Web Strategies for the Curation and Discovery of Open Educational Resources

• Main Author: Vivien Rolfe
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) 2016-12-01
• Series: Open Praxis
• Subjects: Open educational resources; OER; Technology solutions; Search engine optimisation; SEO; Web Discovery
• Online Access: http://www.openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/305

For those receiving funding from the UK HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resource Programme (2009–2012), the sustainability of project outputs was one of a number of essential goals. Our approach for the hosting and distribution of health and life science open educational resources (OER) was based on the utilisation of the WordPress.org blogging platform and search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques to curate content and widen discovery. This paper outlines the approaches taken and tools used at the time, and reflects upon the effectiveness of web strategies several years post-funding. The paper concludes that using WordPress.org as a platform for sharing and curating OER, and the adoption of a pragmatic approach to SEO, offers cheap and simple ways for small-scale open education projects to be effective and sustainable.