About The Project

What is OpenRUB?

OpenRUB is the platform for freely accessible and open teaching and learning materials (Open Content and Open Educational Resources) for all faculties of the Ruhr-University Bochum.
The published teaching and learning materials have been developed within the framework of courses and are presented in various formats:

• Moodle courses: information, self-study and OpenCourseWare (OCW) courses & preliminary courses
• course concepts: also presented in Moodle or on external websites
• videos from courses: YouTube channels, lecture recordings, tutorial videos
• websites: Teaching/learning and information materials
• individual materials: i.a. slides, exercise sheets, old exams, scripts, pictures, videos or data (open data)

The learning objectives are listed in the descriptions of the individual learning offers. Some materials are licensed under Creative Commons and can therefore be reused and adapted. These materials are displayed separately. The licenses are enclosed in the learning offering.

If questions remain unanswered: We provide technical, didactic and legal advice to teachers on Open Educational Resources and Open Content! Just contact us! We are continually developing OpenRUB, which is why we are happy to incorporate your ideas and suggestions.

What is OpenCourseWare (OCW)?

At Ruhr-University, OpenCourseWare is a special course format in Moodle. The OCW course format is based on MIT's OpenCourseWare concept.
It has a uniform structure with the following contents:

• event descriptions,
• requirements of the course (seminar or lecture),
• curricula,
• texts or references,
• lecture recordings, if applicable,
• exercises and exams, if applicable.

OCW courses thus represent courses, through which the event concept and the discussed contents are emphasized.
Teachers can be inspired by these concepts.
Students can use OCW courses to get a first impression of the course and, if applicable, to obtain materials or literature suggestions for their own scientific work.

We provide a template for an OCW course and assist in its development.
Click here to see the OCW format demo course.

 

What are the goals and who is the target group for OpenRUB?

Openness is a requirement of scientific work. Every day, universities use a variety of digital media and content in teaching, study and research. To make this as easy and risk-free as possible, it makes sense to use and create open content.

OpenRUB is intended to give all people the opportunity to access online educational materials of the RUB in order to further their education. As a repository of the Ruhr-University Bochum, teaching and learning opportunities are presented by members of the RUB.

To learn more about OER and Creative Commons, click here.
Learn more about OER in the following Moodle courses:

• Introduction Open Educational Resources
• Open Teaching and Learning

 

Under Which Licenses are Materials Published on OpenRUB?

Teachers can choose between the following two ways to publish their teaching/learning materials on OpenRUB.

• 1) All rights reserved: All rights of use to the contents remain with the authors.
  The contents are freely accessible, i.e. they can be viewed on OpenRUB and linked from other websites.

  

• 2) Some rights reserved: Certain rights of use are granted for the content.
  The rights of use may include the rights of reproduction, redistribution and modification. Such contents are usually licensed by Creative Commons (CC) and are marked as such. This means, among other things, that other users are allowed to upload and modify this content on their own websites free of charge. The name of the author must always be mentioned. The advantage of Creative Commons licenses is that users can see directly what they are allowed to use the materials for.

  

   

Variant 2) "Some rights reserved" allows simple and, above all, more extensive subsequent use than variant 1) "All rights reserved". The contents can be completely adopted and modified with variant 2). If possible, we recommend to consider variant 2) when publishing on OpenRUB. After all, we are striving to increase the production and distribution of open teaching and learning materials.
In this context, we provide consultation on OER and CC licensing.

 

What are Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that offers authors prefabricated license agreements for the usage of creative materials by others. The licenses serve the purpose that the materials can be shared and used legally and free of charge. The various license agreements directly indicate how and with what restrictions the materials may be used.

 

Open Content

Open Content is free content, the free use and distribution of which is permitted by copyrightholders. Open Content includes multitude different contents: Software, media, technologies, (scientific) publications, teaching and learning materials, etc. On this platform we focus on free teaching materials, so-called Open Educational Resources (OER).

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• The platform OpenRUB was developed by the eScouts team OER at the Center for Science Didactics, Department of eLearning (RUBeL), Ruhr-University Bochum.

OpenRUB-Associates

• Saif Al-Dilaimi (IT)
• Kathrin Braungardt
• Michael Fuchs (English Translation)
• Christine Ruthenfranz

Co-Founders of OpenRUB

• Kathrin Braungardt
• Matthias Kostrzewa
• Christine Ruthenfranz