Jorum Forum
Over 40 people from a wide range of FE and HE institutions in the UK and Ireland gathered at CEEBL, the Centre for Excellence in Enquiry Based Learning, to attend the Jorum Forum event on Wednesday 10th December.
The day provided a mix of presentations, demonstrations and discussions on Jorum’s plans for the future, such as JorumOpen and the Community Bay, and on related projects and activities. The morning saw a range of presentations by members of the wider Jorum team. Nicola Siminson kicked off with an overview of Jorum for newcomers, and looked ahead to the launch of three new licences in 2009, including a fully open access JorumOpen.
Presentation overview
Mary Jane Steer then talked about the cataloguing of Jorum resources, and posed questions about which classification schemes people found most useful, showing how Jorum is evolving to meet user needs.
A range of brand new resources in Jorum was previewed by Matt Ramirez, including materials from the Repurposing Existing Virtual Patients (REVIP) project and the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). Matt finished by sharing his top 5 criteria for good resource features.
Andy Richardson provided a walk-through of access to Jorum following the introduction of federated access management and Shibboleth, and emphasised the importance of re-registering for Jorum. More information can be found at the following link: http://www.jorum.ac.uk/shib_contributor_moreinfo.htm
Next, the audience was granted a sneak preview by Laura Shaw of the new Jorum Community Bay, a space to find out more about all aspects of sharing, reusing and repurposing learning and teaching materials, as well as for the community to contribute and share their own knowledge and tips. The Community Bay is still under development, but the Jorum team are keen for the audience to pilot and evaluate the tool by registering at the following link: http://community.jorum.ac.uk/
The Jorum Forum was also an opportunity for participants to share their views on Jorum, and group discussions generated some interesting comments and debate on topics ranging from the Jorum website to the draft mission statement. These discussions have been captured on the Community Bay, and can be continued by replying to the postings there.
After lunch, Steve Smith provided a practical and entertaining insight into ways of repurposing materials from Jorum, whether for learning about tiling in an FE setting, or art history in an HE scenario. Our knowledge of Dadaism was tested in a quiz, and Steve even finished with a song!
Sarah Darley then described the POCKET project’s experience of developing open content, building on the Open University’s OpenLearn approach. Sarah outlined the processes involved in taking existing content and making it available both electronically and openly, including accessibility and copyright considerations.
Working to share learning objects across a consortium of regional institutions was the theme of Fleur Corfield’s presentation, which also looked at the reasons behind reusing and repurposing materials instead of creating them from scratch – ranging from saving time in the long run, to managing the issue of multiple versions of the same materials.
Richard Goddard gave a live demonstration of the MrCute Moodle repository tool, and how it could be used to search the Jorum repository from within a VLE. MrCute stands for “Moodle Repository Create Upload Tag Embed”.
To round the day off, Amber Thomas spoke about the joint HEA / JISC Open Educational Resources (OER) programme, outlining the types of projects which could be eligible for funding. JorumOpen will act as a place for deposit of materials created under this programme.
Overall, the Jorum Forum gathering was a thought provoking event with plenty of scope for further discussion and development. We hope to grow Jorum even further in 2009 with help from our members to ensure Jorum becomes the repository site of choice.
Powerpoint presentations
- Jorum is changing – Nicola Siminson
- Cataloguing Jorum resources – Mary Jane Steer
- What’s new in Jorum – Matt Ramirez
- Access to Jorum – Andrew Richardson
- Jorum Community Bay: a sneak preview – Laura Shaw
- Developing open content: the POCKET experience – Sarah Darley
- Work Based Learning resources across a consortium – Fleur Corfield
- Open educational resources and Jorum – Amber Thomas
Agenda
Download the agenda for the day - PDFJorum poster
Download the A3 Jorum poster - PDF
