ForgeEditor: a Teacher-Centered Interface to Create and Share Open Educational Resources

The use of software forges (e.g., GitLab1, GitHub2) as collaborative platforms has already provenits effectiveness for developers[1], and their adoption is now also expanding into othercommunities. Several communities of teachers, for example, have started using software forges tocollaboratively produce and share Open Educational Resources[2].To support this practice, the French Ministry of Education has provided LaForgeEdu3 a GitLabsoftware forge, specifically intended for primary and secondary school teachers. However, thissoftware forge was not designed with teacher’s practices in mind and it’s interface and the terms ituses (eg: fork,commit, merge request) are difficult to apprehend. With the help of educationalprofessionals, our aim is to lower the entry barrier for using software forges by providing a newteacher-centered interface called ForgeEditor.This poster presents the new ForgeEditor interface and two first user studies with 20 teachers.These first results show that teachers who had never used software forges preferred the newinterface but also pointed out several necessary improvements to help teachers find the availableeducational resources. The results also show that teachers were able to collaborate on theproduction of resources, using ForgeEditor.