Unlocking Education Together: A Meta-model Emphasizing Usability and Reuse of Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources (OERs) represent a paradigm shift in education, offering diverse, freely accessible materials to democratize knowledge. However, challenges in usability and integration hinder their practical application. This paper addresses these issues within the innovative ENCORE (ENriching Circular use of OeR for Education) project, dedicated to optimizing OER utilization. Focusing on the direct usability challenges faced during ENCORE’s development, an extension to the ENCORE meta-model is proposed. This enhancement ensures uniform representation, empowering educators to seamlessly integrate and utilize OERs in personalized learning paths and assessments. Beyond conventional classrooms, the extended meta-model fosters community awareness through collaborative material sharing. This paper serves as a call to action, emphasizing the pivotal role of OERs in reshaping education. Additionally, the paper introduces a research roadmap addressing key research areas such as personalized learning paths, generative AI applications, and community building, among others.