OERScout technology framework: A novel approach to open educational resources search

Abstract

The open educational resources (OER) movement has gained momentum in the past few years. With this new drive towards making knowledge open and accessible, a large number of OER repositories have been established and made available online throughout the world. However, the inability of existing search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing to effectively search for useful OER which are of acceptable academic standard for teaching purposes is a major factor contributing to the slow uptake of the entire movement. As a major step towards solving this issue, this paper proposes OERScout, a technology framework based on text mining solutions. The objectives of our work are to (i) develop a technology framework which will parametrically measure the usefulness of an OER for a particular academic purpose based on the openness, accessibility, and relevance attributes; and (ii) provide academics with a mechanism to locate OER which are of an acceptable academic standard. From our user tests, we have identified that OERScout is a sound solution for effectively zeroing in on OER which can be readily used for teaching and learning purposes.

The Infrastructure of Openness: Results from a Multi-Institutional Survey on OER Platforms

“…The authors emphasized the importance in defining an appropriate metadata scheme, so that the resources can be appropriately shared amongst the institutions. Abeywardena, Chan, and Tham (2013) describe their OERScout technology framework, which utilizes text-mining methodologies to make OER repositories more discoverable. Cohen, Omolla, and Malick (2014) While the aforementioned research looked at the architecture of OER platforms in individual contexts, only one study examined the use of OER platforms across multiple contexts.…”

Faculty Members’ Instructional Priorities for Adopting OER

“…In this study, four instructors out of ten indicated that they felt that OER did not save time or cost because finding reliable, high quality, and relevant OER was a very time-consuming process. Surveying 420 academics in public and private Asian universities, Abeywardena, Chan, and Tham (2013) established that over 57% of them tended to spend extensive amounts of time locating OER of an acceptable quality and often failed to find what they were looking for.…”

SeeOER: Uma Arquitetura para Mecanismo de Busca naWeb por Recursos Educacionais Abertos

“…A partir desta foi desenvolvido um protótipo. Sementes foram escolhidas para os testes realizados [Jorum 2014] do próprio mecanismo de busca, e do OERScout no artigo publicado [Abeywardena et al 2013]. Os outros mecanismos de busca correlatos não foram mencionados na comparação, pois estes não publicaram resultados sobre a quantidade de REAs indexados obtidos.…”

“…OERScouté uma proposta recente de mecanismo de busca por REAs na Web [Abeywardena et al 2013]. Ele recupera os REAs a partir de uma lista estática de repositórios.…”