OERca Instructions

Note: These are instructions for OERca end users. Installation instructions are provided here.

OERca Instructions

Getting Started
In order to begin using the OERca Software Tool for managing content, you will need to populate your course with materials, content objects (COs), and information about the course, instructor, materials, and COs. In the future, much of this will be automated, but for now, you have the privilege of building the course.

Viewing Course

 * 1) Choose the Manage Courses tab or click on the course status bar on your home tab
 * 2) If more than one course, choose a course

Viewing/Editing Course Information

 * 1) Choose the Manage Courses tab
 * 2) If more than one course, choose a course, otherwise, skip to step 3
 * 3) On the right side of the page, just below the header choose "Edit Course Info"
 * 4) Edit the information - see the descriptions of the fields below:


 * School: The school or college at the university
 * Course Subject: The subject or department within the school or college
 * Course Number: The course or sequence number as recognized by wolverine access
 * Title: The title of the course or sequence
 * Level: The academic level of the students taking the course
 * Length: The length of the course in terms of weeks (up to 14)
 * Term: The academic term of the course to be published
 * Year: The academic year of the course to be published
 * Director (Med School Only): The sequence director
 * Creator: The creator of the course or sequence
 * Collaborators: Any collaborators on creating the course or sequence
 * Language: Which language the course is offered
 * Highlights: The educational objectives for the course or sequence
 * Description: The description of the course or sequence
 * Keywords: Any words that would describe the course or sequence for search purposes

Viewing/Editing Instructor Information

 * * disabled for now


 * 1) Choose the Manage Courses tab
 * 2) If more than one course, choose a course, otherwise, skip to step 3
 * 3) On the right side of the page, just below the header choose "Edit Instructor Info"

Viewing Materials

 * 1) Choose Manage Courses tab
 * 2) If more than one course, choose a course, otherwise, skip to step 3
 * 3) Choose a material to view

Viewing/Editing Material Information

 * 1) Choose Manage Courses tab
 * 2) Select desired course
 * 3) Choose a material
 * 4) On the right side of the page below the header, choose "Material Info"
 * 5) Edit the information - see the descriptions of the fields below:


 * Name: The name of the material
 * Author: The author of the material
 * Collaborators: Any collaborators on the material
 * Material Type: Which type of instructional item is the course material
 * File Type: Which file format is the course material
 * Embedded COs?: Does the course material contain content objects within it (check yes if the material itself is a content objects - for example, if the material is an image file, make sure it is marked as having embedded content objects, then capture the image itself and clear it as you would other content objects)

Adding Materials through Single or Bulk Upload (decomposition/disassembling)
If doing a bulk upload:


 * 1) Find the materials to add on your local machine
 * 2) Select all the files, right click and choose "Compress" (for Mac) or "add to Zip" (for PC). This will create a compressed file of all the materials.

For both single and bulk uploads:


 * 1) Within OERca, choose the Manage Courses tab.
 * 2) On the right side of the page below the header choose: "Add Course Materials."
 * 3) Select the appropriate tab for Single or Bulk Upload
 * 4) Fill out the appropriate fields and choose the file to upload from your local hard drive.
 * 5) If the material is a .pdf or .ppt file and it has embedded content objects, check the "Automatically Extract Embedded Content Objects?" option. This will automatically extract most of the content objects (COs). (Note: The user will need to double check that it A) found everything and B) didn't bring in any extraneous COs.)
 * 6) Click the "Add" button on the bottom of the input box, and then click "Close"

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Adding a website to analyze within OERca
Some of our colleagues have asked what is the best way to clear a website for use as an open educational resource. Rather than clicking through all of the links on a professor's website to review content objects, you can use the following process that incorporates OERca. This way, you will have a record of your decisions, and a more organized and efficient environment to review the content objects in.

To begin, you will need a website crawling program. There are many free webcrawling programs that will work. I happened to use SiteSucker, it is also free and very easy to use. You can download SiteSucker here: http://www.sitesucker.us/home.html

After you have downloaded and installed SiteSucker (or your preferred web crawler) enter the website’s URL into the “Web URL” text field. Then click download - SiteSucker will now download all of your website’s content into a folder located either on your desktop, or in your downloads folder.

