Electronic Resources

These pages have been developed as a guide to the range of resources available to the FE sector. The pages link to some JISC services & collections, plus many other online educational materials that are available for use in teaching & learning. For further information about resources call the RSC's Information Helpdesk on 0141 585 0022 or email the RSC.

The e-Books for FE project is making almost 3000 e-books available to the FE sector for the next five years. The project is being managed by JISC Collections and further information about the project can be found on the project website. Contact your library to find out how to access the collection.

Intute provides access to high quality Internet based resources, chosen by subject specialists in FE & HE, according to their quality, accuracy and usefulness for supporting teaching and learning. Case studies and lesson plans to help get ideas are also available on the site and the Intute: Virtual Training Suite provides free Internet tutorials to help you learn how to get the best from the Web for your education and research. If your working in the further education sector the FE pages are a good place to start.

JISC Collections is a service funded by the UK funding councils to manage licenses for online resources on behalf of further and higher education and the research councils. The mission of JISC Collections is to negotiate with owners of digital content and publishers of online information to provide the UK further and higher education community with a range of resources to support education and research. Some collections require a college subscription - check with your learning resources staff on what's available to your institution and how to access them.

Our Bank on Success project involved working with curriculum practitioners in colleges and our training sessions generating a collection of e-Assessments that can be downloaded from here and uploaded into your institutions learning platform.

Our Curriculum Mapping project involved working with curriculum practitioners in colleges and our training sessions generating a collection of SQA Unit Descriptors with useful websites mapped to each learning outcome. Although completed some time ago there are many useful sites for many subject areas.

eMerge legacy resources - As part of eMerge: a programme of eLearning staff development for Scotland's colleges, funded by the SFEFC, the RSC worked with staff in colleges in the South & West of Scotland on a range of projects. The RSC also ran a special project for Learning Resources staff during October 2005. The aim of this project-based approach was skills development and consolidation. However, an outcome of these projects was the creation of resources which can be shared with the sector. All the resources are freely available to download and adapt.

Subject directory - This section of our website contains links to a wide variety of subject related sites. Although the directory includes links to useful websites and resources in the main free to use, permissions may be needed before inclusion in teaching & learning. Please be sure to check the terms of use.

Scotland's Colleges provides access to a range of electronic learning resources from searching their online repository. The learning materials are only available by login to the staff of their member colleges in Scotland.

Funding from the Scottish Government provides the opportunity for all of Scotland's Colleges to access the entire range of the SCHOLAR materials free of charge for the next 2 years. Currently there are materials to support Maths, Science, Business and Modern Languages with plans to develop more areas of the curriculum in the future. You should contact the SCHOLAR contact in your own institution to arange access to the materials.

Funded by the LSC & the SFC, these materials are available free to the Further Education Sector in Scotland. The NLN Materials represent one of the most substantial and wide-ranging collections of eLearning materials in the UK. The learning objects are small, flexible 'bite-sized' chunks of learning and are designed to support a whole host of subject and topic areas. You can register to view the materials and create collections that your learners can use online or from within college learning platforms. Materials can also be downloaded and used from Cds or DVDs when internet access is limited.

Access to Ferl has recently moved to the QIA (Quality Improvement Agency) Excellence Gateway – where you can register and personalise the site by bookmarking useful resources and benefiting from a peer review system. Browsing the resources will take you to the familiar subject categories giving you access to the excellent resource bank.

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. Don't be put off by the registration process, your learning resources staff should be able to give you help and advice about accessing the materials.

The Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services, IRISS, provide a number of resources which can be used by educators and students. Most of the resources are relevant to those in the social services sector but there are many generic resources which have wider applicability. Resources include podcasts and videos, image banks, multi-media learning objects, toolkits and links to repositories of materials for teaching and learning.