Input Sought: Choosing/Using an Institutional OER Repository

[Enkerli]

Phew! What a thread! Good job, @BarbaraClass & @cogdog !
It hits so close to home, for me, that I had to take several steps back before responding.

One quick response: we’re currently exploring Omeka S, which I could describe as a user-friendly alternative to DSpace with strong support for Linked Open Data. While it’s mostly known/used for museum-type collections, we’re finding it eminently appropriate for OERs and other digital resources meant for learning, from videos and graphs to PDFs and Word documents.

As a type of extended disclaimer… Currently, my most direct involvement with a platform for OER is around Pavillon REN, a bilingual (mostly French, some in English) catalog/database for no-cost digital educational resources (REN) with an emphasis on OERs. Funded by Quebec’s HigherEd ministry, it’s linked to the province’s Digital Action Plan (“DAP” or «PAN»).
Digital Action Plan for Education and Higher Education | Ministère de l’Éducation et Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur (gouv.qc.ca)

For primary-secondary education (K-11, if you will), there’s another platform: Open School/École ouverte. While I’m not directly involved in this one, some of my colleagues are. This presentation, in French, gives a useful overview of that portal’s core features, including the upcoming authoring system which will allow learners and teachers to collaborate on resources and publish them for anyone to use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUJIORlFOX8

That platform is quite different from Pavillon. Pavillon isn’t a repository and it’d only be called a “portal” in a loose usage of that term. Quebec’s OER creators have been clamouring for a repository. We’ve been thinking about solutions for the medium term. And, yes, we’ve gone through all sorts of details, from metadata to interop and competency frameworks.

All this to say… This topic is very close to a significant part of my dayjob.

Again… Phew!

For context, our panel (in French) during OE Week 2022 set the stage for some related discussions.
Panel sur les plateformes REL canadiennes - YouTube

Now, answering multiple points in the same reply (so that Discourse doesn’t complain about me)…

@OEGconnect

If your organization has experience using a hosted OER repository, please let us know what you are using and how it is working for you.

We do. Including our IT team. (I’m on the Digital Pedagogy team.)

@cogdog

I would think many would suggest DSpace but if you are using or have experience here (I do not), please reply.

My DSpace experience is mostly indirect (though our IT team hosts at least one DSpace instance for an open archive focused on Open Access). What I hear about DSpace isn’t that immensely encouraging for people (like me) who care deeply about technological appropriation. I’m sure people at eCampus Ontario would have very positive things to say about DSpace, since that’s allegedly what they’re using as the backend for their Open Library. So far, I’m finding Omeka S to be more appropriate for the same usage pattern.

@Arwalz

I agree with the approach of “put your content in a lot of different places.”

Neat! Some people balk at the idea. It’s not always clear why they do. Sure, there are issues in versioning and interoperability. These aren’t intractable problems. Especially with proper indexing leveraging Linked Open Data.

@JudithSebesta

Microsites are best suited to organizations who seek their own branded library with its own domain that sits apart from OER Commons.

That might help some institutions which “do OER” as a branding exercise. (I’d call that OpenWashing or fauxpen.) It never ceases to amaze me that some people who advocate for the production of new OERs would refrain from using others’ OERs. Yet that’s part of our open landscape and we might as well get them involved in a broad community instead of fighting that urge.

@cogdog

But how to we avoid the loss of things such as the OER World Map?

Probably by building a self-sustaining structure… and/or one which can adapt/morph with changing needs. It’s a tough problem. Probably not intractable. Easier once we correctly identify its root causes.

Relatedly:

@cogdog

The alarm of UKOER should be heard also also a shout out to the Internet Archive as many projects/resources i have been part of at least have traces or more there.

and:

@JoshHalpern

The Orange Grove is another repository that disappeared.

This part is about designing something sustainable from the start, including principles of archiving (info pros are good at this). Open formats help, of course. As does interoperability through compatible approaches to metadata. There’s also the notion that archives grow organically among peers, though curation might suffer from biases.

@Mackiwg

the ‘internet as repository’ helps us to think about a shift in emphasis from tools (technology) to educating educators (pedagogy) about what is important when deciding where to store and share OER.

We’re on the same page! The key, here, is probably to collaborate with librarians.

@Mackiwg

Perhaps its useful to think about the criteria educators should consider when deciding on spaces to put stuff

I’ll try to bring your list to other people who’ve made their own. I think there are similarities and differences.

@danmcguire

I’m a proponent of using OER in an LMS, preferably an open source one, which leads me to promoting both Moodle and MoodleNet.

Fair. We advocate for some of that (our org hosts 120 Moodle instances). For Moodle proper, an issue for us has been in access between institutions. Especially when it’s not clear whether or not people/orgs want accounts.
With H5P activities, it’s an easier story. Create them anywhere (WordPress, LMS, Lumi…), use them anywhere. I keep my hopes up for expanded use of Moodle’s Content Hub.

@danmcguire

I think we need to expand our thinking as to what a ‘book’ is.

Agreed!

@LornaMCampbell

At the University of Edinburgh we’ve also gone down the “web as repository” route. Rather than having a single centralised OER repository, we encourage colleagues to share resources wherever they can be most usefully managed and found.

Similar to the point @Mackiwg about pedagogues’ needs, librarians are primary “partners in crime”. In our observations and experiences, search engines do a poor job at surfacing relevant OERs. And a major advantage with properly-indexed OERs is that we gain insight on how to adopt, adapt, use, leverage, contextualize them.

@Arwalz

There are a lot of library initiatives to link networked data. Much of this conversation has moved into the Metadata realm under the name “Linked Open Data.” I think that conceptually aligned with the direction this thread is going. This is not my area of expertise but I have colleagues that specialize in this area. For a tutorial on linked open data, see here or see a second example on linked open data from europeana .

YES!
Been singing the LOD song for a while, including the #LODLAM chorus.
Yet people turn a deaf ear. Maybe because it relies on a shared understanding of some principles from indexing and data management.
The easiest entry point to gain this insight is this simple categorization:

5-star Open Data

@clintlalonde

Many years ago we went with a centralized OER repository (openEquella. This is an open source product stewarded by the Apereo Foundation of which - full disclosure - I am a Director on)

Before GCshare, there was a project at CSPS to leverage openEquella for multi-tenancy, in the NextGen LMS. (It got me to discuss some issues with Ian Dolphin.) At the time, there was a possible connection with Moodle. In the end, the School went with D2L’s Brightspace and the Moodle instance for Open Learning has had an uncertain future.
Hope some people there have been talking with you or with others at Apereo.