here - http://eehope.swan.ac.uk/dokuwiki/blackboard_quest

Thanks once again to Katrina, Lori and Chris.

The next session is on 13th May and is entitled 'Do Hedgehogs Steal Ice Cream? Embedding Critical Thinking.'