Towards Better Discoverability and Use of Open Content

Abstract

Availability and open access to resources is an important factor in educational development, but not a sufficient solution by itself. Open educational practices need to be fostered by an appropriate supportive environment including discoverable and shareable content, combined with tools for adaptation and re-distribution. Although a number of open content resources have been created, the accessibility for end users remains low because resources are spread across different OER repositories. This paper is an attempt to respond to OER challenges by proposing an innovative architecture extending the set of features typical for portal OER repositories with social networking features and (re)publishing functionality.