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What is a Repository?

A learning object repository (LOR) holds digital resources that can be used, reused and repurposed for educational purposes. It provides a storage environment for both learning objects and descriptions of the objects to help users find, identify, select, and obtain relevant and useful results.

About the Texas Course Redesign Repository

The Texas Course Redesign Repository (TCRR) is a LOR developed to leverage the course content developed through the Texas Course Redesign Project for reuse and repurposing. It provides access to course content at various levels, from the whole course to the smallest piece that comprise the course content such as a flash animation or a video clip. The learning objects the TCRR includes but not limited limited to: text, images, audio, video, flash animations, and multiple-choice quizzes. The content is available free of charge to all public institutions of higher education in Texas.

What Content is Currently Available?

The TCRR currently contains 2 disciplines (History and Language), 4 redesigned courses (U.S. History I & II, Developmental Writing, and Elementary Spanish Grammar), which comprise over 1,400 learning objects.

Benefits of Using the TCRR

Broaden or narrow your browsing by Discipline, Sub-discipline, Course, or specific sizes of learning objects in Collections.

Browse by Title, Subject, Author, Media Format, and Date Created.

Browse multiple media formats including animation, audio, image, text/html, and video.

Search with basic or advanced search, with the option to narrow your search to a Discipline, Sub-discipline, Course, or Collection.

Find the items you want, then view, add to your folder, and download all from the same page.

Compare full descriptions of a list of items without leaving the page you are on.

View entire items online before downloading.

Add your favorite items to My Folder (your personal online folder), to retrieve them at a later time.

Download items that contain more than a single file to your desktop and import them to a Learning Management System (LMS) such as Angel, Blackboard/WebCT, and Sakai

View the Getting Started tutorial for basic instructions on how to navigate the Repository.

The Help page contains more detailed information, including an FAQ and Glossary.

The History of the Repository

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's Texas Course Redesign Repository (TCRR) is a research and development project to demonstrate how a robust digital repository application can serve as a primary dissemination mechanism for the courses and course content being created as part of the Coordinating Board's Texas Course Redesign Project. The design and development of the TCRR was carried out by the Texas Center for Digital Knowledge (TxCDK) in the College of Information at the University of North Texas.

Funding

The Coordinating Board awarded two Texas Course Redesign Project grants to the TxCDK for the research and development that produced the TCRR.

Timeline

The TCRR Version 3, completed in August 2009, is the final deliverable to the Coordinating Board. Earlier versions of this application were referred to as the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Learning Object Repository (THECB LOR).

Phase I

TxCDK began development on a learning object repository for the Coordinating Board in Summer 2007. Phase I of the project focused on a proof-of-concept implementation to demonstrate: 1) how course content of redesigned courses can be decomposed into discrete learning objects, and 2) how those learning objects can be stored in a digital repository for users to search and retrieve relevant learning objects. The project team chose DSpace, an open source digital repository platform, for the proof-of-concept implementation. Version 1 of what has become the TCRR is the proof-of-concept implementation. It is still available at http://zed.lis.unt.edu:8083/dspace, but it is no longer being maintained.

Phase II

Phase II began in September 2007 and included the development of user requirements based on a series of focus groups and other input. The goal of Phase II was to produce a near-production ready system by August 2009. Phase II development has used the new releases of DSpace, including the new XML-based interface tool called Manakin (developed at Texas A&M University) that is now bundled with DSpace releases. The XML User Interface allowed more robust customization to better meet user requirements. The first implementation for Phase II is referred to as Version 2 and is still available at http://txcdk1.unt.edu/THECBLOR_v2. It is no longer being maintained.

Version 2 included content from 3 redesigned courses, and it served as the implementation for the first rounds of usability testing.

Phase III

Version 3, then, is the result of research, development, testing, and technology evolution over the two years of the project.

More information

Information about the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board THECB LOR Project at Texas Center for Digital Knowledge is available at: http://thecblor.unt.edu