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Ecosystem

Edlib is very much a part of a larger ecosystem that includes —but, is not limited to— open educational resources, Creative Commons licensing and H5P.

Open Educational Resources​

Open educational resources (OERs) are any type of educational material that is in the public domain. They are published under open licenses (for example, Creative Commons licenses) that specify how materials can be used, reused, adapted, shared and modified according to specific needs, all within the boundaries of copyright law. OERs can include textbooks, lecture notes, syllabi, assignments and tests.

OER Benefits​

For teaching staff, OERs can supplement and add value to existing curriculum resources. At the same time, OERs can reduce the cost of education for students (reducing financial stress by removing textbook purchases).

For students, using OERs can expose students to a wider range of digital learning opportunities in the form of open texts, open images, open courseware, and self-assessment tools. In general, learners can benefit from:

  • Enhanced quality and flexibility of resources.
  • Seeing/applying knowledge in a wider context than their course may otherwise allow (for example, an international dimension).
  • Support for learner-centered, self-directed, peer-to-peer and social/informal learning approaches.

Creative Commons Licensing​

Creative Commons licensing addresses the following use cases:

  • Reuse: Content can be reused in its unaltered original format.
  • Retain: Copies of content can be retained for personal archives or reference.
  • Revise: Content can be modified or altered to suit specific needs.
  • Remix: Content can be adapted with other similar content to create something new.
  • Redistribute: Content can be shared with anyone else in its original or altered format.

Creative Commons licensing plays a critical role within the context of open educational resources.

H5P​

Using H5P, Edlib ensures that you keep up with the leading ed-tech providers worldwide. H5P provides continuous development of new content types. At the same time, the open source community behind it helps keep the products free of bugs, translated to new languages, and generally up to date with the needs of its users.

Edlib uses the H5P Hub, which keeps the available content types found on the h5p.org site up to date. Here you can view examples of each content type and try out their look and feel. These H5P libraries and many more can be found on the official H5P GitHub account. Unofficial H5P libraries, forked or built from scratch, can also be installed and used within Edlib. For developing and installing non-official libraries, please refer to the "Third-party content section" for best practices.