On 28 Jan 2009, at 13:50, Phil Barker wrote:
> I think Scott was right about some of the differences between
> repositories for research papers and repositories for teaching and
> learning materials. I was involved in a discussion with some of the
> DRAW project about this last year. You can see their thoughts on the
> differences in section 3 of the paper at http://www.worc.ac.uk/drawproject/documents/eunis2008erepsfinal.pdf
Thanks for this Phil. I have read your comments, Scott's comments and
this document and I really (really) don't see there being a huge gulf
(an insurmountable gulf?) between the two applications of "repository"
or "information collection and management" or "academic knowledge
sharing".
I have added my own thoughts about this on a blog posting ( http://repositoryman.blogspot.com/2009/01/repositories-vs-learning-object.html
).
I think the underlying issue for those who create repositories for
research and those who create repositories for teaching is that their
end users are still coming to terms with the Web. They've got half the
story - how the Web lets them read and consume public information, but
we're all still coming to terms with the other half of the story - how
the Web lets us create knowledge and information in a space which is
no longer entirely private and isolated.
It's not just repositories which are tricky (terrible technology!
completely unusable! far too many forms to fill in! not user
friendly!) - most of us lecturers have still to come to terms with
writing our home pages, and our course pages and our biographical
details and our CV pages. Communicating on the Web is an unfinished
revolution.
So where the DRAW report comments "So yes, there is a role for
repositories in e-learning, but universities need to re-think their
design and how they are used." I would add "and lecturers need to
reflect and rethink their practice"!
This is a fascinating discussion, and I hope that JISC activities
allow more opportunities for us (the two communities surrounding
research repositories and e-learning) to butt heads, err, discuss the
issues.
--
Les
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