RepRODUCE Blog

Does content specially commissioned by the lead institution count as “external content”? No. We don’t need to fund projects to tell us that institutions can commission and use content designed for them. External content is content that has not been specifically designed for you to use.

Our institution or area doesn’t have “departments”, are we ineligible? No. As long as you can identify your module (or comparable “chunk” of learning) to a subject area that you teach, that is fine.

What kind of resources do you want to see projects using? Anything from single images right up to an entire activity. Be creative!

Our validation cycle is longer than you allow for - can we still bid? Yes… note in the circular that there is a substantial gap between when the funding ends and when the final report is due. We have done this precisely because we know that things take time. But bear in mind you would still be funded for the same time, and you should really consider telling us about this in your outline workplan in the bid document.

A few people have asked about the “percentages” of content from different sources that successful projects can use. For those who haven’t yet memorised the circular, this is paragraph 14, point 3.

“Use of identified materials. Projects must identify at least some of the materials they intend to use at the bidding stage. Materials should be sourced in roughly these proportions, however we hope to see higher percentages of external content used by successful projects:

• At least 50% external content These should be non-commercial materials produced externally to the institution and that do not have any connection with the institution leading the bid
• Up to 35% institutional content These should be materials sourced from other parts of the institution leading the bid and repurposed accordingly.
• Up to 15% new content These would be materials specifically generated for this course.”

Now, as I’m sure you will all have guessed, we have no way of accurately measuring the percentage proportion of content from each category. Rather, these figures are intended as a guideline to help you to see the kind of thing we are looking for. And in the assessment process, we will be using these figures as a guideline too, to remind us of the kind of thing we initially asked for.

But there will be no quantifiable metrics, not here.

Our first questions regarding this call all started with the fragment above. And ended there, as we had to stop and correct a major misconception.

This call is not about you repurposing your own content. This is about bringing content in from outside the institution, and using it to revamp one of your modules (and about documenting the process, of course).

Yes, we know that is difficult, and that many institutions may find major internal blocks on this kind of reuse. But a large part of government thinking about content has been based around the idea of it being created once and reused freely. We’d like to identify and remove barriers (all kinds of barriers) so this can happen.