Reusing, Sourcing and Managing Resources
Reusability
If you want to reuse learning materials across different courses it is important that these resources are not bound to specific contexts. Separating context from resources may be counter-intuitive to the way you usually develop resources for students. The Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS http://www.cetis.ac.uk) has produced guides to authoring reusable materials, which may help you customise resources for reuse within your teaching context to:
provide special needs students with resources in specific formats which would better support their learning;
customise resource in formats which suit specific teaching situations (e.g. HTML may be a preferred format for a resource in an online course, in campus based teaching the same resource may be customised to PDF for printing and distributed to students on paper) ;
develop a sense of ownership through adding information on local, institutional support or linking to preferred texts.
The CETIS guides can be found online at
Casey, J. and McAlpine, M. (2002) Writing and Using Reusable Educational Materials: A Beginner's Guide. Available from CETIS Educational Content Group Files.
Calverley, G. (2002). Distributed Learning Project Guide: Creating Reusable Materials.
Wiley, D., Instructional Use of Learning Objects
Sourcing
If you want to share learning materials, it is important to ensure that other tutors or students can source them. In order to achieve this, each resource must be tagged with standardised search terms and/or descriptions. This information about the resource, or 'metadata', is provided by selecting from a controlled vocabulary or entering free text. The metadata information 'fields' will vary according to each repository system, but are likely to include author information, copyright, educational level and/or how to use the resource. The use of standards ensures that any set of resources can be migrated from one VLE to another. Another important aspect of agreed metadata standards and vocabularies is that they are vital for the cataloguing of resources within a digital repository - for example, under a Dewey-style subject scheme or a taxonomy of agreed terms for resource types. Without cataloguing and search systems, it would be difficult for tutors or students to find what they are looking for in a repository.
Managing Resources
There is some debate as to who should be in charge of entering metadata, particularly since most academics and students do not have the skills to select appropriate search terms. To help overcome this issue, many digital repositories automatically create as much metadata as possible. Many repositories are regulated by librarians who can ensure quality assurance of metadata tagging to enable easy sourcing of materials. However, resource authors are best placed to describe the educational intent of their material (Currier and Barton, 2002). Effective use of virtual learning environments will increasingly depend on tutors, students and library specialists working in partnership.
In most VLE systems tutors are responsible for managing learning resources, rather than students. However, information flow concerns a number of stakeholders, including:
librarians - few VLEs are fully linked to institutional libraries to allow students to search online journals within their subject discipline,
students - it can be difficult for students to manage and share their own resources within and across student groups. This requires the integration of shared workspaces or e-portfolios within the VLE,
registry and finance - many institutions are now linking their VLE with a student information system. This allows students to access personal details on their progress and financial details. Information regarding linkage of systems can be found in the Creating an MLE infoKit.
Designing for Sustainability: Summary
Reusing resources, or repurposing existing resources for a new teaching context, is a good way to use your time as effectively as possible. This section has outlined a range of places where you locate digital learning resources. However, making your own resources available for reuse across a number of different courses within a VLE is an equally important strategy for efficient use of your time. A later section examines a range of systems currently available to support resource sharing.
