For this spotlight moment, I – a member of the project twillo – want to share three lessons we learned on how to support OER wherever we can. Feel free to ask questions or comment on any of them.
First, twillo started out as an initiative building a space for educators in academia in the German state of Lower Saxony. But from the get-go the project wanted to embrace the openness fundamental to the ideas of open education and open educational resources. As an OER repository we have always been open to educators from other states and countries. We accept any teaching material that is published under an open license; be it under one of the Creative Commons licenses or open software licences like GNU, MIT, Apache. We have decided to also include materials under less open CC-licenses that, e.g., disallow derivate or commercial use. After all, one step towards openness is better than none.
Second, we strive to make the great potential of OER creation from educators all over the world visible. We therefore replaced the internal search engine within our repository, which originally was limited to materials hosted by us. Instead, we came up with an open source alternative: The OERSI. This search index specifically for OER materials used in higher education allows any visitor of our site to search through all the materials indexed by it. New sources can be added easily into the OERSI to be indexed on a regular basis, and the customizable search plug-in can be integrated in any webpage, free of charge.
Finally, with our 2025 relaunch we have added an English version of the twillo webpage. Wherever possible, we translated our FAQs, guides, templates, blog entries, and upcoming events. So, we can offer our support to persons beyond German-speaking countries.
However, there is still much to do! For example, while AI offers great opportunities for global interconnection (e.g., by easing translation), it also brings challenges (e.g., how can genAI be responsibly be used in the creation of open educational resources?). Let us discuss these opportunities and challenges together!
David@twillo
OEGlobal Tour 2025 Navigation
General Calendar plus links to daily events
Main Space virtual lobby for the Tour
Welcome Greeting and Meeting
Tour Information How to Participate, What to See and Do
Day 1 Middle East, Asia, & Oceania
Day 2 Africa and Europe
Day 3 Latin America and North America
OE Award Winners Ceremony