SWAPBox web project a success
A collaborative project involving external partners as well as ECS and the Library here at Southampton, SWAPBox has brought together existing high quality digital materials that can be used for technology enhanced learning in social work and social policy.
SWAPBox is a way of storing, managing and publishing social policy and social work teaching resources on the web. This year-long JISC-funded project has been managed by the Social Policy and Social Work Subject Centre here in Social Sciences.
It ensures that these resources are freely available for higher education and the workplace in the UK and internationally. In addition it has evaluated the use and reuse of open educational resources by the social work and social policy community and successfully encouraged the further sharing of learning resources through the various functions available on SWAPBox (e.g. groups). SWAPBox is unique in its vision of a repository that gives equal weight to collecting resources and developing community building functions.
In the five months between its launch in March 2011 and the end of the project in August 2011, over 180 individual users had signed up and 758 resources added. With the ongoing commitment of current and potential partners, SWAPBox will continue to be maintained and developed beyond the funding period.