Collaboration for OER Infrastructures – Overview

This page provides information about the existing OER infrastructure in Germany and links to reusable concepts and open-source software. We can connect you with active contributors via the OEDE-Slack.

German OER Statistics

In Germany, approximately 100,000 OER are discoverable and usable through various infrastructures (Source: OER-Statistics WirLernenOnline). Some educational domain-specific repositories provide their metadata to WirLernenOnline via exchange interfaces. Other OER sources are indexed using crawlers (in these cases, metadata is generated automatically). Repositories that do not support automated indexing or counting are included based on editorial estimates.

OER-Statistik

Networked OER Repositories

Education and IT communities collaborate to design interconnected OER-supportive IT infrastructures across federal states. In the school sector, state-specific media libraries have been exchanging educational content (not specifically OER) for over 20 years. In recent years, the higher education sector has established an OER exchange network. In the field of continuing education, a new, non-OER-specific portal has started utilizing school infrastructures.

Educational institutions and federal states operate central OER or general media library and editorial solutions, which are integrated with learning platforms and editors.

Open Source Solution with a Collaborative Innovation Process

In 10 German federal states and Switzerland, central media libraries and OER solutions are based on edu-sharing. This open-source software is being jointly developed further. New technologies are tested within the WirLernenOnline (WLO) community and then transferred to broader use. Users in the federal states provide feedback and contribute to the systematic innovation process.

Central Community-Based OER Discovery and Quality Assurance

With WirLernenOnline, the lab version of the edu-sharing software, the community centrally collects and curates open educational resources. The collection began in 2020 during the pandemic with the goal of providing at least five open learning resources per curriculum topic within an educational search tool in just four weeks. This initiative was planned by the Bündnis Freie Bildung (Alliance for Free Education), funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and implemented by many community members.

Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. and J&K (German OERcamps, OER Podcast) established community-based editorial teams. These teams reviewed approximately 30,000 resources and compiled them into about 3,500 curriculum collections. Around 30 subject-specific portals now offer curated materials, teaching concepts, and tips for modern, digital education. A quality framework was developed in collaboration with federal states. Today, this central Open Edu Hub manages over 200,000 resources and distributes them to connected learning platforms and other search engines.

edu-sharing.net/.com  developed the software in collaboration with the GWDG (a major German data center and AI host). Together, they automated the indexing of resources and integrated WirLernenOnline (WLO) into learning platforms and portals. Many of the community’s innovative concepts were implemented in the process, including modern metadata technologies, statistical features, and automatically generated topic pages (see below).

In 2021, OERsi (a search index for OER in higher education) went online. It was developed by two library organizations: HBZ and TIB. OERsi provides its data to WirLernenOnline.

Quelle: OER-Repo-AG

Concepts Developed in the First OER Funding Program 2016–2018

Innovative concepts originated, among other sources, from the first OER funding program “OERinfo” initiated by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (2016–2018). In this program, education and IT experts collaboratively planned German OER infrastructures. The outcomes included recommendations for action, metadata and networking concepts, prototypes, and the experimental environment OER-Contentbuffet (now WirLernenOnline). The OER-Contentbuffet also served as a collaboration platform for OER projects and an editorial environment for collecting and disseminating OER information and training materials. Additionally, the OERinfo platform was established as the central information portal for OER in Germany.

Even since the 1990s, the German Education Server and state education servers have been developing search engines and metadata exchange solutions for educational content in schools (e.g. the search engine of the German Education Server). Pioneers of more OER-specific infrastructures in Germany include the OER World Map (since 2012), the first state-level OER repositories ZOERR (Baden-Württemberg) and OER-Berlin, the OER-Hörnchen (Germany’s first central OER search engine), and edu-sharing (open source since 2010).

Expert:innen-Empfehlungen aus dem 1. OER-Förderprogramm

OER Collection Points

Central OER Collection Points

To ensure that all OER in Germany are discoverable and statistically accounted for, some repositories are already exchanging collected OER. Several federal states maintain OER repositories, often tailored to specific educational sectors. These repositories index content from sources, authoring tools, and learning management systems (LMS):

  • in the higher education sector OERsi collects OER
  • in the school sector Sodix/Mundo indexes OER from reputable sources and teachers.
  • in the vocational school sector a portal Hubbs started and
  • centrally, WirLernenOnline (WLO) aggregates OER from the established collection points and many other sources, curates it through community-based approach, organize it into subject and topic portals and compiles the OER-Statistic.

In addition, there are subject-specific OER portals and communities, such as those for religion (RPI-virtuell), for mathematics and other school subjects (Serlo), and for physics (LeifiPhysik). Libraries, such as the German Digital Library (DDB), collect digital cultural assets. The DDB provides metadata for millions of resources via federated search. WLO community editorial teams can search the library and integrate relevant content into curriculum-based collections.

