Posted on behalf of Nancy Graham, Chair of the CoPILOT sub-group
As some will no doubt already know, Jorum, the learning object repository hosted by Jisc, is being retired. Some of you will have uploaded your information literacy open educational resources (OER) onto the site (or linked to locally hosted ones) and you will need to keep up with developments to ensure those resources are either maintained elsewhere by Jisc or you may wish to make local arrangements for hosting.
For those of us who took part in projects funded as part of the UK OER strands, the retirement is particularly sad, as those projects and their outputs made a really positive impact on both individuals and institutions. For example, Leeds and GCU now have OER policies, in no small part thanks to the efforts of librarians developing information literacy resources and wanting to share them openly.
Indeed the IL Group (in particular the current Chair Jane Secker and I) worked closely with Jorum to develop the IL/DL Collection. This collection of 187 resources is focused around information and digital literacy and acts as a hub for IL OER. It is also host to some of the IL teaching/learning resource exemplars, as highlighted on our teaching resources page, like the My Learning Essentials resource from the University of Manchester.
We also use Jorum to host the winning resources for the LILAC Credo Digital Award.
These resources are openly licensed for others to re-use and re-purpose with the aim of sharing good practice and supporting each other in our teaching endeavours. Please make use of the resources while they are still there!
As with so many things in life, sometimes events overtake us and whilst the Jorum retirement is progressing, a Dept of Business, Innovation and Skills Green Paper published on Friday 5th November, set out the government’s plan to review Higher Education including a possible Teaching Excellence Framework. If this does go ahead and institutions begin to assess teaching quality, it is highly likely that assessors will want to see teaching materials. At which point institutional, subject and national learning object repositories may well require further development and maintenance.
So for those of you that continue to create, re-use and share your IL OER, your expertise has not been built up in vain. Be prepared to share your expertise and passion within your academic colleagues as they turn to you for help!