Jackie Grahahm describes how Re:source enables the delivery and sharing of open educational resources across FE institutions in Scotland, and the role social media has played. Presented at the 6th annual Metadata & Web 2.0 seminar organised by the Cataloguing and Indexing Group in Scotland, held at the National Library of Scotland, 21 June 2013

1. Jackie Graham
College Development Network
21 June 2013
An open resource-sharing service for the
college sector in Scotland

2. Re:Source
www.resourceshare.ac.uk
• collaborative project led by Scotland’s Colleges (now College
Development Network) in partnership with SQA, Education
Scotland, JISC Regional Support Centre Scotland.
• developed and hosted by Mimas, the University of Manchester.
• open resource-sharing service for the college sector in
Scotland, launched November 2012.

3. Aims of the service:
• To improve access to open learning and teaching resources within the
college sector in Scotland and help the sector achieve greater efficiency
in the provision of learning and teaching resources
• To develop and maintain a shared resource-sharing environment where
the use, sharing, creation and re-purposing of digital resources is
pervasive and effective, providing a national focal point for open content
shared by the sector and open materials held elsewhere.
• To promote the benefits of open sharing and shift the culture within the
sector to a greater use and sharing of open resources in line with wider
OER activity.

4. Development
• development of existing shared repository service
• widening ‘depositor’ access without extra cost
• changes in sector: mergers, regionalisation
• move to open licensing
• scoping and learning from
experience of Jorum, NDLR
• timing, opportunity for partnership
• delivered new shared service at
less than half annual cost

5. Consultation
Round table consultation held with college and sector representatives.
Scoping of requirements.
Further consultation process led by Lou McGill, independent consultant
• individual interviews with representatives from Scotland's
Colleges, colleges and partner agencies.
• online questionnaire to canvas views and involve further stakeholders in
the process
• findings informed report and engagement strategy (October 2012).

6. Engagement strategy
With long-term aim of embedding open sharing within everyday practice of
staff, Engagement Strategy:
• identified challenges, opportunities, benefits
• possible activities and actions, ways to measure success
• identified different stakeholder groups, which will gain different benefits
from the service
• recognised that awareness-raising needs long-term staged approaches
• recognised that not everyone will engage in the same way
• recommended use of the experience of previous JISC wide-scale
change management programmes
• advocated a big vision but focus on achievable activities and targets.

7. Engagement action plan
Specific recommendations for embedding change in practice:
• national/policy level -
o visible commitment to and promotion of benefits of open sharing
o build on links with other partners/sectors to share resources
• regional level -
o strategy/policy to reflect commitment to open sharing
o highlight benefits of sharing within region and wider
• institutional level -
o systems and services to support open sharing
o staff development to recognise open practice
• subject discipline/professional networks -
o support collection development and showcasing
o highlight open sharing of both resources and practice

8. Re:Source - the platform
WordPress front page and blog area, and DSpace repository -
Integration for Moodle VLEs.
As Re:Source sub-site of Jorum, single sign-on also provided by Jorum.

9. Communities and collections
Communities in DSpace used to
organise collections. Users can
be assigned to these.
Two main CDN communities:
Open resources - collections of
resources which are licensed
under Creative Commons or
other open licence.
Resources licensed to colleges
(materials developed by COLEG)

10. Simple upload process
with reduced metadata profile.
User completes -
dc.title
dc.description
dc.contributor (author, editor, modifier)
dc.publisher
dc.date.created
dc.type (vocab for learning resource type)
dc.subject (keywords)
dc.subject classification (superclass)
dc.subject.other (SCQF level)
dc.rightsholder
dc.rights
dc.rights.uri
Also used:
dc.identifier
dc.identifier.uri
dc.date.accessioned
dc.date.issued
dc.language
dc.format.mimetype
dc.format.extent (size)
Licence chooser to help user select licence.
Further guidance on copyright and licensing.

11. Re:Source as OER access point
Re:Source provides access to OER resources shared through Jorum.
A simple search in Re:Source can include Jorum within scope.
Opportunity to add other repositories (such as OU OpenLearn)

12. Next steps
Take forward recommendations of action plan
• Policy
• Engagement
• Build on/develop partnerships
• Content
• Integration

13. Tel: 01786 892000
info@collegedevelopmentnetwork.ac.uk
www.collegedevelopmentnetwork.ac.uk
Follow @ColDevNet on Twitter
facebook.com/collegedevelopmentnetwork
Contact Details
jackie.graham@collegedevelopmentnetwork.ac.uk
@jacqu23 (twitter)
jackie.graham (skype)