Next Generation Repositories: Lessons from KRN

by Mr Matthew Riddle, Dr Lee Wilson, Dr Catherine Howell, Mr Steven Hurst

There has been a significant effort in the area of digital repositories over the past 5 years in UK Higher Education. Those involved in establishing repositories face many technical, administrative, legal, procedural, cultural and institutional barriers for re-use of learning resources. This symposium will focus on how the next generation of repositories should approach these problems, presenting one such major project and the lessons learnt from it.

The Knowledge Resource Network (KRN) is a Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) project being run at the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies (CARET) at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with the Open University. The aims of project are to foster the exchange of innovative learning materials and to support the growth of 'communities of practice' in higher education. While the KRN began life as a digital repository, it is now in the process of transformation into a project about users and supporting user communities.

Three perspectives on the KRN project are examined in detail. The first provides the thesis: the historical setting for the debate, including the reasons for such a project, the goals for repositories in assisting academics with teaching and learning, why re-use should be promoted, and the most serious problems it faces.

The second provides the antithesis: that a conception of knowledge as an object shared across boundaries neglects interpersonal relations and ties. The fostering of reuse and collaboration is described in terms of the dynamics of these relationships. KRN is practically located in these networks of social agents. Ironically, a technological focus in learning design fails to account for this, and becomes a barrier to the utilisation of the possibilities of technological innovation.

The third suggests a synthesis: that further development of the learning resources for re-use must be undertaken in collaboration with authors. A strategy is proposed that involves the identification of high quality resources; the pedagogical principles and educational objectives of these resources; a rich description of how the resources were used, including key elements that make them work and any necessary technology and a plan for re-use, including a guide for those who might use them.

Each of the three position papers aims to stimulate discussion and engagement among symposium participants. The symposium will also draw on group expertise in order to generate a list of functional requirements for "next generation repositories". Accordingly, there will be discussion time following each chaired presentation and the symposium will conclude with a facilitated interactive session in which participants will be invited to contribute use cases and scenarios.

ID Number: 983

Date: Tuesday, 5th September 2006

Time: 1130

Location: tbc

Theme: Next generation providers

Presentation: riddle_et_al_alt-c.ppt (The file which you can access from this link is the responsibility of the author of the Abstract to which the file relates, not ALT.