Abstract

PARTAGE (Platform for Access and Reuse of Digital Commons for Education) is a CominLabs innovation initiative designed to provide educators with integrated tools to publish, find, access, and remix Open Educational Resources (OER). This project builds on the successes of previous initiatives, including the CLARA and Florilège projects.

Leveraging Semantic Web technologies and AI-enhanced metadata, PARTAGE applies the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) to educational resources. By doing so, PARTAGE aligns with the global vision of open education: a world where knowledge is freely shared and learning opportunities are universally accessible.

To achieve this vision, PARTAGE incorporates a structured pipeline that ensures the seamless ingestion, enrichment, and access of OERs, aligning with FAIR principles at every stage.

Goal and overview

The ultimate objective of PARTAGE is to consolidate and package all functionalities into a robust, open source automated pipeline that empowers educators and institutions to effectively manage, access, and reuse Open Educational Resources (OERs). The envisioned pipeline integrates the following steps:

1. Ingestion of New OERs: Each new OER is assigned a unique and permanent web identifier (URI/IRI) if it does not have one already, ensuring global accessibility and traceability.

2. Content Extraction: Using advanced tools such as speech-to-text processors, optical character recognition (OCR), and web parsers, the platform extracts meaningful content from the resources.

3. Annotation and Enrichment: Automated and human-generated annotations are applied based on predefined ontology rules, enhancing the metadata and usability of each OER.

4. Knowledge Graph Update: The enriched OER’s metadata is integrated into a comprehensive Knowledge Graph (KG). This graph is then made accessible through a SPARQL endpoint, a dedicated API, and an advanced search engine for precise queries and resource discovery.

OERs and FAIR principles

Findable

OERs are often dispersed, making it challenging for educators to locate relevant resources. PARTAGE addresses this by:

• Allowing educators to add new OERs to the platform while promoting the use of web identifiers such as URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers) or IRIs (International Resource Identifiers), ensuring resources can be indexed by external search engines.
• Enriching OERs with metadata generated through AI techniques or provided via human annotation.
• Offering a dedicated search engine and API that leverages metadata to facilitate precise OER discovery.

These steps ensure that OERs not only become more discoverable but also form the foundation for further enrichment and accessibility in subsequent stages of the pipeline.

Accessible and Interoperable

PARTAGE builds on the robust foundation of the CLARA REST API to enhance access to OERs and ensure their metadata is fully interoperable. This compatibility allows seamless interaction with tools such as the CLARA search engine.

To simplify resource usage and enable smarter access, PARTAGE integrates a compatibility graph that associates each OER with explicit licensing information, giving educators confidence to use, customize, and share resources. By incorporating standard metadata schemas (Dublin Core, LRMI, LOM, CCSO) into its pipeline, PARTAGE ensures that OERs and their metadata remain interoperable across diverse platforms and educational ecosystems.

The interoperability established here is critical for updating and maintaining the Knowledge Graph, which serves as the backbone for searchability and more tools integration.

Reusable

Building on the interoperability and enriched metadata, PARTAGE simplifies the reuse and remixing of OERs by addressing licensing challenges.

It will allow educators to bookmark and organize OERs into curated playlists or course-specific sets during their search. Using the compatibility graph educators can identify subsets of OERs with compatible licenses to combine resources legally, highlighting potential conflicts and offering clarity on usage rights.

This pipeline positions PARTAGE as a cornerstone of digital commons for education, aligned with the FAIR principles and the global vision of accessible and reusable educational resources. By interlinking each stage of the pipeline, PARTAGE will deliver a platform where educators and institutions can confidently discover, adapt, and share educational resources.