Formal/informal sharing

Some interesting discussions took place at the recent joint meeting of the JISC CETIS Metadata and Digital Repositories/Educational Content SIGs which was investigating new ways of sharing content. Technologies seem to fall into 2 categories - conventional or disruptive.

Conventional types are managed and controlled by institutions, such as VLEs, and its interesting that Learning Object Repositories are classed as conventional when there's still very little activity embedded in institutions. Disruptive technologies would be things like RSS, perhaps with the addition of Yahoo Pipes to filter and combine feeds from various sources. This is seen as empowering for individuals, handing control over to their workspace.

Several speakers highlighted the need for both approaches, with institutions providing authorotative sources and quality metadata while allowing users the freedom to use content where they feel comfortable. However there are still issues about the need to monitor, assess or archive students' work, which can't be done through flickr!! Also, institutions may need to track use of technology simply to be able to decide whether to keep on providing resources to support it. If a repository merely provides the backend through which users find content but never really 'visit', the arguments to support it become more intangible. We need to find ways of ensuring the value of managed technology services is still recognised.