Site of the Month

March - Reuseable Learning Objects from the RLO CETL
Reuseable Learning Objects (RLOs) are high quality interactive multimedia resources, that is short online activities that integrate sound, animation and text with things to do. This site has a good selection of completed RLOs in areas including Study Skills, Business Studies, French, Maths, Sports Science and Health Sciences (lots - Clinical Skills, Ethics, Evidence-based Practice, Foundation Sciences, Genetics, Human Life Sciences, Pharmacology). You can freely link to these from Blackboard or send an email with the URL to students.

Examples

  • Study Skills: What is referencing?
    - This RLO outlines the importance of referencing and how to refer to the work of others appropriately. Interactive tasks illustrate the range of materials that can be referenced and examples of plagiarism.
  • Study Skills: How to conduct a literature search
    - This resource show you how to conduct a basic literature search including the use of boolean operators - and and or to refine searches.
  • Study Skills: Reflective writing
    - An interactive resource to help students with reflective writing. It includes theory on reflective writing and learning cycles, a quiz on learning styles, and has video clips of students talking about their experiences of completing reflective writing projects.
  • Business: Stakeholders
    - This resource is designed to take students through the process of applying a stakeholder analysis to a case study. It takes the coffee industry as an example. ...
  • Ethics: Should Sarah smack her child?
    - This RLO explores the ethical dimension and different views surrounding the use of mild smacking as a means of punishment. Should Sarah smack her child?
  • Evidence-based practice: Qualitative and quantitative research
    - Outlining the distinction between qualitative and quantitative methods of doing research
  • Foundation Sciences: Structure of the Atom
    - An introduction to basic atomic structure
  • Science/Mathematics: Writing in Scientific Notation
    - Multimedia RLO on writing in Scientific Notation
  • Mathematics: Introduction to Complex Numbers
    - This animation introduces imaginary numbers and complex numbers

    Another RLO site - Universities' Collaboration in eLearning
    This site, although focused on the medical area (Anatomy & Physiology, Genetics, Epidemiology etc.), has good RLOs in areas including Research Methods, Sociology and Maths & Statistics (there is overlap with the RLO CETL).

    Examples

  • Research Methods: Why a Questionnaire?
    - What questionnaires are good for; when alternative methods may be more suitable
  • Sociology: Social Class
    - Shows the persistence and complexity of the social class/health gradient
  • Maths & Statistics: Levels Of Measurement
    - An explanation of the four different levels of measurement
  • Science Basics: Pressure
    - Introducing basic concepts of physical pressure

    Previous Sites of the Month
    February - slideshare.net
    Slideshare is an online repository for presentations. "SlideShare is the best way to share and find presentations. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to make a webinar." Presentations can be embedded in websites, blogs and your Blackboard courses.
    February - LexisNexis News & Business Use to find full-text of newspaper and magazine articles (legal, news and business information service with 2 billion documents gathered from 28,000 sources)
    December - Flickr
    Add images to your presentations and handouts using Flickr, the online photo management and sharing application
    November - OpenLearn
    The OpenLearn website gives free access to course materials from The Open University. Areas include study skills, engineering, maths, science, IT, business, law, and languages. These can be hyperlinked to or downloaded, adapted and embedded in your Blackboard site.
    October - The Common Craft Show
    A good source of short videos, including topics such as wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, twitter, RSS and more.

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    If you have any suggestions or questions, please contact Damien Raftery, eLearning Development Officer