Further Education and Skills - providing appropriate routes to open content, a new Jisc project

Tuesday 11:00-12:30 (1), Darwin Suite

Type: Lightning talk

Theme: Academic practice, development and pedagogy

#oer14 #abs57

Authors

Dr Susanne P Boyle, Senior Manager Learning, Teaching and Professional Skills, Jorum Director, Mimas, The University of Manchester, [email protected]
Mr Mark Power, FE & Skills Development Officer, Mimas, The University of Manchester, [email protected]
Ms Caren Milloy, Head of Projects, Jisc Collections, [email protected]
Mr Nigel Ecclesfield, Jisc Programme manager, Jisc, [email protected]

Abstract

Introduction

This lightening talk will introduce a new Jisc project for Further Education (FE) and Skills. The vision is to harness existing Jisc content by developing accessible and flexible routes to content without further cost to FE. This project complements the existing Jisc FE and Skills Development and Resources programme by concentrating on the infrastructure whilst it continues to develop high quality content.

Jisc provides a variety of high quality digital content services to the FE and Skills sectors, such as Hairdressing Training, which tailors its content to curriculum and qualifications. However, some content is underused - with teaching staff and students not readily able to access the content that suits their working practices and organisational settings. This project will help to contextualise and deliver content, making it readily transparent to a user how the content relates to, or can be used to support teaching / learning in specific subject areas or levels.

Methods

Evidence shows that where Jisc services are mapped to curriculum and barriers to access are removed (e.g. HT and e-books for FE) that usage increases. The HT service is an open resource being used by 90% of UK FE and the e-books for FE project saves the community over £7 million per annum.

Throughout the project we will be engaging very closely with the sector through dedicated expert groups, existing organisations like the RSCs and user focus groups.

The project will:
- collate more evidence on usage barriers and success stories
- develop new routes to existing content, for example APIs or VLE integration
- map existing content to curriculums and qualifications
- make changes and recommendations to Jisc services like Jorum
- make use of existing communities and social networking opportunities

The benefits to teaching practitioners will include being able to quickly ascertain the relevance of Jisc content and being able to easily integrate it with their teaching materials and practices.
Results

FE and Skills practitioners will be able to discover Jisc content directly from within their own institution that is mapped to their curricula. Benefits to practitioners will include being able to quickly ascertain the relevance of content to their teaching area and being able to easily integrate it with their teaching. This will have benefits for FE colleges who struggle to procure content with limited budgets – the Jisc content is either specifically licensed for use in FE or openly available and should highlight and encourage further use of open content, from existing services like Jorum.

Discussion

A substantial element of this project will be working with the FE and Skills communities to understand their requirements and pedagogical needs. There are likely to be lessons learnt from Jisc’s successful engagement with HE. The project plan has been written by people with substantial FE experience, but we need to further understand the community’s requirements and develop tools and services which best fit these. If you feel you can contribute to this discussion please attend the session and help to shape this exciting new project.

Funding acknowledgements

Jisc

Further details

Keywords: Further Education, Skills, Jorum, OER, community, discoverability, Jisc, digital content, Colleges