Could the international community collaborate to create a map of the OER world? The William and Flora Hewlett foundation selected three teams to develop a prototype in response to this challenge. These prototypes were shared at the Hewlett Foundation’s OER Grantees Meeting 2014.

1. OER World Map
Prototypes
• UNICAMP & Open Knowledge Foundation Brasil
• The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education
(ISKME)
• North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Center (hbz)
Panel Facilitator: Kathy Nicholson, Hewlett Foundation
April 24, 2014

2. Project Background
• Extensive online discussion re: OER mapping
• Need for seeing & connecting OER projects
• Experiment: Open RFP, 3 awards of $25k each
• Today: OER community comments and feedback
• To inform next open RFP, to be issued in Q3 2014

3. Please comment by April 30!
• #oermap
• hfknicholson@gmail.com

5. RATIONALE
Content
K-12
Latin America
Portuguese/
Spanish
Sources
OER experts
Literature
Sites
Analyses
OER maps
Mapping
systems
System
Open-source
Open-map
Open-content
Distributed

6. DATA SOURCES
70+ specialists, 30% return rate (so far) and growing
Latin America (especially) but also beyond
Publications and sites (Gov’t/Ministries)
Previous inventories (OER Brazil, EdAberta)
Well-known resources (TEMOA, RELPE, OEI, Dictalia)
Academic publications and reports (UNESCO, COL)

7. PLATFORM
OpenStreetMaps | tiles Leaflet | library
JEO | interface
CouchDB | federation
Wordpress | cms
User
Developer

8. TOP FEATURES
Facile open source throughout
Replicate content and system, decentralization
Complex searches
Among the whole scheme of metadata
Navigate through text searches or countries
Multilingual
Support for multiple languages in interface and content
User interaction
Complete user form for suggestions, easy comments and demonstration of user-
created collections
Novel content
LatAm, and especially K-12 were an area of limited exposure in OER

12. SCALABILITY
Steal this map!
All data is downloadable through a simple link in standard JSON format
Resource-based data
Interface already permits resource-metadata content
Extensible system
CMS-based system allows for multiple new apps and widgets
Data inclusion
Easily include new data through user recommendations and admin interface
Standards defined
Metadata standard shared among projects (eMundus/POERUP) and aligned with
Dublin Core

13. NEXT STEPS
Expand the scope of the initiatives
Expand on the decentralization scheme
Expand the application interface to incorporate
harvested resource-metadata
Make use of linked data/URIs
Disconnect the system from its Wordpress-
dependency
Dynamically organize and present content and allow
interaction with users

14. www.mira.org.br
Tel Amiel UNICAMP/Brasil
Everton Alvarenga Open Knowledge - Brasil
Priscila Gonsales IED/Brasil
Xavier Ochoa ESPOL/Ecuador
Tiago Soares
Carlos Villavicencio
Andre Deak
Felipe Lavignatti
Gabriel Fedel

15. OER World Map Project:
Approach, Design, and Next Steps
Kate Katz, Product Manager, ISKME
Hewlett OER Grantee Meeting 2014
April 24, 2014
ISKME 2014:

16. Rationale and Approach
• The OER landscape is comprised of a multiplicity of
stakeholders, with varied and overlapping needs
• There are limited spaces for these stakeholders to
come together, share, and gather information
about their activities
• Providing such a space for OER-related data, in
conjunction with key education indicators, can
support stakeholders in identifying opportunities
and developing partnerships toward improved
practice and strategic decision making
Develop an
interactive, dynamic
map that supports
knowledge sharing,
illustrates connections
between community
members, and
situates OER
initiatives within the
context of educational
opportunity more
broadly

17. User Groups
OER End Users
Teachers, Learners, Parents, School
Administrators
OER Providers
OER Aggregators, Institutions, Creators,
Service Providers
OER Advocates
Foundations, Government Offices,
Policy Advisory Committees
• What is their role in the OER
Community?
• What did they come to the
map to learn?
• What information do they
have to share?
• What language do they speak?
• What type of device(s) are
they using?
• What is their level of technical
proficiency?

