Hi 
Just to say Jorum remains available for some time yet, probably until September 2016 and Jisc is still committed to supporting the open agenda. The intention is to rehome content from Jorum into a new platform that will feel more modern and have more usability/searchability. The initial announcement  of the decision to retire Jorum (which was agreed with stakeholders) is explained on the jisc website: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/jisc-to-retire-jorum-and-refresh-its-open-educational-resources-offer-24-jun-2015 and a post on Jorum itself gives more details. In particular note the following comments from Jisc in the Jorum post.

"We are developing a plan to ensure that good quality content is preserved and made available via other means. We are also working closely with Jorum window clients and CDN to ensure the needs of their institutions are met, and that they can collaborate with us in developing a potential new service" 
And
"Jisc needs to take a new innovative approach that is in line with new developments in technology and social media platforms. We need to explore how different teaching communities (and their usage activity data) can help us in the creation and vetting of excellent content to support learning in the FE, Skills and HE sectors.

To achieve this, we are currently undertaking two major R&D activities.
1. Jisc App and Content Store (working project title)
2. FE online academy

The first activity adopts an 'app store' model in line with those used by Amazon, Apple, and Google play. The store is envisioned as a place where our teaching practitioners can discover apps and resources in a way that's in line with the most current online trend - it will be a modern platform where you can find things simply and intuitively.

The FE online academy's primary purpose will be to support the CPD of FE teaching practitioners and enable the entire teaching workforce to become professional digital practitioners.

Both these R&D projects are in the alpha stage of development, with both moving into beta stage towards the end of this year, which will allow us to thoroughly carry out user testing."

The full post containing these quotes is here: http://www.jorum.ac.uk/retirement/  News of further developments should also appear in Jorum/the Jisc news pages as things progress. 

I think the idea of a modern app and content store for oer sounds exciting and could be a really innovative step forward.

Best wishes
Christa Appleton


-----Original Message-----
From: Open Education Special Interest Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Pat Lockley (Pgogy)
Sent: 24 September 2015 15:56
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Jorum to retire. Do we care?

On 2015-09-24 10:00, Thomson, Simon wrote:
> Thanks Pat for the detailed info. Yes, sorry about the Leeds Met 
> change (due to a university name change).
> I think you make a good point about permanency of the resource access.
> 
> At Leeds Beckett (Met as it was) we actually deposited the resource in 
> Jorum (not just a link to the resource in our repository) for that 
> very reason.
> I think that Jorum (or any other national open repository) is valuable 
> because it can hold a physical copy of that resource permanently (and 
> overcome issues where institutions change their name!??)

 From a vague recollection, the Leeds Beckett OAI feed had a weird characteristic and I had to code in a change so it could pick up your youtube videos. So perhaps some lived on youtube? Nick could confirm.

I think holding a physical copy of something is perhaps too content focused on what an OER is. I get a lot of WordPress blog posts as OER, and these do not tend to being a single physical copy, lest you PDF the page or some such on submission? Also, then, sooner or later what of revisions and so on - each change leads to a replacement, or a new deposition? Something akin to the Xpert / XOT relationship? Or possibly git.

This is perhaps a problem with repositories - they are perhaps more built for a static end product than a living evolving thing.

I suspect the space required to host all the content would be huge - not sure how much AWS would cost, or even if amazon would be something we'd wish to support in using their products.

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Jisc Services Limited is a wholly owned Jisc subsidiary and a company limited by guarantee which is registered in England under company number 2881024, VAT number GB 197 0632 86. The registered office is: One Castle Park, Tower Hill, Bristol BS2 0JA. T 0203 697 5800.