A University Network for
Open Educational Resources (OER)
The Open Resources Campus.nrw (ORCA.nrw) is a joint platform and network for those studying and teaching at public universities, universities of applied sciences, and colleges of art and music in North Rhine-Westphalia, organized under the umbrella of the Digital University NRW. ORCA.nrw aims to encourage the use and sharing of OER for teaching and learning.
Do you teach at a university? Share your teaching material and easily find material from other teachers for further use. Discover the possibilities offered by the state portal and help shape the process towards a pool of open educational resources.
Are you a student? Review, deepen or expand your knowledge with the digital learning content of the state portal. Access freely available material or various support services. Find out about relevant topics related to your studies.
Searching for OER
Teachers and students can benefit from an extensive and constantly growing pool of material. The search function of the state portal is linked to the Open Educational Resources Search Index (OERSI), which was developed as an open source project. This enables a low-threshold, nationwide search of open educational materials via the portal.
Uploading OER
In order to access the upload process, you must be a teacher or lecturer at a public or predominantly state-funded university in NRW and log in to the portal via the "DFN-AAI" access.
After agreeing to the terms of use, the first step is to indicate whether the material was created as part of a grant or independently. You will then be asked to enter or select metadata for the material, such as the appropriate license. By indexing the material in OERSI, we ensure that it can be found and used throughout Germany.
After uploading, your material will not be visible immediately, but will first be checked for completeness of metadata and relevance of licensing, and then published. In the case of funding, additional steps may be required before publication, depending on the funding line (e.g. ensuring that the material is accsessible).
Do you want to know more about ORCA.nrw? Or do you have specific questions? Feel free to reach out to us, we are hearing from you!