SiteSucker also has a couple of features that will greatly improve the efficiency of downloading and isolating images. When used with it’s general settings Sitesucker will download images, audio, movies, code (not including Javascript), and archives. Regardless of the website content the majority of the files downloaded will be HTML. This is because Sitesucker uses HTML files to analyze and download the content of a web site. There is, however, an optimal configuration for our purposes. Here is how you apply these settings:

HTML Processing:

First, you will set the HTML processing by going to Settings&gt;General&gt;HTML Processing drop down&gt;select “Delete After Analysis”.

File Type:

Second, in the same tab layout that General is located you will want to find and click on File Type&gt;select “Only Download These File Types” in the drop down&gt;check “Images”&gt;leave the rest unchecked and click ok.



With these settings SiteSucker should only download image files and delete all the HTML files that it downloads for analysis. It will also delete any folders that do not contain images. This will greatly reduce the risk of accidentally deleting or overlooking images.

Once you have all of the content downloaded and nicely organized into folders (thanks web crawlers!) you will be in a better position to review your website’s content objects. With your operating system’s file preview option selected (OSX: select a file and hit the space bar) you can preview all of the files within the website quickly and easily by using the arrow keys to review each of the downloaded files. Locate content objects (in this case, we’re mostly looking for images used on the site) and separate and place them into a new folder on your desktop.

Within OERca, log in as an admin and add a new Curriculum and a new Course. This is where you will upload the content objects for review, just like you would with a powerpoint lecture for a class.

However, before you can upload the files, you will have to rename them so that OERca will recognize them. Any file renaming utility will work. I like to use a program named “a better finder rename,” but there are many free options out there as well. Once you have downloaded and installed a file renaming utility, you will want to add two digits and an underscore to the beginning of each file. For example:

Original filename Testfilename.jpg

Renamed filename 00_Testfilename.jpg

I suppose you could do this manually, but if you have more than 10 or so files you will save time by using a file renaming utility. You can also bulk rename all of the files so that they have the same two digit code, or you can vary the two digit code across your set of files in any way you see fit.

Once you have all of the files renamed you will want to zip up the folder that they live in. OSX: right click and select “compress”.

Finally, after the zip file is ready – log into OERca, navigate to your course, click add content objects, and then select the bulk upload option.

Your website’s content objects are now ready for review within OERca.

Downloading Materials (recomposition)

 * 1) Once you have finished recommending actions and entering source information for a material, go back to the page with the list of all the materials.
 * 2) Select the checkboxes next to the completed ones.
 * 3) Click the download button. Before adding the Power Point to the download list, recomposition will be run. It should insert the proper

citation on the slides under the images, and then also create a full list of references at the end of the presentation. You will still need to manually add the first two slides with the disclaimer and the citation key [[Media:Disclaimer_Citation_Key.ppt]]. The full list of references at the end already considers the disclaimer and citation key in the page count. 8q0QRPpuuKE

Viewing Content Objects

 * 1) Choose Manage Courses tab
 * 2) Select desired course
 * 3) Choose a material

Viewing/Editing Content Object Metadata (for recomposition)

 * 1) Choose Manage Courses tab
 * 2) Select desired course
 * 3) Choose a material
 * 4) Choose a content object from the left side of the page
 * 5) If editing, enter the Source Information. Click "Show/hide citation formatting help" for formatting guidance. (Note the suggested format there for including license information. If this is entered correctly, the license information will automatically be added during "recomposition" or reassembling later on. If it is CC licenses, and you add the CC license URL, recomposition will automatically grab the appropriate license image you. If it is public domain or one of the other licenses, then recomposition will add the citation but not the license image.)
 * 6) You can also ask questions and send COs to the instructor or dScribe2
 * 7) Select a recommended action (optional).
 * 8) Select a final action.


 * For ORIGINAL images, the Final Action Taken must be one of the following to make the image eligible for recomposition:
 * Search
 * Retain: Public Domain
 * Retain: Copyright Analysis
 * Create
 * For REPLACEMENT images, the Final Action Taken must be one of the following to make the image eligible for recomposition
 * Search
 * Create
 * For images with a Final Action of "Remove and Annotate", the image will be removed during recomposition and replaced with an image indicating the removal.