Higher Education

The German higher education sector has the most advanced OER infrastructure. In addition to ZOERR, federal states such as Hamburg (HOOU), Rhineland-Palatinate (OpenEdu-RLP), Hesse (HessenHub), Lower Saxony (Twillo), Bavaria (VHB), and North Rhine-Westphalia (ORCA.nrw) have developed their own infrastructures. So 7 of the 16 federal states have central OER repositories and we are still working to expand our OER-Network in Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, and Thuringia. Collaboration among OER repositories in higher education is organized through the OER Repo Working Group (OER Repo AG).

Hamburg and Baden-Württemberg were pioneers in this area. During the first OER funding program, Baden-Württemberg, which developed ZOERR using state funds, introduced a metadata exchange concept into JOINTLY collaborations. Together, we revitalized a metadata working group, which now plays a key role in defining requirements and concepts for German infrastructures (DINI AG Metadata, DINI AG Curriculum).

After the first funding program, the higher education sector, alongside the OER Repo AG, established KN-OERR as a networking institution and added further working groups. They advanced the standardization of metadata profiles (AMB) and the exchange of metadata. The Open Educational Resources Search Index (OERsi) collects OER from the first federal states and other higher education sources, provides a search function, and shares its data with WirLernenOnline (WLO).

Weiterführende Dokumente und Links:

Schools and Vocational Schools

The school sector does not have specific OER infrastructures but has had an educational media infrastructure since the 1990s. Federal states operate local school clouds and state media libraries, while districts and cities maintain media centers. The FWU, a central institution of the federal states, operates key parts of the educational media infrastructure, primarily distributing commercial and non-free content.

During the first funding program, OER filters were integrated into some media libraries. Teachers can create and share OER within certain school clouds. Experiences in the school sector show that OER often emerge gradually through a “trickle-up” process: teachers first share content within their school’s subject faculty, then, following positive feedback, in the state media library, and eventually as OER.

The FWU develops numerous central services for the educational media infrastructure, focusing mainly on commercial media. Mundo serves as a central search engine, while eduCheck establish centralized quality control for educational media. SODIX establish a central educational content hub and MEM works on digitalizing curricula, enabling improved metadata tagging, including for OER. MKIS aims establish a media database and to bundle metadata and AI services. Licence Connect organizes license management between media providers and users, while VIDIS facilitates secure logins for schools to educational (media) providers. AIS plans to offer adaptive learning paths and content. An With Mundo and Hubbs, central search and entry points for the school and vocational education sectors are being established. This ambitious infrastructure program is funded by the German federal government through DigitalPakt Schule funds, with the participation of the federal states. The FWU infrastructure focuses on managing non-free content and services but also makes them usable for OER.

Quelle: FWU-Webseite zur Bildungsmedieninfrastruktur

Other Educational Areas

In other educational sectors, there are currently no central repositories that can be integrated into WLO or included in the OER statistics. The structures remain relatively heterogeneous.

To address this, WLO is expanding its infrastructure during the current development phase. Communities can already set up their own editorial and collaboration environments. Together with pilot partners like the GPM – Gesellschaft für Projektmanagement (Professional Association for Project Management ), this offering is being optimized for the continuing education sector and is planned to become widely available starting in 2025.

Alternatively, stakeholders can reuse and operate the open-source solutions of WLO, OERsi and others. This enables professional and vocational associations, knowledge-sharing institutes, consumer organizations, or NGOs to collect OER on their topics and distribute them through their own portals. The content collected in this way is included in the OER statistics.

Reusable Concepts and Solutions

This page provided an overview of OER-supportive infrastructures. The concepts and solutions are open and can be reused by other institutions, federal states, and countries. We facilitate contact with the key players via the OEDE Slack Communication Space.

to the OEDE Communication Space (Slack)

The OEDE Wiki serves as a repository for concepts and documentation related to OER-supportive infrastructures. The wiki was initiated during the 1st German OER funding program as part of “JOINTLY collaborations” among OER projects. Subsequent projects, including those that further developed WirLernenOnline, have utilized it as a public documentation and concept space. The current development phase, “IT’s JOINTLY,” is set to conclude in March 2025 and is actively contributing to the documentation. This project is funded as part of the “National Educational Infrastructure” / “My Learning Space” program by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Our community activities are open to all. Everyone with relevant expertise is warmly invited to contribute. Further collaborations with international stakeholders are also warmly welcomed ❤️.

Konzepte und Übersichten

  • OER-förderlichen Infrastrukturen und Dokumentationen bisheriger Projekte rund um JOINTLY und WirLernenOnline
    OEDE-Wiki

    • Standards u. Spezifikationen
    • Skalierfähige Contentverwaltung
    • Integration von Bildungsanwendungen (z.B. LMS, Editoren)
    • Smarte, automatisierte Erschließung mit Qualitätsprüfung, Qualitätsübersichten und Metadaten-Konzepten
    • OER-Netzwerke und zentrale Services
    • Vernetzte Redaktionen für OER
    • Netzwerk als Persönliche Lernumgebung nutzen
  • Kompendium: Didaktische Metadaten 
  • OER-Metadatengruppe (u.a. Abstimmung von Metadatenaustausch und Profilen)
    Curricula-Gruppe (u.a. Konzepte zur Digitalisierung von Lehrplänen u.a. als OER-Metadatengrundlage)

Software

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