twilloHub: Cross-national infrastructure for OER

With the aim of estab­lish­ing the use and cre­ation of open edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als, in par­tic­u­lar Open Edu­ca­tional Resources (OER), in uni­ver­sity teach­ing, a large num­ber of por­tals and plat­forms are oper­ated at state level, which exist largely inde­pen­dently of each other. By set­ting up the twillo­Hub, the TIB — Leib­niz Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre for Sci­ence and Tech­nol­ogy is mak­ing a key con­tri­bu­tion to the sus­tain­able tech­ni­cal net­work­ing of these infra­struc­tures — a pio­neer­ing step towards transna­tional coop­er­a­tion in the field of open edu­ca­tion.

As part of the twillo­Hub ser­vice offer­ing, TIB enables other coun­try ini­tia­tives or insti­tu­tions to use its tried and tested, reli­able infra­struc­ture. This includes the twillo por­tal for the pro­cess­ing, man­age­ment and dis­sem­i­na­tion of freely acces­si­ble edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als and the TIB AV-Por­tal — a spe­cial­ized plat­form for sci­en­tific edu­ca­tional films. The great advan­tage for coop­er­a­tion part­ners of using the twillo­Hub is that they do not have to set up their own infra­struc­ture for upload­ing OER, which is costly and time-con­sum­ing.

In addi­tion to oper­at­ing, devel­op­ing and main­tain­ing the sys­tem, the TIB also curates the meta­data of the mate­r­ial pro­vided, assigns DOIs (Dig­i­tal Object Iden­ti­fiers) and pro­vides sup­port for con­tent-related and tech­ni­cal issues. Through close com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the send­ing of sta­tis­ti­cal reports, mem­bers of the twillo­Hub are always informed about all rel­e­vant activ­i­ties in the por­tals.

The meta­data of the edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als pub­lished in the TIB AV-Por­tal and on twillo are dis­trib­uted via an OAI inter­face, includ­ing in the OERSI search index. This ensures that the mate­ri­als pro­vided can be found eas­ily and also increases their vis­i­bil­ity.

A look into practice:
Successful collaboration between TIB and ORCA.nrw at twilloHub

The first offi­cial twillo­Hub coop­er­a­tion was launched in 2024, with the Open Resources Cam­pus NRW(ORCA.nrw) using the back­ends of TIB Ser­vices to man­age open edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als. This coop­er­a­tion between North Rhine-West­phalia and Lower Sax­ony in dig­i­tal uni­ver­sity teach­ing cre­ates syn­er­gies (see MWK press release 19.07.2024). All con­tent pre­vi­ously stored on ORCA’s own infra­struc­ture has been trans­ferred to the AV por­tal and twillo. In addi­tion, the approx­i­mately 40 uni­ver­si­ties in North Rhine-West­phalia are con­nected to twillo via DFN, so that reg­is­tra­tion can take place directly via sin­gle sign-on at your own uni­ver­sity (for more infor­ma­tion on login options and DFN, see FAQ).

To ensure the best pos­si­ble sup­port for ORCA users, the net­work offices and ORCA.nrw staff in par­tic­u­lar are in close con­tact with the TIB sup­port staff, from which both sides ben­e­fit greatly with regard to the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the ser­vices.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion between ORCA.nrw and TIB rep­re­sents the first step towards a cen­tral infra­struc­ture for open higher edu­ca­tion mate­ri­als in Ger­many that can respond flex­i­bly to the needs of teach­ers and learn­ers. It serves as a model for fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tions and paves the way for a sus­tain­able and future-ori­ented open edu­ca­tional world.

Are you inter­ested in coop­er­at­ing with twillo­Hub and would like to find out more about the oppor­tu­ni­ties and ben­e­fits?

Please feel free to contact us

Noreen Krause (noreen.krause@tib.eu) and Mar­gret Plank (margret.plank@tib.eu)