OER1031 Demonstration ppt

Opening up special collections: the use of GLO Maker with resources from the Women's Library

Tom Boyle, Debbie Holley and Teresa Doherty, London Metropolitan University

Conference Theme: Open Educational Content

Intended audience: Academics keen to develop their expertise with accessing and working with special collections; developers seeking copyright free images; those with an interest in women’s contemporary culture; those keen to develop their skills in the incorporation of materials into the GLO Maker authoring tool for creating their own resources.

Abstract: This session will demonstrate the results from combining a powerful OER authoring tool with access to rich, reusable content. The authoring tool is GLO Maker 2 [1]. Thus is a teacher oriented authoring tool based on explicit, reusable learning designs. Specific learning objects can be generated by linking multimedia content into these designs. The content for the learning objects demonstrated in this session is derived from the Women's Library at London Metropolitan University [2]. The Women's Library is a cultural centre housing the most extensive collection of women's history in the UK. Access is free and open to everyone from undergraduate level, and to internal and external scholars and researchers. Following an extensive digitalization project, special collection materials are now available for inclusion in the design of teaching and learning resources. A pilot project was conducted with academic staff at London Metropolitan University Business School, the RLO-CETL [3] and The Women’s Library. The GLO Maker tool was used together with material from the digitized collections to create rich, multimedia learning objects. The pilot project was designed to develop staff awareness of the materials available in a special collection library. One example of an artifact is the poster covering ‘how to create a poster’, and this work has been extended to encompass a student poster day, when students are invited along to create a series of posters either around their own subject or discipline or to enter a competition to design the best poster to encourage students to design for impact when creating posters for assessment. The pilot aims to extend the range and variety of learning and teaching contexts available, and to reflect the changing needs of the wider educational community, where sharing of topics of academic value with known communities of interest are encouraged by emerging JISC policy [4] This demonstration will showcase the learning objects created. It will reflect on the process of engaging staff in the creation of rich, OER learning objects. The demonstration will also show how these learning objects can be repurposed by other tutors to meet their local needs and preferences. Those attending will be given online access to the full ‘package’ of resources – the GLO Maker 2 authoring tool, the generative learning objects produced, and the location of specific resources in the special collection.

Keywords: The Women’s Library, GLO Maker, Business, Fashion, Special Collections, Learning Objects

References:
[1] http://www.glomaker.org/
[2] http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/thewomenslibrary/
[3] http://www.rlo-cetl.ac.uk
[4] JISC Special report on  Digitisation, curation & two-way engagement, 2009.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/digicurationfinalreport.aspx