Sharing is Caring – The Many Advantages of Using iShare

What is iShare?

iShare is Macquarie University’s digital content management repository for learning and teaching. It was built to facilitate sharing digital resources across the university and systems such as iLearn. Once added in iShare a resource can be used in multiple places in iLearn by simply using the generated URL for the resource.

Benefits of using iShare:

• Upload and store a resource once and yet be able to link this resource in multiple locations
• If a resource is updated in iShare, all instances of the resource are updated and the URL remains unchanged
• Easily share files with colleagues or a department
• Copyright compliance
• Version control

Key Features

One source of truth

Say you have a teaching resource that you use frequently, but you have to keep re-uploading it in different places. With iShare, simply upload it once and that one source becomes a generated link that can be placed in multiple locations. So if that resource needs editing, you can make instant changes across all versions.

Share with others

iShare resources can be shared with and re-used by your MQ colleagues, or can be shared with an audience outside MQ (if you choose this option). This comes in handy when you are co-convening a unit, or collaborating on a project. Share resources you think would be useful to others, or if there’s a great resource someone else has created, why not use theirs! Sharing, openness and connectedness are major aims of the Learning for the Future framework, and iShare certainly helps to facilitate this.

Collections

• Learning and Teaching Resources – Discover resources created or shared by your MQ colleagues, and reuse them in your own unit
• Copyright Collection Unit Readings – The Library’s Copyright Collection contains links to subscribed electronic resources and scanned PDFs for use in unit readings. This collection is managed by Library staff and resources are activated for relevant dates for relevant sessions.
• iLearn Video Collection – Reuse hundreds of videos created and shared by colleagues in your own unit
• Learning and Teaching Image Library – Reuse images created and shared by colleagues in your own unit

How it works

Please visit the more detailed guidance notes on the staff portal, below is a brief summary.

Sharing/Uploading

Go to ishare.mq.edu.au and sign in with your OneID

Click on Contribute from the left-hand menu.

You can currently contribute to the following collections:

Learning and Teaching Resources
Learning and Teaching Image Library

There are three other collections, which have slightly different permissions. They are:

1. CREAM Database (Chiropractic Research) – resources for teaching research methods to chiropractic students and researchers and is available for staff in Department of Chiropractic to contribute.
2. iLearn Video Collection – All MQ staff can search this library, to link or embed videos in an iLearn unit, but it is currently only available for Learning Designers to contribute. If you would like to upload a video in iShare (to either Youtube or Kaltura directly from iShare), please speak to your Faculty Learning Designers.
3. Copyrght Collection, Unit readings – Library staff contribute to and manage this collection. MQ staff can search this library and link readings to iLearn units only when the resources are activated for relevant sessions.

When uploading a resource, you will need to provide information like the title, description, your department, the unit it’ll be used in, if it’s copyright/licensed material and if you want the resource to be viewable within MQ only or to be public.

Search and view resources

Click on “Search” in the left-hand menu

Enter your search Keyword

Select the collection you wish to search in

Click the title or image to view resource description

To view the resource, click the links under ‘Links to Resources’.

Link a resource in iLearn

You can add the resource directly into your iLearn unit using the “add an activity or resource” feature or you can add the resource’s URL as a hyperlink.

When adding a resource directly to your iLearn unit, you will already be authenticated so you won’t need to leave iLearn.

Add an iShare link to other sites

You can add the iShare link as a URL to a website or external source.

Update a file

Rather than having to update resources in multiple locations, in iShare you can click “edit this version” and replace the resource. Any replacements will retain the same item descriptions and the same link. So once a resource is updated in iShare, it will automatically update in any location it’s been placed in.

Upcoming Features

An upcoming change with the Learning and Teaching Image Library will mean you can embed images directly in iLearn (rather than just a link).

We’ll soon adjust permissions so the wider user community can upload videos into Kaltura via iShare.

In the next 6 months we’ll add a feature to add captions to videos stored in Kaltura and we are currently building and testing a Kaltura plugin in iLearn.

Connecting Literacies and Learning Commons

The Library, the Learning Innovation Hub, Learning Skills and a number of units across the community have collaborated over the last year on a project called Connecting Literacies. The project’s aim was to gather resources across various literacy areas, such as Career Literacies, Academic Literacies and Research Literacies, in one place. User testing told us that users didn’t want to have to go to another system to discover and access these resources, so we’ve collated a range of fundamental resources in an iLearn community unit, with all stored for reuse in iShare.

Look out in the next few weeks for the launch of Connecting Literacies!

A key goal of the Learning for the Future Strategic Framework is building a Learning Commons. Many pathways feed into a Learning Commons, and many projects that have already come to fruition. These include the Open iLearn initiative, the Connecting Literacies project, making iShare more user friendly and creating better video storage and sharing opportunities, allowing the Big History MOOC videos to be available for reuse in iShare, community sharing spaces in iLearn and more.

If you’d like to share other Learning Commons ideas or projects, please leave a comment below or contact geraldine.timmins@mq.edu.au.