RLOs on the web

As part of this BRUM (Birmingham Re-Usable Materials) project, we conducted a brief audit into materials already available.

A key player in this area is obviously the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in Re-Usable Learning Objects, led by London Metropolitan University, in partnership with the Universities of Nottingham and Cambridge. www.rlo-cetl.ac.uk Although still at an early stage in their development their site already contains some relevant information literacy materials such as an interactive referencing RLO and there are RLOs for reflective writing and qualitative and quantitative research etc.

JORUM www.jorum.ac.uk is also beginning to take off, as a national repository of academic-quality re-usable materials. There are a number of information-literacy type materials in JORUM and we be adding our own RLOs to this.

Personally, I also really like the idea of Cardiff’s Information Literacy Resource Bank https://ilrb.cf.ac.uk/ and the way they are encouraging academics to utilise their materials in their VLE.

Less-reusable (as they are institution-specific) but good examples of the use of technology for induction and information literacy, are the Sheffield ipod tour http://www.lbasg.group.shef.ac.uk/downloads/index.html and the Warwick Learning Grid recording http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/study/grid/users/firsttime/
We are particularly interested in their use of peer-to-peer support and learning and one of our own RLOs will include students’ own perspectives on what is important in the library.

There are certainly many more good examples. If you know of any useful information literacy Re-Usable Learning Objects or innovative use of technology in this area, please do post a comment / get in touch.