Nottingham Trent U Works with Desire2Learn To Promote LRO among Faculty

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 12/16/09

Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, UK said it plans to develop and extend its standards-based repository infrastructure to include new services. This two-year project will work on enhancing processes and technology for better integrating learning object repository in the university's virtual learning environment.

The institution, which has 24,000 students, will work with Desire2Learn on the technical development aspects. This partnership draws on the work of the university's learning object repository working group, which has done a number of tasks focused on preparing the learning object tool for release in the virtual learning environment during the next academic year.

The latest repository project will tackle the following:

• To enhance the institutional repository and encourage its use among faculty;
• To collaborate with Desire2Learn in integrating the learning object repository with the institution repository as well as external repositories, such as Jorum, a free U.K.-based online service that provides access to teaching and learning resources;
• To define metadata mapping and metadata application profiles for the description of different types of content; and
• To develop policies for the sharing and licensing of content.

"By building a sharing community mindset, easy access and discovery of learning resources and related work will be facilitated. We will be demonstrating what can be done but, importantly, part of the...project is focusing on cultural change, the contribution to the sector should be in identifying barriers and ways of addressing these to facilitate sharing or reuse of learning objects," said Sue McKnight, director of Libraries and Knowledge Resources at the university. "We are working together with the academics to assist with their successes; to create really inspiring learning environments. If there is a lot of really good content in the learning object repository, or indeed if our search through the learning object repository leads them to other repositories that have really good content, we'll be making it easier for them to achieve what they want as teachers--to enhance the experience of students."

"Nottingham Trent University is setting the framework for the U.K. market. They are leading the way--laying the groundwork that will leverage technology to develop more accessible scholarly and related work," said Desire2Learn President and CEO, John Baker. "Through this partnership, there will be a wealth of information that can be drawn upon, just in time as people want it."

Nottingham Trent is one of Desire2Learn's largest clients in the United Kingdom, according to the company.