timeline
title Starting Open Prospectively
section Planning for Openness
Scoping : Setting clear goals
: Understanding your audience
: Stakeholder management
: Evaluation of success
Practicalities : Resources and time commitment
: Licensing
: Platform and content
section Content
Creating content: Open by Design
: Prepare for the Future
: Testing
section Launch and Implementation
Host your OER : Pick a Platform
section Leveraging Benefits
... : ...
6 Resources
This chapter on resources serves as a guide to the various tools and platforms that can be used to create, manage, and disseminate open educational resources (OER). The overview is not comprehensive but rather provides a starting point for educators and institutions looking to incorporate open education into their teaching and learning practices. The chapter will help you with the Launch and Implementation stage of creating your OER, see Chapter 4.
The initial authors have mostly made descriptions of tools they use themselves. We welcome anyone to contribute descriptions of additional resources so that we can become more complete. Just create a pull request to add content to the book. In the online version of the book there should be a Edit this page button beneath the Table of contents. You will be recognized as a contributor to the book in the contributors list.
6.1 Github
GitHub is a powerful and versatile platform, transcending its traditional role as a hub for software development. At its core, GitHub is a web-based interface that utilizes Git, a version control system allowing multiple people to work together on projects. This functionality of GitHub is not limited to code; it extends seamlessly into the development and management of open educational resources.
The true strength of GitHub lies in its collaborative nature. Developers, educators and students can jointly create, modify, and enhance software code, course materials, textbooks, and other educational and non-educational resources. This process is facilitated by GitHub’s intuitive features like ‘forking’, where users can make their own copy of a project to modify, and ‘pull requests’, which allow them to suggest changes to the original project. These features encourage a community-driven approach to development and education, where knowledge is not just consumed but actively constructed and refined by its users.
GitHub’s version control capabilities are equally useful in an educational context. Educators can track and manage changes to materials over time, ensuring that resources are continually updated and improved. This aspect fosters a dynamic educational environment where content evolves in response to new information, pedagogical strategies, and user feedback.
Moreover, GitHub hosts a plethora of diverse educational content, offering an expansive resource pool for educators and students. The platform’s open nature aligns perfectly with the ethos of open science and open education, providing unrestricted access to a wide array of learning materials. Whether it’s programming tutorials, scientific research, or entire course curricula, GitHub serves as a one-stop shop for educational resources.
A notable initiative by GitHub in the education sector is GitHub Education. This program provides students and educators with free access to the best developer tools in one place, along with opportunities to learn and collaborate. It’s a valuable resource for those looking to integrate technology and collaboration in their teaching and learning processes. GitHub Education offers various benefits like free access to GitHub Enterprise or Team plans, automation tools, continuous integration, cloud hosting services, and more, all of which are pivotal in creating an interactive and engaging learning environment.
By leveraging GitHub in the educational context, educators and institutions can break away from traditional, siloed approaches to teaching. The platform encourages an open, collaborative, and constantly evolving educational landscape, aligning with the modern pedagogical focus on accessibility, flexibility, and learner-centered approaches. In an era where digital literacy and collaborative skills are paramount, GitHub stands as an exemplary tool in the arsenal of open education.
GitHub Pages
This service allows users to create and host a website directly from their GitHub repository. It is an invaluable tool for educators and institutions aiming to disseminate their open educational resources (OER) to a wider audience in a more structured and accessible manner.
GitHub Pages operates by transforming plain text or markdown files in a GitHub repository into a fully-fledged website. This capability is especially beneficial for educators looking to share course materials, lecture notes, or even entire textbooks in an easily navigable format. The simplicity of setting up a GitHub Pages site means that educators, regardless of their technical expertise, can establish an online presence for their course materials without the need for complex web development skills.
One of the primary advantages of using GitHub Pages for hosting educational content is its seamless integration with the rest of the GitHub ecosystem. Updates to course materials in the GitHub repository are automatically reflected on the associated GitHub Pages site. This ensures that students always have access to the most current version of the resources, fostering a dynamic and up-to-date learning environment.
Moreover, GitHub Pages supports custom domain names and offers a range of themes and layouts, allowing educators to personalize their site to align with their course’s branding or their institution’s visual identity. This feature enhances the user experience for students and other stakeholders who visit these educational websites.
