Everyone is probably familiar with the world of Microsoft. However, if free alternatives are to be used, LibreOffice is at the top of the list. Not only is it free of charge and can be used without advertising - it is also open source. This means that the source code is freely accessible. This corresponds exactly to the OER concept: readable, usable and modifiable for everyone.
Open source tools are usually maintained and improved by volunteer communities, with more and more companies and projects supporting the concept and further development of the tools. For companies, too, this means saving costs, the freedom to meet their own needs and ensuring the stability of the code.
Why should open source tools be used for OER creation?
In order to create OER, it therefore makes sense to use OER-compliant programs for production. Since the OER community often creates OER materials without payment or with little funding, free programs are worthwhile. For example, a lot of money can be saved on a video editing tool. It is advisable to choose a widely used open source tool so that a large community can be consulted when it comes to operation and questions.
The workshop
On March 17, 2025, we gave our 18 participants an overview of the various alternatives in the open source world. In addition, we presented selected tools and had the participants try them out with instructions to overcome the initial hurdle together.
Our speakers took turns giving insights into searching and writing with MS Word alternatives, Markdown and LaTeX, as well as various editors. Gina Buchwald-Chassée from our partner project FOERBICO kindly supported us and conducted a hands-on session with the participants, which was very well received. You can find more details on her blog on Markdown only available in German, apparently. This was also followed by an external contribution from Nico Lindert on Gimp, an image editing tool. Afterwards, videos were created and edited with ShareX and ShotCut. Pablo Solano Marchini, who already supported us in the last workshop, showed us how to create animations with FlipaClip. FlipaClip is unfortunately not an open source tool, but freeware that is very easy to use.
This allowed us to quickly get our participants excited about creating animations. An open source alternative would be OpenToonz, but it is more complex and therefore requires a lot of training time. We will provide a more detailed insight into this in the following guide to open source tools. The final step was an introduction to H5P. All the materials that had already been created could be inserted into this and further processed into quizzes, matching tasks and other playful exercises. Mood surveys carried out between the individual topics showed that our participants are likely to continue using the tools presented.
For a more detailed insight, please look at the presentation slides, held in German, on our website. For your own research on other alternative open source tools, we recommend the website AlternativeTo.
