Executive Summary

The aim of ‘Java Bread-Board’ as an OER project, was to take an existing set of software tools (developed at York University) and undertake the necessary work to make them available as an open-source and open-learning toolset. The idea is that educators can develop new learning materials and modules , based upon the JBB tool-set as a learning environment, and in another instance and educator or student could develop extensions to the software itself, increasing its applicability to curriculum areas and adding new features to support learning outcomes.

By Open-Source we mean the software itself may be altered and extended to new purposes by third parties , under a non-profit licence arrangement. By Open-Learning , we mean that the Tools will be available without costs for non-commercial learning activities and private
study.

In order to provide a complete outcome under the open-learning resources goal, the software is to be released along with some initial learning materials, with the intent to expand these through our own efforts and contributions from the community of users and educators.

In technical terms, work has been conducted on the source code (written in JAVA) for the Bread-Board simulator. The reasons for undertaking this work were (a) to improve upon certain usability issues that existed in the previous software tool-set, (b) improve the interface for third-party developers of new modules for the Tool set, and (c) to ensure future
development and maintenance can be effectively carried out.

The outcomes of the project are as follows:-

1. The source code has been prepared for open source release
2. The source code has been rationalised to support third-party development
3. The tools have been modified to overcome minor usability issues.
4. Two sets of learning materials have been developed.
5. Depositing of the Software tools on Jorum1
6. Depositing of the learning materials on Jorum( 2,3)
7. Depositing of source code on a platform, e.g. Source-Force, for community access.
8. Establishment of a permanent web presence and community

Keywords

OER research · open-learning resources · software