OER Humanities: The HumBox Project Alison Dickens (Project Director) Subject Centre LLAS

Background  3 strands:  Individual  Institutional  Subject  Rationale:  “to release existing learning resources under a suitable license for open use and repurposing.”

Programme aims and objectives  To encourage the sharing of learning resources between institutions, between academics and within communities of practice;  To enable learning materials and resources can be shared universally - locally, nationally and globally to support learning;  To encourage development and uptake of tools and processes supporting the release of open resources that will enhance both productivity and relevance by being customisable and adaptable by both academics and students;  To act as a marketing tool where students can view resources produced by an institution prior to applying to study there.

Anticipated outcomes (benefits)  An increase in student satisfaction concerning the quality of learning materials;  An enhancement of the global academic reputation of the UK HE system;  An increase in applications to UK HEI courses from international, and non- traditional, learners;  Improved value for money in resource creation for the UK HE sector;  UK higher education’s contribution to the public good and the developing world;  A significant increase in the open availability and use of free high quality online resources;  Advertising and marketing benefits to individual lecturers, HEIs and UK education, opening up universities to potential students (e.g. widen access; promote the uptake of science subjects),;  Making use of the significant investment that has already been made in digital content by providing ways to reuse and repurpose existing resources and to demonstrate how they can be used for teaching and learning;  Support for new modes of online learning, such as those that involve the use of web 2.0 tools.

HumBox Project  Consortium of 4 Subject Centres (LLAS, English, History, PRS)  12 School/departmental partners:  Aberystwyth (School of English and Creative Writing)  Aston (School of Languages and Social Sciences)  Coventry (Faculty of Business, Environment and Society)  Glasgow (Department of Central and East European Studies)  Leeds (School of Modern Languages and Cultures)  Portsmouth (School of Languages and Area Studies)  Sheffield (Humanities Institute, Dept of Biblical Studies)  Southampton (School of Humanities)  Warwick (Arts Faculty)  Winchester (Department of English, Creative Writing and American Studies)  Wolverhampton (School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences

Project Outline  Primary aim: to discover, review and revise (as appropriate) digital resources from a range of Humanities disciplines and to share them as open content.

Workpackage 1  Resource collection and upgrades to repository  Deliverable 1: Teaching resources to be made available for sharing  Deliverable 2: The repurposed HumBox repository.

Workpackage 2  Publicity and marketing  Deliverable 3: Project website and publicity materials.  Deliverable 4: A marketing/ dissemination strategy

Workpackage 3  Resource review and modification  Deliverable 5: Engagement of project partners with issues of sharing resources  Deliverable 6: Strategies to address concerns of quality, reusability and copyright/IPR.

Workpackage 4  Resources commented/modified and uploaded to repository  Deliverable 7: Resources uploaded to other repositories and user tested.  Deliverable 8: Finalised version of HumBox goes live

Workpackage 5  Dissemination and extension of HumBox community  Deliverable 9: Establishment of growing community of colleagues committed to sharing and reusing learning resources in and across Humanities disciplines.  Deliverable 10: Increased confidence among academics in the notion of sharing and appreciation of the benefits of, and barriers to, sharing teaching and learning resources.

Workplan AMJJASONDJFM wp 1 wp 2 wp 3 wp 4 wp 5

Partner roles  WP1: collect resources and upload to HumBox  WP2: disseminate project to and involve colleagues  WP3: peer review items in repository  WP4: add comments to items in repository, contribute to polishing/repurposing as appropriate  WP5: participate in dissemination activities

Introductions  Who are you?  Why have you joined the project?  What do you hope to get out of it?  What are your expectations of the project?  How will it impact on your department/school/insitution?

Key dates  May 19th 2009 Partner meeting 1  May-Sept 2009 Subject meeting 1  September 2009 Partner meeting 2 (two days)  Sept-Dec 2009 Subject meeting 2  October 2009 Interim reports  January-Feb 2010 Dissemination events  Feb 2010 Final reports

Budget  Contract with each partner  £5000 for staff time  £1000 travel and subsistence  Up to £3000 for resources (depending on number and type of resource)  Matched funding in staff time and resources

Resource types ItemTypeFormat 1 Texts (including worksheets, transcripts, articles).txt,.doc,.pdf,.html,.xls 2Presentations (including multimedia slideshows).ppt (Powerpoint),.swf (Flash),.sti (Impress),.knt (Apple Keynote) 3Images.jpg,.gif 4 Audio/Videomp3,.wav,.mpg,.asf,.wmv 5Multiple choice questionsVarious tools for generating these e.g. Question Mark Perception 6Interactive learning activities (including learning objects, exercises/quizzes) Likely to be in.html,.swf 7 Other

Funding model (draft) No of resource types 10 resources20 resources30 resources40 resources 1£150£300£700£1500 2£200£400£850£1800 3£250£500£1000£2100 4£300£600£1150£2400 5£350£700£1300£ £400£800£1450£3000

Communication  Link Subject Centre – , Skype   Sharepoint – web-based area for resource sharing and communication  Project Manager, Kate Borthwick  Project web page  Repository