EXL Open Courseware Standard (EOCS)

Welcome to the home of EOCS. This standard is currently a work-in-progress. To learn more, continue reading our README and star this repo on GitHub.

About EXLskills

EXLskills is on a mission to change education with an open-source online digital skills learning, certification, and peer-to-peer instruction platform that is committed to offering premium-quality courseware for 100% free via our open-source courseware methodology. Our courses are developed using the content in this repository and are then imported/pushed to EXLskills.com with the eocsutil tool. This process is 100% transparent, free, and open-source.

File Structure

There are two main file structures for EOCS, the default and the multi-block (directory-per-vertical) file structures. The default file structure is designed for simple courses while the optional file structure is designed for courses that require certain verticals to have multiple blocks. You can also mix the formats within the same course. The two types of folder structures are shown below.

Simple EOCS Course Structure:

course
├── index.yaml
└── 00_Chapter Name
    ├── index.yaml
    └── 00_Sequential Name
        ├── index.yaml
        └── 00_Vertical Name.md
        └── 01_Second Vertical Name.md

EOCS Course with Vertical Directories (Multiple blocks):

course
├── index.yaml
└── 00_Chapter Name
    ├── index.yaml
    └── 00_Sequential Name
        ├── index.yaml
        └── 00_verticalname
            ├── index.yaml
            ├── index.md
            ├── index.repl
            └── index.repl.yaml

The file structure with vertical directories requires a different style of formatting as well as a separate folder for each vertical.

If the vertical contains more than 1 block, the standard format {index}_{name}.{ext} should be used to ensure that the ordering is correct on import/conversion.

Inline code for verticals are setup with REPL, where each index.repl.yaml file is considered a block. The index.repl directory should contain a "source" directory for the inline code.

Use our AP Java Course as reference for the optional file structure.

Index Files

Each course contains multiple index.yaml files that contain different information for each sublevel. The table below contains a brief description of each attribute and where it is located inside the folder structure. As shown below, each index.yaml file for the chapter, sequential, and vertical contain an attribute called url_name. This attribute is a crucial component in the index.yaml file as these "url names" are used when updating the course. If no url_name is found (i.e. when you first import the course), a new url_name will be automatically created and will override the existing files (if any).

Course:

Attribute	Location	Optional/Required	Default
course	index.yaml	Required	None
course url_name	index.yaml	Required	None
course_image	index.yaml	Required	None
display_name	index.yaml	Optional	Generated from parent directory name
est_minutes	index.yaml	Optional	None
language	index.yaml	Required	en
org	index.yaml	Optional	None

Chapter:

Attribute	Location	Optional/Required	Default
chapter display_name	index.yaml	Optional	Generated from parent directory name
chapter url_name	index.yaml	Required	None

Sequential:

Attribute	Location	Optional/Required	Default
format	index.yaml	Optional	Homework
graded	index.yaml	Optional	true
sequential display_name	index.yaml	Optional	Generated from parent directory name
sequential url_name	index.yaml	Required	None

Vertical:

Attribute	Location	Optional/Required	Default
api_version	index.repl	Optional	1
environment	index.repl	Optional	None
height	index.repl	Optional	500px
src_path	index.repl	Optional	None
vertical display_name	index.yaml	Optional	Generated from parent directory name
vertical url_name	index.yaml	Required	None