When sharing resources with my colleagues there are 4 methods that I utilise beyond verbally discussing resources. The first is the staff portal where I can upload any resources that I don’t want students to see but still wish to share with colleagues. The second method is to upload all resources to the student portal; this is shared with both staff and students. Moodle provides similar functionality but is more challenging to upload large quantities of files and frequently receives negative comments from students that it is far too confusing. Another factor that can be seen as both a positive and a negative is staff can only see resources when they teach on the specific course. This limits the level of sharing amongst staff but manages control between departments. Each of these methods I utilise as a standard procedure so that anyone who wants the resources can take them without needing to ask. There have been occasions when colleagues have asked me directly to share a specific resource, this is normally specific code or database design that is too large to be uploaded to any of the methods above, in these instances I opt for a combination of email and memory stick to transfer the resource to my colleague.
Although I have not experienced it directly, many members of staff are very protective over the resources they create and do not wish to share. I have been asked if I would be willing to share my resources, I replied “of course”, this shows what a contentious subject this is. I have also made use of colleague resources in which they have protected the document from any changes and inserted their name at the bottom of each page. As I needed to make changes this significantly slowed the process of using this resource, as I had to recreate it.
