Repositories and Content

E-Learning Programme projects and resources that relate to the repositories and content theme.

SWORD: Cutting Through the Red Tape to Populate Learning Materials Repositories

This in-depth article by Sarah Currier, the Product Manager for Intrallect Ltd., introduces SWORD (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) to those interested in sharing, reuse, repurposing and management of teaching and learning materials. The article provides an overview of the tool, technical details of how SWORD works and four case study vignettes, or SWORD Stories, on work that is already under way, which illustrate how SWORD streamlines the process of depositing learning materials into repositories.

DesignShare: Linking up IMS Learning Design tools and systems

We spoke to Mark Barrett-Baxendale from Liverpool Hope University about the JISC DesignShare Toolkit Demonstrator project, which focussed on the use and storage of Units of Learning defined by IMS Learning Design. Mark concludes that the project “demonstrated the utility of the service oriented approach” by linking the Open Document.Net repository to the Reload IMS Learning Design editor.

JISC-CETIS 2006: Linking Formal and Informal learning

A report from the JISC-CETIS conference held in Salford on the 14th and 15th November. This year, the focus was on "the gap between learning within the (fire)wall of a well-established institution and learning on the wild web and beyond."

JISC-CETIS Assessment and Metadata meeting

The slides, audio files and summaries are now available from a joint meeting of the JISC-CETIS special interest groups held on 12th October. The meeting focused on item banks and repositories and considered JISC IE and web 2.0 approaches.

Search Service Projects

Neil Fegen, Assistant Co-ordinator of the CETIS Metadata Special Interest Group, provides an overview of the JISC funded search related web service projects and illustrates the potential benefits of this work with useful two scenarios.

Educational Content SIG presentations available

Presentations from the CETIS Educational Content SIG are now available online. They include presentations from a number of the Scottish Transformation projects.

JISC Digital Repositories Programme wiki and mailing list launched

The Digital Repositories Programme [1], a £4m JISC programme to enhance the implementation and development of digital repositories in the UK, has recently launched a wiki (DigiRep) [2], managed by the Programme’s support team.

Developing Standards based e-Learning Tools

The Distributed e-Learning (DeL) strand of the e-Learning Programme is funding the development of innovative, standards based, open source tools for students and teachers which aim to provide new opportunities for learning. This article looks at the rationale behind these projects and the tools that are being produced.

The community sets priorities for the e-Framework

The second JISC/CETIS Conference was held at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, on the 15th and 16th November. This, now annual, conference brings together many of the development community, particularly those working on JISC funded projects, along with domain experts and policy makers from further afield including the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands.

Repositories- what do users want?

In an article in October's Ariadne by Amber Thomas and Andrew Rothery discussing the need to take the user's perspective when developing online repositories.

DELTA project website

A direct link to the DELTA project web site.

D+ project on the JISC web site

The JISC web site for the D+ (Discovery + Brokerage for Deep and Distributed e-Learning Resources Discovery) project. This page provides formal project information, aims, objectives and contacts

CETIS Metadata and Digital Repository Special Interest Group (SIG)

See the section on 'linking repositories with learning environments' for information on the IMS Resource List Interoperability (RLI) Specification.

MDC project on JISC web site

JISC web site for the MDC (Middleware for Distributed Cognition) project. This page provides formal project information, aims, objectives, contacts etc.

CETIS Educational Content Special Interest Group

The aim of this group is to track, evaluate and support the UK FE/HE sector's uptake and implementation of the educational content interoperability standards. They focus primarily on IMS:Content Packaging, Learning Design and Simple Sequencing.

VLMA

A summary of the Virtual Lightbox for Museums and Archives project funded by the distributed e-learning strand.

WCKER

A summary of the WCKER (Wizard Construction Kit Extension for Reload) project funded by the distributed e-learning strand.

DELTA

A tool for submitting, searching for and retrieving distributed pedagogical resources.

Resource List Toolkit project web site

Web site for the Resource List Toolkit project based at the University of Edinburgh.

WCKER project website

A direct link t the WCKER (Wizard Construction Kit Extension for Reload) project web site based at the University of Oxford.