..an inspiring collection of free Humanities teaching resources Introducing.... Sarah Hayes

HumBox was one of the 14 OER projects in the ‘Subject’ Strand of the current JISC Open Educational Resources (OER) Programme It was developed collaboratively by the four Higher Education Academy Subject Centres below:

lead the way in depositing resources.… HumBox has been successful so far because, a community of Humanities lecturers have been actively involved in depositing and re-using these learning resources.....at Aston in LSS, the English tutors have participated, and others too now….but why are people doing this?.. And a dozen project partners who...

Previous learning materials repositories largely ignored by academics - took too long to upload to and add details… - not linked to the VLE Humbox has aimed to facilitate:- ----a new community approach where academic practitioners collaborate to make a wide range of learning resources-----freely available-----easily discoverable----- and as routinely re-used by teachers and learners as YouTube, Facebook, etc

- regular meetings to kick start and build the community - sense of ownership/identity via Humbox profile - active communication via a blog and basecamp - people have enjoyed presenting about Humbox - promotional leaflets, postcards, mugs - people had some payment for their time - people have been paid a modest sum for each item - having a repository from the start to develop – discussing subject specific issues within their broad subject community Factors that seem to have encouraged academic partners to participate in this OER Project

Why use HumBox? You don’t need to reinvent the wheel – if someone else has already developed a learning resource similar to what you need, then download and adapt it.

Why use HumBox? Showcase your learning resources and your research to the wider world in general and to colleagues and potential students in particular. People can put a face to the learning resource

Why use HumBox? Diversify your teaching repertoire – use approaches from your own and other subject areas to add variety to what you do Receive feedback from others on how they use your resources – a peer review and comments facility enables this

Why use HumBox? Enhance the reputation of your institution and UK higher education generally by showing what we have to offer Copyright issues addressed through creative commons licenses

Why use HumBox? Benefit from allowing others to extend and enhance the resources you develop Also share your research and projects with people within the community Broaden your contacts in your field Hummingbird Divebomber courtesy of peasap (flickr.com)

Sue GartonFiona CoplandNur Hooton School of Languages and Social Sciences The English materials contributed to Humbox are from the MSc in TESOL by Distance Learning “I think Humbox brings together students, practitioners, researchers, all together in the way of sharing ideas and learning from each other’s experiences” Nur Hooton, Aston

School of Languages and Social Sciences Quotes from Aston English Tutors:- “One of the reasons I am excited about Humbox is because of the potential I see for the distance learning programmes that we run here” “We would be very interested to get some feedback one day on how people have enjoyed our resources” Dr Fiona Copland “a shared resource such as the Humbox e-repository offers great potential for sharing experiences in a variety of different contexts” “I find this a very interesting, exciting initiative and I’m looking forward to it moving forward in the future” Dr Sue Garton

An abstract for a joint paper on C-SAP and Humbox was submitted to EUNIS2010 Hayes, S, Lowe, P, Marsh, D & Gruszczynska, A (2010) “Motivations to deposit: Two approaches to Open Educational Resources (OER) within Languages and Social Sciences (LSS) at Aston University School of Languages and Social Sciences The School of Languages and Social Sciences at Aston has participated in 2 Open Educational Resources (OER) Projects run by our 2 HEA Subject Centres :- C-SAP Evaluating the Practice of Opening up Resources for Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences Co-ordinated by Pam Lowe, at Aston LLAS Humbox ( Languages ) Co-ordinated by Sarah Hayes, at Aston

Visit HumBox and set up your own account – since the official launch in Sheffield in February it is now completely open to allHumBox Create your own profile Find a useful resource and help yourself – there are a lot there Give some feedback to the creator on how you use it, if you wish Have a look here at partner videos discussing Humboxpartner videos discussing Humbox Tell your colleagues about HumBox! How do I get involved?