This document provides an overview of content management systems (CMS) for open educational resources (OER). It discusses that popular web CMS like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are free and extendable options. WordPress has a dedicated accessibility team and themes that follow best practices. The document recommends starting with a simple CMS and optimizing for legibility and accessibility before design. It also suggests prototyping with off-the-shelf technologies rather than custom solutions to avoid vendor lock-in.

1. Overview of Content
Management Systems
(CMS) for OER
Jure Cuhalev
jure@oeconsortium.org

2. • Jure Čuhalev,
Director of Technology at Open Education
Consortium
• 10+ years in working in Open Source Communities
• Previously Community Manager / Technology
evangelist

3. LMS Web CMS
Student enrolment
Discussion boards
Assessment
Content
Content
Integration with 3rd party
content providers
General purpose

4. Popular Web CMS Systems
• WordPress (most popular)
• Drupal
• Joomla
• They are all actively maintained with large global and
local communities
• Extendable with 3rd party commercial support, books
and forums
• Accessibly features and translation support

5. Licensing / costs
• Open Source software - Free (and open) but
without warranty or support
• Commercial hosting available from as low as $5/
month
• Require about 1 hour/month for basic maintenance
(security and maintenance updates)

6. How to choose?
• Survey existing solutions inside your organisation
• Avoid vendor lock-in (custom built solutions)
• Availability of external contractors
• Just pick one - good content trumps technology

7. Getting started with WP
• Free hosting on wordpress.com
• Use one of the default themes:
• Twenty Fifteen and Twenty Fourteen
• Just start writing and copying your existing content
• Once you hit limits of the WP.com, export content
and import it into your hosted wordpress.org
installation

9. Accessibility
• Wordpress has dedicated
accessibility team
• Admin dashboard and
official themes (Twenty *) all
follow best current practices

10. • Start with content in a simple CMS
• Once you have one course entered, consult with
CMS consultant about presentation and
organisation
• Optimise for legibility and accessibility, design
second

11. Ed Tech?
• Prototype using off the shelf technologies
• Lots of advancements in general purpose software
• Vendors might not be experienced
• Not invented here syndrom

15. Platforms
• OpenStax CNX - http://cnx.org/
• P2PU - https://p2pu.org/en/
• MERLOT Course builder
• (many more)

16. Discoverability

17. • Google will index and find your resources
• As long as you provide good content, no need
for Search Engine Optimisation
• (Advanced) Structured Data Markup
• https://developers.google.com/structured-data/
• Benefit from being hosted on .edu and other
educational domains

18. • Each vertical search engine will have their own
policies on how to include the data
• Most of them support entry via wizard
• Excel / CSV for larger data sets (100+ courses)
• Manually match your course categories with the
one from provider
• Dublin Core / Learning Objects Metadata / LRMI