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Adding Content Objects Single or Bulk Upload
If doing a bulk upload:


 * 1) Find the COs, RCOs, and context images to add on your local machine (otherwise, skip to step 3).
 * 2) Select all the files to upload, right click and choose "Compress" (for Mac) or "add to Zip" (for PC). This will create a compressed file of all the materials.
 * 3) The .zip file for the bulk upload may contain the following files:
 * 4) context images - these must follow the naming scheme: slide1.jpg (PPT) or slidetitle.001.jpg. The uploader takes JPG and PNG files (and possibly others).
 * 5) Content Objects (COs) - these follow the naming scheme: 1_descriptivename.jpg (1 is the slide number on which the image appears). The name format for Content Objects is &lt;PAGE#&gt;_&lt;description&gt;.&lt;filetype&gt;.
 * 6) Replacement Content Objects (RCOs) - these follow the naming scheme: 1R_descriptivename.jpg (for example, if the original CO is named: 1_starexplosion.jpg the RCO will be named: 1R_starexplosion.jpg).

For single or bulk upload:


 * 1) Choose Manage Courses tab
 * 2) Select desired course
 * 3) Choose a material
 * 4) On the right side of the page below the header, choose "Add Content Objects"
 * 5) Fill out the appropriate fields and choose the file (single image or Zip) to upload from your local hard drive
 * 6) All of the slide images, COs, and RCOs for one course material (lecture) will be compressed (zipped) into a .zip file and uploaded.
 * 7) The single uploader will take any single CO, RCO, or slide image that follows the above naming scheme.
 * 8) Click the "Add" button on the bottom of the input box, and then click "Close"

Viewing Replacement Content Objects

 * 1) Choose Manage Courses tab
 * 2) Select desired course
 * 3) Choose a material
 * 4) Select a content object - the replacement content object is to the right of the original and the background turns green when you select it

Viewing/Editing Replacement Content Object Metadata

 * 1) Choose Manage Courses tab
 * 2) Select desired course
 * 3) Choose a material
 * 4) Choose a content object from the left side of the page
 * 5) Select the replacement content object to the right of the original content object
 * 6) If editing, fill in metadata in the information and copyright tabs - you can also send RCOs to the instructor in the status tab

Adding Replacement Content Objects
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 * 1) Choose Manage Courses tab
 * 2) Select desired course
 * 3) Choose a material
 * 4) Choose a content object from the left side of the page
 * 5) Select the replacement content object to the right of the original content object
 * 6) Click on the link to "Upload Replacement" or scroll to the bottom of the page
 * 7) Choose the file to upload from your local hard drive
 * 8) Click the "Upload" button on the bottom of the input box

Adding Content Objects to the provenance Ask Form

 * 1) Choose Manage Courses tab
 * 2) Select desired course
 * 3) Choose a material
 * 4) Choose a content object from the left side of the page
 * 5) Choose the status tab
 * 6) Choose "Yes" to "ASK INSTRUCTOR"


 * If you would like to add additional questions for the instructor:
 * Within the status tab, click "Ask instructor additional questions"
 * Type your question and click "SAVE"

Adding Replacement Content Objects to the replacements Ask Form

 * 1) Choose Manage Courses tab
 * 2) Select desired course
 * 3) Choose a material
 * 4) Choose a content object from the left side of the page
 * 5) Select the replacement content object to the right of the content object (background will change to green)
 * 6) Choose the status tab
 * 7) Choose "Yes" to "ASK INSTRUCTOR"


 * If you would like to add additional questions for the instructor:
 * Within the status tab, click "Ask instructor additional questions"
 * Type your question and click "SAVE"

Viewing the Ask Form

 * 1) Choose Manage Courses tab
 * 2) Select desired course
 * 3) Select the material for which you would like to see the Ask Form
 * 4) Click on the link "Ask Forms" in the top navigation

NOTE: you may need to toggle between the Instructor Ask Form and the dScribe2 Ask Form using the drop down box just under the top navigation