How OER webapps came to be the way they are (and how to fix them!): a developer’s guide to the SUSTAIN model

Abstract

Many Open Educational Resource (OER) web applications have suffered from limited longevity and impact, even when teachers and students are receptive. A major cause is hiding in the subtle decisions about which technologies are used to build the apps. This “publish, then perish” trend is a direct result of the fact that OER developers are not always professional web developers, and are susceptible to following industry trends that do not align with educational and scholarly goals. I discuss factors that contribute to this tendency, and propose an alternative deployment model to extend the impact of educational applications: the SUSTAIN model. Using the example of the now-defunct VIEW browser extension, I highlight struggles that have complicated deployment and maintenance. I then present a consolidation and re-write of two webapps (VIEW and RuMOR) into a single new browser extension, the Russian Language ToolKit (RLTK). The new build prioritizes long-term viability by compiling underlying tools to WebAssembly and porting all language processing functionality from the previous implementations’ back-end servers to the browser’s javascript runtime. By isolating all technology to a static webapp, most potential sources of deployment failure are completely avoided. Finally, I discuss possibilities and limitations of this approach that can help researchers determine whether it is appropriate for their work.