The HumBox Project
What is the Humbox Project?
The HumBox Project is part of a wider Open Educational Resources initiative funded by the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and the Higher Education Academy. Its principal aim is as follows:
- To showcase UK Higher Education by encouraging teachers within HE institutions to publish excellent teaching and learning resources openly on the web.
The HumBox Project focuses on the Humanities and is a collaboration between four Humanities Subject Centres (LLAS, English, History and Philosophical and Religious Studies), and the following HEIs: Aberystwyth, Aston, Coventry Business School, Glasgow, Leeds, Portsmouth, Royal Holloway, Sheffield, Southampton, Wolverhampton, Winchester and Warwick.
The philosophy of HumBox is that there should be a single, trusted repository for the Humanities in which high quality teaching and learning resources are published for open use by other teachers, subject to restrictions which include retaining the rights of the original individuals and institutions to be identified as the authors. "Open" means "without cost" but it does not mean "without conditions".
Further information about the aims and objectives
You can see the HumBox test site by following this link. (Please note that this is a test site)
What will be the benefits to Arts & Humanities at Sheffield?
- Participation in a pilot which will be setting the agenda for open educational resources, thereby enabling Sheffield to contribute to the debate about how educational resources should be shared, peer-reviewed and the rights of their authors protected.
- An opportunity for both established and early-career academics to publish teaching resources which will be used by their peers within other HEIs.
- Institutional branding will provide high visibility to the University and its academics, bearing in mind that prospective students both within the UK and internationally use OER repositories to assess teaching content and quality.
- First in. HumBox will go live as a UK HEI resource endorsed by the JISC at the end of the project in April 2010. At this point, only resources contributed by individuals from the partner institutions will be available for use by others.
How is Sheffield involved?
The pilot project will involve partner institutions contributing resources to HumBox as a 'foundation collection'. These resources will be used to test the repository technology and, critically, explore issues of licensing, accreditation, institutional branding and use.
The Humanities Research Institute and the Department of Biblical Studies are serving as the first points of contact for Arts and Humanities at Sheffield. Any person wishing to obtain further information or discuss the possibility of contributing materials to the project should contact the following person:
Michael Pidd (m.pidd@sheffield.ac.uk), Humanities Research Institute.
What types of resources can I contribute?
- Texts, such as worksheets, transcripts, bibliographies, articles. These can be in any file format, such as .txt, .doc, .pdf, .html and .xls
- Presentations, such as Powerpoint presentations. These can be in any file format, such as .ppt, .swf (Flash), .sti (Impress) and .knt (Apple Keynote)
- Images, such as photographs, cartoons and movie stills. These can be in any file format, such as .jpg and .gif
- Audio/Video, such as podcasts, discussion videos and video tutorials. These can be in any file format, such as .mp3, .wav, .mpg, .asf, .wmv
- Multiple-choice questions, such as assessments and questionnaires. A variety of tools for generating such questions may be used, eg. Question Mark and Perception.
- Interactive Learning Activities, such as learning exercises and online tutorials. These can be in any file format, such as .html and .swf (Flash).