Resource sharing

What is it?

Students gather, or create, learning resources, media or web links and use social software tools for sharing the resources among a group or wider community. Students can also access online networks for tapping into resource collections assembled by others outside the group. Additional tasks, such as rating, commenting on and reviewing resources can be a part of the process. Sharing resources can be a first step toward empowering learners to be more independent in their learning activities and allow them to experience the benefits of teamwork or collaboration. This approach can be used to supplement any collaborative tasks where students are responsible for constructing knowledge as distinct from being presented with ‘authoritative’ resources.

Wikis are a quick and easy way to start online-resource collections that can added to by the group and discussed or commented on. Podcasting is a way to distribute audio or video resources through a system designed for targeting information sources you want to keep up with. Social bookmarking sites are ideal for storing and sharing those online resources available to a wider community of users of the site.

Pros and cons

Students are given responsibility to identify, interpret and evaluate learning resources to suit a learning need or outcome. They develop skills in collecting resources and in the process have the chance to learn about quality information sources relevant to their industry or learning needs. These skills potentially benefit lifelong learning. By collectively assembling a range of resources, students focus on different aspects or areas of knowledge or skills and can appreciate the benefits of teamwork.

Students will need to be supported with starting points in order to search for quality resources including how to interpret and evaluate resources that are fit for purpose. Peer reviewing, rating or commenting are supports that can be built into activities to develop critical analysis skills for resource evaluation.

Some students may be reluctant to reveal information sources they have used for individual assignment work. When every student can benefit from pooling resources, such as through a group project or a peer review exercise, then this strategy will be deemed to have been successful.

Fit for purpose?

Students may need to be given guidance on, or starting points for, the identification of quality sources for information and industry networks.
Criteria for evaluating quality resources need to be provided or otherwise developed as part of the activity.
Resources need to be focused on tasks or directly relevant to learning outcomes and ideally useful for ongoing learning activities.
Adequate time needs to be given for students to carry out research or access information sources.
Web searching skills need to be adequate for, or else incorporated into the activity.

Find out more

For more ideas of how this strategy can work in practice, go to the following case studies:

Blogs – Collaborating with blogs and online documents, Colleen Hodgins
Podcasting – Sharing and creating with podcasts, Rosa Ochoa
Social bookmarking – Resource sharing with social bookmarking, Robin Petterd
Social bookmarking – Sharing and making resources with social bookmarking, Peter Shanks
Social bookmarking – Empowering learners with social bookmarking, Anne Bartlett-Bragg
Wikis – Sharing and making resources with wikis, Andrew Kidd.