The only reason that OERs exist is to be reused. This can occur by adoption or adaptation. The usage scenarios tend to set up different approaches in terms of technical fulfillment. Adaptation is complex and creates issues around discovery (of versions), interoperability of content and tools, tracking and management of derivative works and the attribution that should occur etc etc. In short, the content lifecycle for adapted content is more complex and requires more ‘backend’ planning to be more easily enabled. The work needs to be removed from the “adaptor”, and wherever possible, shifted to the technology with minimal human intervention.

The most significant problems are:

– What options are available to simplify licensing and enable reuse across initiatives? (Surely this is a relatively simple policy decision.)

– What options are available to support the development of open source tools for adaptation and reuse of OER content? (See for example )

– What options are available to support attribution requirements of derivative works at the individual application level and at the infrastructure level.

– New generation infrastructure models
There has been a strong trend away from learning being controlled and managed by a single application (Learning Management System, Course Management System, Virtual Learning Environment etc) towards a more open approach where content useful to learners can be deployed to simultaneously to different individual applications (trend towards open infrastructure and Personal Learning Environments).
How are architectures and content models better able to support these approaches?