Engaging tutors in using e-repositories for learning and

Engaging tutors in using e-repositories for learning and teaching Andrew Rothery a. rothery@worc. ac. uk Sarah Hayes s. hayes@aston. ac. uk

Welcome to our University corridor I will introduce you to some of our tutors, but they are not in their offices right now…… ……. they are meeting together to share and discuss their personal repository needs to support the different ways that they teach and the range of materials they use…. .

Professor Y

Prof. Y has used integrated teaching materials and interactive activities with her videos. These will be uploaded to JORUM Open, the UK national repository where they will be available to everyone nationally and internationally. Prof. Y is proud of her work and keen to publish it openly, for others to adapt and as a way of improving her reputation and standing in her field.

Dr Z

Dr. Z has used a university licensing agreement to obtain a collection of video and documentary material from UK TV channels. This has been stored in an institutional archive-style repository with a conventional metadata structure, and access for students is provided via the VLE. Using the VLE enables the university to restrict access to groups of students and particular locations according to what is permitted by the licence agreement.

Here at the front our two colleagues, Dr B and Dr X, are demonstrating the systems they have been using Dr B Dr X

Dr B uses a media player system, like You. Tube, but created in-house. He puts links to his videos in the VLE so students can view them without needing special software on their computers. Dr B also keeps an entry for these materials in the institutional repository where they can be tagged and organized for his own use, but not shared with others. Dr. X is uses a new Web 2. 0 style repository where his resources are tagged by personal topics: research methods, ME 101, reports, schizophrenia, etc. Using the social networking features, he shares access with a group of colleagues at the same university who teach the same subject.

The Web 2. 0 style repository used by Dr X is Learning Box, developed by Faroes Project http: //languagebox. eprints. org/

Further along the corridor…. …. a group of social science students produce short videos as part of their course and are required to make these available for viewing by the other students on the course…. So Dr. C has given students access to an institutional repository where they can each upload their videos and search and view the entire collection.

Here we have discussed just some of our staff and student needs for repositories • Conventional repositories have not so far met our needs for e-learning • A range of solutions, to fit with the ‘flow’ of tutor and student activities is recommended • How did we come to believe this? • We will briefly summarise our experience from Developing Repositories at Worcester • And share findings from 3 recent JISC - Joint Information Systems Committee reports

Our Developing Repositories at Worcester (DRa. W) Project found: • Tutors happy to upload research papers • Learning materials are more complex… • Tutors see no point in uploading teaching materials to a separate system from the VLE - too much metadata to add! But…. . • Tutors will upload to Web 2. 0 systems like You Tube, Slide Share and Flickr • A flexible, multi-system approach helps to plan for both ‘open’ and ‘closed’ access • An integrated university repository environment needs support embedded

Good Intentions • There is a fundamental assumption that tutors want to share their teaching resources • This takes place when a need arises • ‘Closed’ nature of the VLE hasn’t helped • Examine the ‘motivations’ to deposit • There are many unique and special situations • Offer a range of choices to encourage buy-in Good intentions: Improving the evidence base in support of sharing learning materials (Currier, Duncan, & Douglas, 2008)

On-line Innovation in Higher Education • UK should collaboratively provide a corpus of freely available open learning content • high quality resources that attract re-use • Emphasis on a cultural change to tutor, student and institutional workflow Question: In the research process, one builds on the work of others; can the same culture be encouraged in creating, sharing and reusing learning materials? On-line Innovation in Higher Education (Cooke, 2008)

And finally… A Road Map to guide us… • Map out all the roles repositories might play – E. g. management of digital resources, open access and re-use • Be guided by researchers’ and lecturers’ use of the Web to direct repository development • Demonstrate innovative use of repositories e. g. group repository, individual repository, transitory repository • Help repository usage into users’ workflows • Enable learning materials repositories to move from ‘project’ to a valuable service Digital Repositories Roadmap Review: towards a vision for research and learning in 2013 (Heery, 2009)