1. Scotland’s Colleges Symposium 24 March 2010, Worcester Learning and teaching repositories: is this the last chance? Jackie Graham jackie.graham@scotlandscolleges.ac.uk

2. Scotland’s Colleges Scotland's Colleges is the key policy and development agency for the Scottish college sector. Formed in 2009 from the merger of four support agencies: SFEU, COLEG, ASC and SCI. We support Scotland's 43 colleges in the following areas: Staff development Development of resources Facilitating the sharing of resources and practices Policy development

3. Strategy Our strategy for learning resources has two main components: Developing resources in support of the college curriculum Supporting and facilitating the sharing of resources and practice The college curriculum is becoming more complex with new qualification, curricular and policy developments: HN and NQ modernisation, Curriculum for Excellence, More Choices, More Chances. Investment in resources needs to support and encourage practitioners to adopt the aims of these developments.

4. On-line services How can our on-line services be developed to better fulfil the needs of practitioners and support these developments? How can they be used to support and encourage greater sharing of resources? Scoping exercise to review: how well existing services meet our requirements. Identify which areas which can be improved on. Identify other services in use across the sector. Identify where services could be integrated to improve and simplify the user experience. Identify options in terms of software and hosting solutions.

5. Repository services In 2008 COLEG launched a learning object repository. Primarily to host its existing catalogue of resources, but also to offer colleges a means of sharing their own materials. Software: intraLibrary (100 contributor licence) Authentication: Open Athens (added March 2009), Shibboleth (added August 2009) VLE plug-ins made available for colleges: Moodle and Blackboard plug-ins (from Intrallect). MrCute plug-in for Moodle Public search also provided on Scotland’s Colleges website. Reporting: Intrallect reporting tool commissioned (March 2009).

6. Repository contains Around 2000 learning and teaching resources A wide range of resources, in a number of subject areas, developed specifically for colleges in Scotland: learning packs, tutor resource packs formative assessments assets (slides, images, video clips) From a variety of sources: COLEG, Scotland’s Colleges (quality assured) member colleges other partners For a variety of delivery methods: Open, blended, online, classroom

7. Repository usage Extent of college roll-out: (number of user accounts created) Monthly login activity from March 2009. Monthly downloads from March 2009.

8. Encouraging engagement What will encourage active engagement? Increasing the usability of repository and web services. Widening contributor access and simplifying the deposit procedure. Simplifying licensing. Encouraging the use of tools to search from within other web environments and college VLEs. Greater promotion of existing resources and how they have been or can be used. Encouraging the development and depositing of new resources. Encouraging communication and sharing of resources and practice through subject networks.