Building an Intelligent Ecosystem for Open Educational Resources: From Discovery to Personalized Learning

Open Educational Resources (OERs) promise democratized access to quality education, yet effective utilization remains limited by discoverability, quality assessment, and integration challenges. This chapter presents the ENCORE project, a comprehensive methodology creating an intelligent OER ecosystem through systematic characterization, AI-powered discovery and generation, and community-driven validation. The three-layer architecture encompasses resource management, intelligence services, and application tools. Key contributions include an extended meta-model for OER characterization, a database of 118,000+ resources linked to ESCO skills, visual authoring environments (E4E) and adaptive execution tools (E4L), and AI-assisted assessment generation with human oversight. Empirical validation through usability studies (SUS score 75.5) and Model-Driven Engineering case studies demonstrates practical applicability. However, challenges remain regarding AI limitations, sustainability, and balancing standardization with contextual adaptation. The chapter argues that effective OER utilization requires ecosystem thinking attending to technical infrastructure, pedagogical soundness, and social validation processes.