FEATURES LIST
- Rich search capabilities enabling quick and easy discover of the content you need
- Standards-based – complies with all major standards, is designed to IMS specifications, and is SCORM compliant
- Workflow for quality assurance and content approval – simple or complex, openEQUELLA workflows can align to institutional processes to ensure previously manual tasks can be performed within the platform
- Digital rights management (DRM) – ensure content attribution, access and reuse is defined. openEQUELLA’s internal DRM capabilities can also be extended to support licences such as Creative Commons
- Highly interoperable – to all common LMSs and other 3rd party platforms via rich APIs and support of LTI
- Can integrate with multiple LMS systems at the same time for systems that may be running more than one LMS for any period of time
- Copyright management – in accordance with Copyright Rules (Part 5B)
- Custom taxonomies – when contributing content, ensure your users can select from a set of defined terms that align with your institution, industry, or area of focus (e.g. curriculum, outcome, framework)
- No restrictions on type of content – all file types, so long as it’s digital!
- Create private or public collections – open or as closed as you want it to be
- Highly configurable to deliver a bespoke solution from an established platform
- Version control – one copy that links out to 1,000s of courses
- A robust reporting engine – gain important insights about any aspect of your openEQUELLA installation, including reports such as weekly usage, most viewed content, and content requiring attention due to its content lifecycle state
- Analytics – using tools such as Google Analytics, access important data and analytics relating to the use of the openEQUELLA platform
TAFE Queensland Use Case
TAFE Queensland (TQ) is a vocational education and training provider with over 120,000 learners enrolled in approximately 650 qualifications, courses and micro-credentials offered across 60 locations in the State and internationally. As a single entity operating across such a wide spectrum of geographic locations, reducing duplication by having a central repository of reusable teaching and learning resources was not a ‘nice-to-have’ – it was an imperative. Adopting openEQUELLA in 2007 and subsequently implementing an internal content management and quality control team has resulted in TQ being able to offer a high-quality, consistent student experience. For teachers, creating new courses and enhancing course content as new resources and assessments are developed has been significantly more efficient.
Frequently Asked Questions
openEQUELLA is a highly scalable platform – there are no physical limitations on how many users can be supported at the one time. However, it’s important that for self-hosted environments, careful consideration is made regarding the infrastructure that openEQUELLA is being installed on, to ensure that your usage needs are catered for. As part of Edalex’s hosting service, our team is able to tailor an environment that suits your current and future needs.
Yes! openEQUELLA was originally designed for complex environments, in which a single, central storage location was desired to reduce the reliance on disparate systems, and assist users to quickly discover digital content that had previously existed within such silos. Across the last 18 years, openEQUELLA has been implemented by large, complex institutions – the solution is perfectly suited, regardless of how many schools, departments or campuses an institution has.
openEQUELLA has been designed with interoperability in mind. Users of the platform rely on integrations with various systems, including but not limited to: authentication, learning management, library, and streaming media platforms. In maintaining a seamless integration with such systems, openEQUELLA can sit at the core of your educational technology ecosystem, enabling your institution to maximise its investment in high quality digital content, and act as the ‘single source of truth’ for content management.
It’s important that institutions can make informed, data-based decisions regarding the content stored within their openEQUELLA environment. To enable this, openEQUELLA uses BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools), a flexible custom-reporting engine that allows administrators to design and execute custom reports. Any information included on an installation’s database can be reported on using BIRT.
Absolutely! At its core, openEQUELLA has been designed to aid in the search and discovery of content. In order to do this, content needs to be tagged appropriately, through the use of metadata. Metadata can come in various forms, including titles, descriptions, keywords, file formats etc. Every institution that uses the platform defines their own metadata requirements, based on how they want their content to be classified. For many institutions, this includes tagging content to ensure it aligns with curriculum, outcomes or frameworks.
Yes! One of the advantages of openEQUELLA is its ability to enable sharing of content within a specific department, campus, institution, or consortia. Although content can be locked down to a specific group of users, content can also be made available to the world (in support of OER initiatives). Increasingly, institutions are establishing informal and formal commercial arrangements with other users of the platform, and via the platform’s harvesting capabilities, are sharing access to both specific content items, as well as broad collections of content. By breaking down institutional content silos, openEQUELLA is a powerful tool in establishing a content sharing economy.
Due to the highly configurable nature of openEQUELLA, institutions that have a clear understanding of their repository needs and how digital assets are used across their institution will find themselves at an advantage. If this isn’t you right now, don’t panic – Edalex can work with you and your team to plan your strategy and communications for a seamless integration and to maximise return on investment.
Macquarie University Use Case
Macquarie University (MQ) has been using openEQUELLA since 2013, initially as a centralised digital repository and copyright management system for their Library eReserves, before expanding its use into other areas, such as for Learning and Teaching Resources and as an integrated Multimedia Library. openEQUELLA’s interoperability was a key factor for MQ when choosing which digital content management system they would adopt, as well as its copyright management and highly customisable permissions management capabilities.
Next Steps
