The Need

Online content for K-12 schooling is housed in digital libraries or resource clearinghouses. In the state of Ohio however, the content on these sites is not vetted for quality or for its alignment to state education standards. This results in the need for an online educational repository that is able to provide a variety of high quality, digital educational content that meets compliance with agencies such as the Department of Education.

The Technology

Researchers at the Ohio State University, led by Dr. Nicole Luthy , have developed the Ohio Resource Center repository, which provides access to high-quality, peer reviewed online resources (learning objects) through its library of K-12 educational content. This repository includes detailed records (metadata fields) for resources. ORC curates content from various sources, completes an independent review to assess the educational value, aligns the learning object to academic standards, and then displays the results on a publicly accessible website. Users are able to search for content using these metadata fields and access the content through the links provided.

ORC also serves as a source of easily accessible, peer-reviewed, high-quality, and effective resources. Whereas other resource repositories do not vet or align content, ORC developed evaluation tools and processes to direct users to the best free content available.The respository is portable and can be leveraged within a variety of platforms and learning managementsystems.ORC has valuable intellectual property in:

• Content evaluation (evaluation tools have already been developed)
• Content curation (we are very good at locating and vetting the best content)
• Training protocols