#327 Poster/Demo

Monday 16 April 15:45 - 16:00 Armitage Room

Expanding the Ecosystem for Remixable OER

Katherine Fletcher, Shuttleworth Foundation, US

Conference Theme: Innovation

Summary: An OER Roadmap for Remix. How some simple software pathways make remixable formats easier to create, adapt, and share.

Abstract: The keys to OER remixability are modularity, semantic format, and shareable licenses. Repositories that support modular content and semantic formats, however, are hard to grow and maintain, because they need specialized toolsets for creating and publishing content in those formats. When projects and repositories try to “go it alone” and build integrated all-in-one solutions, they inevitably struggle. We will show how a new approach, the OERPub API and OER Roadmap, is showing initial success in overcoming the barriers to supporting semantic formats.
The OERPub API provides a common way to publish OER to repositories and it is built on well-supported and mature technologies (SWORD and ATOMPub). This small step then makes it possible to build common tools that let authors create content using whatever familiar tools they have (Google Docs, Word, Open Office, LaTeX, etc), but still publish the OER in remixable formats (semantic XML formats like DocBook, CNMXL, and DITA). Repositories can then concentrate on being great places to find, combine, and adapt content, and other ecosystem players can deliver and improve the OER globally and ubiquitously in print, mobile, and online venues. We will discuss the approach and also highlight projects that are succeeding based on this approach.