18. Data Sources
Category Source Description
Resources OER Commons
Resource metadata (language, grade level,
etc.) and evaluations
Providers
OLnet Evidence Hub
OER Commons
Provider name, contact information, goals,
description, primary language, page views
by region
OER Policy TAACCCT
Information about institutions supported by
TAACCCT policy funding
Education Indicators
World Bank
UNESCO
Multiple education indicators by
country/year, including enrollment rates by
school level, by education program and
institution, literacy rates, expenditure per
student, etc.

19. Features
Multi-Dimensional View
Use multiple layers and distinct icons
to create a single view of data across
several parameters
Share My Map
Share a direct link to a version of
the map
Easy-to-Use Filters
Filter the map by resource
language, institution type,
educational indicator, etc.
Timeline Tool
View changes over time across
specific map parameters
Data Export Tool
Download education data,
resource data, and OER
policy data

20. Example Use Case
OER Advocate | Partnerships
User: Program officer
at a foundation
Goal: Identify new
geographic areas for K-
12 OER investment in
the MENA region

21. Example Use Case
Provider | Collaboration
User: OER Provider in
Brazil creating college-
level social science
resources in Portuguese
Goal: Expand its user
base to all of South
America by partnering
with organizations with
a significant number of
users in the region, and
who can help translate
its resources from
Portuguese to Spanish

22. Next Steps: Building Scale
Conduct outreach and build community
Expand API integrations Enable user-generated reports
Develop new input and output features
Develop mechanisms
to capture user input
Develop direct record creation
and editing interface
Iterate on and improve the interface
Gather user feedback Conduct user tests

23. kate@iskme.org
Institute for the Study of Knowledge
Management in Education

24. Developing an OER World
Map prototype
OER Grantees Meeting. Sausalito, 24.04.2014.
Felix Ostrowski & Adrian Pohl

25. Rationale
2
A map is only one of many possible expositions of
data
Possibly not even the best one in some cases
It’s all about the data!
That is why we built the OER Data Hub...
… and the OER World Map on top of it.
Ostrowski/Pohl: OER World Map Prototype

26. Data Sources
3
OCWC membership data
Global list of OER initiatives from UNESCO`s WSIS
Knowledge Communities
… and a handful of manual entries
Ostrowski/Pohl: OER World Map Prototype

27. Technology
4
Data Hub
Play: “The High Velocity Web Framework For Java
and Scala”
Elasticsearch: “a flexible and powerful open source,
distributed, real-time search and analytics engine”
World Map
Drupal: “an open source content management
platform”
Leaflet.js: “a modern open-source JavaScript library
for mobile-friendly interactive maps”
Ostrowski/Pohl: OER World Map Prototype

28. Features
5
Interactive map (filter by type & location)
Editing & linking environment
Data available via read/write API
Customizable data model
Integration of external (linked) data
Ostrowski/Pohl: OER World Map Prototype

29. Data Model

30. OER World Map

31. Creating a new entry

32. Entry web page

33. Entry details on World Map

34. Entry details in the Data Hub

35. Linking data internally...

36. ...and externally.

37. Links yield additional data

38. Scalability
15
The approach of a decoupled frontend
& backend scales well organisationally
(many stakeholders can use the Data
Hub) and technically (additional
hardware & software components can be
added as the dataset & its use grows).
Ostrowski/Pohl: OER World Map Prototype

39. Next Steps – Technical
16
Improve world map presentation & interaction
possibilities
Validate data based on application profile
Refine data model & application profile
Improve resource presentation & web form
Add provenance, administrative metadata and
versioning
Ostrowski/Pohl: OER World Map Prototype

40. Next Steps – Organisational
17
Motivate community to participate
Initiate cooperations with other data curators
Discuss and implement editorial process
Enrich data (add missing information, subject
classification etc.)
Ostrowski/Pohl: OER World Map Prototype

41. Take a look!
18
http://oerworldmap.org
http://api.lobid.org/oer
Ostrowski/Pohl: OER World Map Prototype

42. Thanks for your attention!
These slides are licensed under a CC-BY 4.0 license.