About SWITCHcollection - The Community Learning Object Repository

SWITCHcollection is a national library of reusable learning objects like courses, modules, images, video clips and text documents contributed by swiss universities

Today's Situation with e-Learning Content

digital learning content production is increasing
content is distributed and stored in institutional, local or private LMS or CMS
re-using digital content for education can be tricky due to copyright issues

Problem: contents are generally not public, not retrievable, not persistent, not citable

Goals and Motivation of SWITCHcollection

Re-use e-learning content
Enhance intra- and inter-instituional collaboration
Make teaching activities visible to peers and to the public
Attract students
Long-term archiving and distribution of content with stable URL (content lifecyle)
Make teaching activities citable and referenceable
Single point of entry for all kinds of e-learning contents - independently from distribution platform or learning management system

Key Requirements

Very easy to use: easy to contribute and reuse contents
Metadata model: simple for common usage but extensible for special applications
Tight integration with existing learning management systems
Customizable user interfaces
Federation of national repositories with a single search service
Authors control access rights, content license and usage policies

Milestones of the SWITCHcollection Project

November 2009: SWITCHcollection service goes live.

Summer 2009: A new OAI-PMH harvester has been implemented to set up a more flexible harvesting infrastructure. The harvester software harrow is available at sourceforge with GPL license.

Summer 2009: The Export adapter for Claroline (LMS) has been implemented by HTW Chur.

March 2009: The project gets the service name SWITCHcollection.

August 2008: The LOR search interface goes live. It mainly contains video clips provided by the SWITCHcast lecture recording tool.

Summer 2008: The content export adapter for Ilias has been implemented by HSLU (Hochschule Luzern).

Spring 2008: Basic Metadata harvesting with the USI/SUPSI has been sucessfully implemented.

Winter 2008: Main parts of the specification of the content model and programing interfaces are finished.

Summer 2007: A LOR pilot project is started with 4 pilot partners (Université de Genève, Fachhochschule Zentralschweiz, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Zürcher Hochschule Winterthur). A system for the centralized part of the national LOR has been evaluated.

Spring 2007: SWITCH launches the e-learning services project. One of the main acitvities is to develop the LOR infrastructure as suggested by the working groups.

January 2007: The prototypes as well as a refined LOR project plan are presented to the working groups and swiss e-learning community. The final report can be found on the edutech website.

Autumn 2006: prototypes were developed to test and evaluate the LOR-LMS integration concept with mostly automatic transfer of LMS courses to a LOR.

October 2006: the rectors' conferences of the Swiss Universities (CRUS), Universities of Applied Sciences (KFH) and Universities of Teacher Education (SKPH/SCTE) decided to evaluate a national open source learning platform. They asked the Swiss Virtual Campus (SVC) and SWITCH to evaluate open source learning platforms and make a project proposal.

Spring 2006: the SWITCH/SVC project management asked four working groups with 32 e-learning experts of Swiss higher education institutions to define what services they expect on a national level and to define evaluation criteria. The working groups decided, that 1) there is little interest in having an additional Learning Management System, 2) there is a considerable interest in having a Learning Object Repository (LOR) at the national level, 3) there is an interest in having Integration and Development services, and 4) it is desired to have a team offering Community Building Services, thus fostering efficient information exchange.

Other Learning Object Repository Projects and Services

Academic Learning Object Repositories

EdShare - University of Southampton: A resource for collaboration and sharing of materials used in teaching and learning
http://www.edshare.soton.ac.uk
NDLR - National Digital Learning repository - Irland: The mission is to promote and support Higher Education sector staff in the collaboration, development and sharing of learning resources and associate teaching practices
http://www.ndlr.ie
edna - Austraila's free online network for educators: Access edna's extensive collection of quality, evaluated education and training online resources by searching or by browsing the edna categories, theme pages and hot topics
http://www.edna.edu.au
Ariadne Foundation: European Association open to the World, for Knowledge Sharing and Reuse. The core of the ARIADNE infrastructure is a distributed network of learning repositories.

General Learning Object Repositories

MERLOT: Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
http://www.merlot.org
OER Commons: Repository for K-12 and higher education learning and teaching resources
http://www.oercommons.org

Meta Search Engines for Educational Resources

GLOBE - Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange: The GLOBE member organizations have committed to work collaboratively on a shared vision of ubiquitous access to quality educational content.
http://www.globe-info.org
OpenCourseWare Finder: A service of COSL at Utah State University.
http://www.ocwfinder.org

Academic General Purpose Object Repositories that include Learning Material

Phaidra - Universität Wien: General purpose repository for long-term storage of administrative, research and educational assets.
https://phaidra.univie.ac.at