When you create OER, you need to keep in mind how you want to share it, and that means considering how others will be able to find your OER. The information we use to describe our content is referred to as metadata, and that metadata is an important component of creating and publishing any new work.
This short video explains the concept of metadata:
Here are some common fields that you can use to describe your OER:
Example Metadata Description Fields in OER Commons
- General Description
- Summary
- General subject
- Target audience (or primary user)
- Learner level
- Language
- Material type
- Learning objectives
- Educational standards
- Keywords
- Tags
OER databases and repositories work in a similar way to library catalogues. To make OER easier to find, using metadata is desirable so that search engines can recognize their relevance and include them in the search results.
Any open educational resource uploaded to an online repository needs metadata to make it more visible for those who might be searching for a useful OER in their subject area.
OER repositories or OER hosting sites will have places to record a short (up to 160 character) description of a resource and a set of keywords or tags (often comma separated, it depends on the data entry interface).
If your resource consists of more than one page of content then you need to provide metadata about each page (such as making page headings distinct and specific rather than general or repetitive). This will also help you if you later come to export the OER from where it is originally hosted to be used on another platform.
Here Toby Hanning of Glasgow Caledonian University shares his thoughts:
Metadata is one of the most important aspects of an open educational resource and yet quite possibly the most undervalued. You can follow best practice at all stages – create a quality resource, upload it to the web, assign a Creative Commons license – but if you don’t assign good metadata then your resource will not be discoverable. If your resource is not discoverable it may as well not exist.
Assigning metadata doesn’t have to be time consuming or difficult. Just follow these three tips:
- Think about how someone might search for your resource. What words or phrases might they use? Don’t necessarily avoid jargon, but rather include simple terms. For example, it is fine to use the term myocardial infarction, but you should also include keywords or phrases for heart attack, heart failure, and so on.
- There’s no such thing as too much metadata. The more metadata you assign the more discoverable your resource will be. A full title, list of creators, description and keywords should be considered the minimum.
- Include links in your metadata. Linking to related resources or websites, or to information about the creators, will aid discoverability. If someone finds one of your resources useful, chances are they’ll be interested in using your other resources too.
Librarians might be interested to view the OER MARC Template developed by Mt. Hood Community College as a specific method for building metadata structures. A full description of their methodology and process is available in “Leveraging Cataloging and Collection Development Expertise to Improve OER Discovery,” from OLA Quarterly (2019).
More to Explore
5 Tips for Writing Effective Meta Descriptions (and why they matter) by Claire Atwell
Although written from a search engine optimization perspective, these tips provide simple guidance on describing any type of content that will be accessible online.
Usability of Metadata Standards for Open Educational Resources
This white paper explores the importance of establishing metadata standards for OER, and the role that metadata plays in evaluating the quality of OER.
This content is adapted from the following works:
“Metadata” by Anna Page, licensed under CC BY 4.0
Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.