Step-by-step guide for sharing educational material on edusources through SURFsharekit.

Introduction

WUR teachers are encouraged to openly share their educational materials on edusources. This makes educational materials easy to find for users in- and outside the WUR. To publish educational materials on edusources, you need to upload them to SURFsharekit. SURFsharekit is the back-end of edusources.

Step-by-step to share on edusources through SURFsharekit

1. Go to https://surfsharekit.nl/login  
2. Click login with SRAM and log in with your WUR-account
3. On your dashboard, click the ‘New Publication’ button. A pop-up screen will appear.
   1. > Select ‘Learning material’ when uploading teaching materials.
   2. > Confirm

Note: If you are affiliated with multiple institutions, projects or collaborations, you may have to indicate for which group you are sharing the publication.

Step 1: Uploads - Upload your material

4. Upload the material file(s) (max 10GB) or add a link (e.g. to an e-learning).
5. For each file or link you add, a pop-up screen will appear. Note the following settings:
   1. Access rights > select Publicly available
         * Alternative option: see ‘Only share with WUR colleagues’ below for other options.
   2. Terms of use > select CC BY-NC. This is the recommended licence for OER as stated in the WUR policy.
   3. Optional: if your material is under embargo > Select a date in the future when the material will be published to the public. Before that date, the material is only visible in SURFsharekit for the owner of the material and institution site manager.
   4. > Save > Next step

Step 2: Data - Add Data and Metadata

You are asked to enter the metadata based on the type of material. Metadata determines how your material can be found. SURFsharekit has an elaborate description of each metadata field.

6. Fill in as much fields on this page as you can, as this makes the material easier to find by others. Required fields are marked with an asterisk (*).
7. Add keywords. Preferably use the same language as the material. For Dutch spelling, follow “het groene boekje”. For English, use the Oxford or Cambridge dictionary. You may add keywords in the other language (NL or EN), to make the material appear with those search terms as well.
8. > Next step

Step 3: Publish - Choose a platform to publish

9. > Select edusources
10. After checking that you filled in all steps correctly > submit.

After uploading, your material will be checked by the institution's site managers. They will check if the metadata is correct. When everything is correct, your material will be made available on edusources.

Sharing with WUR colleagues only

If you’d like to share materials only with WUR colleagues, you can still use SURFsharekit to do so. Follow the same steps to publish material outside WUR, except at point 5.1 (indicated with an *) do the following:

5.a. Access rights > select Limited access > specify which institutes or consortia can access the material.

5.a. Terms of use > All rights reserved. 
You can share under All rights reserved within WUR. Since WUR is the copyright holder for all materials made by its employees, other WUR teachers are still allowed to use and adapt the material. If this material will later be openly shared, the licence should be changed to CC BY-NC to allow others to (re)use and adapt the materials.

At step 9., do the same as publicly sharing: Selecting a platform to publish > edusources.

With these settings, the metadata of your material will be visible on edusources. However, it will be marked as “Semi-open-resource”. When users press the download button, they are asked to login. This allows access to WUR colleagues, but not to users from other institutions.

Note that for users from other institutions, it can be disappointing to find educational material that isn’t openly accessible. Would you like to reconsider sharing it openly?

Link related materials (create a collection)

Some materials are related to or follow up on each other. The materials can be linked to edusources in a collection. If you want to use this feature, you need to follow slightly different steps. You need to upload a “main” material (e.g. a class), to which you can add related materials as sub-items (e.g. parts of a lesson, videos). Note that only sub-materials can be linked to a main material, and not the other way around. On edusources, you can navigate from main material to the sub-item, and the other way around.

• Make sure all sub-items are published before publishing the main item.
• Sub-items should be labelled Usable as > Lesson component in Step 2 Data
• When publishing the parent material, go to Step 2 Data.
• In the section Additional information > select Add learning material.
• A pop-up will appear. Select the sub-items you want to link > next.
• If asked, the type of relation to  ‘part of’ > save.

More information about this feature can be found in the wiki of SURF (in Dutch).

Upload materials with similar metadata

If you would like to upload multiple documents with similar metadata, you can easily use the metadata of another publication you already uploaded.

You can indicate the use of a metadata template when starting the process of adding a new publication. It is useful to know beforehand which material you will use as a template. Or publish a specific template in advance, with the required metadata fields filled in.

• On your dashboard, click the ‘new publication’ button. A pop-up screen will appear.
  1. Select ‘Learning material’ when uploading teaching materials.
  2. Turn the switch for Use template on > Next
  3. Select a publication with similar metadata to use a template. 
  4. > Confirm

Questions and support

Do you have questions about this service, or would you like personal support? Feel free to contact us. You can send an email to the Library’s open education support team.