NDLR: Three Stage Evolutionary Pathway for Supporting NDLR Users

The NDLR (National Digital Learning Resources) mission is to promote and support Higher Education sector staff in the collaboration development and sharing of learning resources and associated teaching practices. A key impact of the service is to support greater collaboration for developing and sharing digital teaching resources and associated teaching experience across all subject disciplines and communities of academics and promote good practice use and re-use of existing resources. By being empowered by the support of communities of academics, staff from different disciplines can share effort and expertise as they raise the bar collectively for how they support their students learning, embed research in their teaching and potentially embracing partnerships with research and industry, both in Ireland and Internationally. The service has developed a Three Stage Evolutionary Pathway for Supporting NDLR Users. This presentation will describe the three levels of support available to Irish academics. Individual Academics - Level 1 Local Innovation Projects (LIPs) The NDLR, through the local Institutional representative, provides support and encourages the development and sharing of reusable teaching and learning resources to members of academia through the coordination of a number of local initiatives and local supports Groupings of Academics - Level 2 Learning Innovation Community Support Projects (LINCs) Learning Innovation Community Support Projects (LInCS) are activities (around the development and utilisation of learning resources) to encourage the emergence of academic groupings around particular subject disciplines (i.e. SMARTCoPs). SMART Communities of Practice - Level 3 Sustainable, Manageable, Active, Relevant and Reflective, Targeted (SMART CoPs) SMART CoPs are cross-institutional subject discipline related communities associated with locally funded institutional learning innovation projects (LIPS) and cross-institutional collaborative projects funded (LINCs). They are nurtured and sustained from support given to individual academics and groupings at both local and national levels. SMART CoPs are focused on targeted funded RLO development through projects, and evolve from successful collaborations through LINC projects.