JISC CETIS Conference 2007 (1)

The 2007 JISC CETIS conference was held in Birmingham this week, spanning a two-day event comprising of three keynotes and ten workshop sessions.

I went to the Learning Resources in the Ecology of Repositories session on the first day.

Learning Resources in the Ecology of Repositories

The session was divided into two parts, with the first section consisting of two presentations, with the section after coffee involving a group exercise. Session organiser Phil Barker presented for an hour by introducing the concept, looking at areas such as diversity, species and locality, while explaining the ecology metaphor in detail. John Robertson followed up with further details about the ecology metaphor, showing examples of existing ecosystems and how these might be kept in mind when thinking of repository ecosystems.

After break, the session divided into groups. The task, entitled ‘The Ecology Mindset’ – thinking ecologically, involved thinking about the flow of resources through an ‘ecosystem’ that has a digital repository in it. With a topic decided, the groups then thought about the entities (e.g. individual learners), species (e.g. lecturers), interactions (e.g. emails) and environmental factors (e.g. existence of funding). Our group considered Curriculum Online, the online catalogue of digital learning resources available to buy using e-learning credits. As the service is due to end in August 2008, we had an obvious environmental factor of ceased funding to consider, and this was kept in mind as we considered the various entities and species, along with the corresponding interactions. View the finished diagram.

Overall, the session was productive, as it allowed us to visualise an existing system in the ‘ecosystem’ context.