Reports by Linda Graves, Sue House and Louise Graham, University of Glamorgan
Defining a learning and teaching resource in the context of the FAILTE project.
Jenny Slater, Loughborough University
Jenny began by giving an overview of FAILTE – Facilitating Access to Information on Learning Technology for Engineers. FAILTE is Gaelic for "welcome" and is pronounced "fawl-sha"
The intended users of the project are engineering academic staff in Higher Education interested in using VLE’s. The aim of the project is to set up a database of learning and teaching resources and to make its contents more accessible by providing descriptive information, which will allow the academics to gauge the resource’s suitability to their needs.
Jenny outlined the criteria for including resources within the FAILTE project, the main one being that it should be a learning or teaching resource and not an information resource, as these are already covered by EEVL.
She differentiated between an information resource and a learning and teaching resource in her table entitled "Characteristics of a learning and teaching resource":
| Information resources | Learning & Teaching resources | |
| …are representations of data, knowledge,concepts and experience | YES | NO |
| …contain data which communicate inherent attributes | YES | NO |
| …communicate data, information and/or knowledge | YES | YES |
| …are expositive | YES | YES |
| …are interactive | NO | YES |
| …are designed to enhance the learning of a particular audience: often have learning objectives | NO | YES |
The completed database will eventually be available from the EEVL site and is nearing completion. When questioned on the future of the project Jenny stated that she considered that it will be important to build on the project to maintain it though this will be dependent on funding.
The FAILTE Homepage can be found at http://www.failte.ac.uk
The Powerpoint presentation and Web presentation are available.
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