Examples of informative academic course pages hosted on GitHub include:
6.1.1 How to host your own website on GitHub Pages
Github has build a great website to get you started with hosting your own GitHub page. Many GitHub course repositories are templates and can be easily copied and modified to your liking. More information about template repositories can be found here
6.2 Open Science Framework
The Open Science Framework (OSF) stands as a stable ally in the quest for open science, extending beyond its original design as a tool for research project management. Its adaptability and comprehensive features make it an excellent choice for educators seeking to organize and disseminate course materials, assignments, and collaborative research projects. OSF’s flexibility and ease of use cater to a wide range of educational needs, making it a valuable asset in the open education landscape.
One of the most compelling aspects of OSF is its ability to integrate seamlessly with other platforms like GitHub, Google Drive, and Dropbox. This integration transforms OSF into a central hub for open educational projects, streamlining the management of diverse resources. Educators can leverage this integration to maintain a cohesive and organized repository of course materials, facilitating easy access and consistent updates. By connecting various tools under one roof, OSF ensures that the management of educational materials is both efficient and effective.
OSF’s commitment to open access is particularly noteworthy. By promoting the free availability of educational research, OSF becomes a treasure trove for educators aiming to infuse their teaching with cutting-edge knowledge and methodologies. This open access principle aligns perfectly with the ethos of open education, where barriers to knowledge are dismantled, and learning is made universally accessible. Educators and students alike can benefit from the wealth of research available on OSF, enriching their educational experience and fostering a culture of continuous learning.
Furthermore, OSF’s capacity to facilitate collaboration across institutions is a game-changer in the realm of open education. It enables educators and students from different institutions to engage in joint projects, share resources, and exchange ideas, thereby creating a vibrant, interconnected community of learners and teachers. This collaborative environment not only enhances the quality of educational materials but also fosters a sense of global citizenship and shared purpose among participants.
In essence, OSF embodies the spirit of open education. It provides a structured, integrated, and collaborative platform for educators and students to access, create, and share knowledge. By leveraging OSF’s capabilities, the open education movement can continue to grow and evolve, breaking down traditional barriers to education and paving the way for a more inclusive, dynamic, and interconnected learning experience. The use of OSF in open educational practices exemplifies the transformative power of technology in education, offering new pathways for teaching, learning, and research in the digital age.
6.4 Keeping Track
In this chapter on Launch and Implementation we have given examples of where you can host your OER. To help you keep track of all the steps we discussed, we update our mapping in Figure 6.1 and Figure 6.2 as we have done everytime before. Note that from here on out the two paths have merged together. You can see this in Figure 6.3.
timeline
title Opening Up Existing Educational Materials
section Planning for Openness
Evaluating Existing Resources : Licencing
: Stakeholder Management
section Content
Updating Content : Assessing and Prioritizing Updates
: Testing
section Launch and Implementation
Host your OER : Pick a Platform
section Leveraging Benefits
... : ...
graph TD
A[Starting Open Prospectively]
B[Opening Up Existing Educational Materials]
subgraph S1["Planning for Openness"]
A1a[Scoping]
A1b[Practicalities]
end
subgraph S2[New Content]
A2a[Creating content]
end
subgraph S3["Planning for Openness"]
B1a[Evaluating Existing Resources]
end
subgraph S4[Updating Content]
B2a[Assessing and Prioritizing Updates]
end
A --> S1 --> S2 --> S4
B --> S3 --> S4
subgraph S5["Launch and Implementation"]
C1a[Host your OER]
end
subgraph S6["Leveraging Benefits"]
D1a[...]
end
S4 --> S5
S5 --> S6
style S1 fill:#8686FF,color:#FFFFFF,stroke-width:2px
style S3 fill:#8686FF,color:#FFFFFF,stroke-width:2px
style A1a fill:#A1A1FF,color:#FFFFFF,stroke-width:2px
style A1b fill:#A1A1FF,color:#FFFFFF,stroke-width:2px
style B1a fill:#A1A1FF,color:#FFFFFF,stroke-width:2px
style S2 fill:#FFFF78,color:#000000,stroke-width:2px
style S4 fill:#FFFF78,color:#000000,stroke-width:2px
style A2a fill:#FFFF90,color:#000000,stroke-width:2px
style B2a fill:#FFFF90,color:#000000,stroke-width:2px
style S5 fill:#D7FF86,color:#000000,stroke-width:2px
style C1a fill:#FFFFA1,color:#000000,stroke-width:2px
style S6 fill:#C386FF,color:#FFFFFF,stroke-width:2px
style D1a fill:#EAA1FF,color:#FFFFFF,stroke-width:2px