BDRA’s Knowledge Store

I was pleased to find that the Writing Group liked and endorsed my proposal of a BDRA Bibliography, and that Ale will seek some advice on how best to set it up.

Let me go further, in the hope that the Bibliography might be the first step towards setting up BDRA’s Knowledge Store. ‘Store’ in both senses. First, the Store as a place to pile up the knowledge products that BDRA is constantly and rapidly generating, in a variety of electronic formats ranging from project reports to conference papers to workshop outlines to podcasts and so on. Second, the Store as a ‘one stop shop’ that UoL staff (maybe students too) and those beyond UoL could turn to when they want advice on teaching and learning. In the latter case, the products will need to be on ‘shelves’, catalogued in an accessible way, so that the Store will be more like a supermarket or iTunes than a village corner shop.

I gather that the London Knowledge Lab has something along these lines, and at the OU there’s the Knowledge Network. It would be worth BDRA’s while to study how these two are organised. I know that the Network has gone through several iterations but is used substantially now by staff via the OU Intranet, including me.

As I mentioned at the Writing Group, anything along the lines of an archive does need effort to set up and maintain, but the Store could pay handsomely in terms of value to staff and in further establishing BDRA’s reputation as an outward-facing group that is a real help to hard-pressed academics and others. It shouldn’t replicate what’s elsewhere (e.g., at HEA or JISC) but could have links to those ‘repositories’ (they sound like furniture warehouses).

I think the Store would build on BDRA successes, multiplying their effects.

What do you say? Worth thinking about and discussing soon?

David

Tags: BDRA, dissemination, knowledge products, Knowledge Store