Materials Creation Applications

Choosing which software to use to develop your ideas is an area where you can very quickly become overwhelmed. In fact it's almost impossible to find a tool that does it all so a range of tools is probably needed.

Within the first year that the RSC was established the pervasiveness of Microsoft applications became clear and at that time the Making the Most of Microsoft concept was born. Some our training continues to focus on the idea of using the common office applications and exploring how they could be used more creatively to develop interactive learning resources.
Take a look at the Making the Most of Microsoft section of the website for instructions on using Word, PowerPoint and Excel to create interactive resources. There are many other tools that you can use to create content depending on your own interest and skills levels.

It is critical to make learning materials as accessible as possible as you create them rather than when the need arises. JISC TechDis, the JISC service with responsibility for advising on access and inclusion, has a number of Accessibility Essentials that are focus on ways to make materials developed with a range of common applications more accessible - go to Accessibility Essentials guides. In addition, for learning technologists or indeed the more ambitious teaching practitoners, JISC TechDis have developed the Xerte Learning Object Development Tool which is an XML editor and run time engine that makes it easy to create and deploy interactive learning objects that are highly accessible and SCORM compliant.

To make interactive learning materials it is necessary to consider the role of formative assessment and in the the context of using ICT in learning & teaching that means e-Assessment. It could be argued that the skillset of the teaching practitioner today should include the design and construction of e-Assessments.

Watch a 30 minute recording of the RSCtv video presentation on Designing e-Assessments

Examples

Our EMERGE legacy pages will give you some creative ideas of how some of the applications can be used.

The QIA excellence gateway (formerly Ferl) contains some excellent resources created by teaching practitioners in FE and browsing the resources will take you to the familiar subject categories giving you access to the excellent resource bank. Resources can be downloaded, adapted and provide some great ideas that you can model your own resources on.

Jorum is a free online repository service for teaching and support staff in UK Further and Higher Education Institutions, helping to build a community for the sharing, reuse and repurposing of learning and teaching materials.

COLEG now has a Repository for Scotland's Colleges and all COLEG resources are available from it. As well as COLEG open learning packs, the repository holds material from a wide range of projects, including BlendEd and the COLEG instructional design project. Member colleges can also upload and share their materials within the repository. COLEG Repository find out more.....

Projects

A number of JISC projects have developed Content Management Systems e.g. RELOAD and LAMS and are worth considering if you are planning to exploit your institutions Virtual Learning Environment or repurpose existing materials.