OSSCAR, an open platform for collaborative development of computational tools for education in science

In this paper we present the Open Software Services for Classrooms and Research (OSSCAR) platform. OSSCAR provides an open collaborative environment to develop and access educational resources in the form of web applications, for which various deployment methods are discussed and compared. To minimize efforts in the creation and use of new educational material, OSSCAR combines software tools that have emerged as standards with custom domain-specific ones. The technical solutions adopted to create and distribute content are described and motivated on the basis of reliability, sustainability, ease of uptake and use. Examples from courses in the domains of physics, chemistry, and materials science are shown to demonstrate the style and level of interactivity of typical applications. The tools presented are easy to use, and create a uniform and open environment exploitable by a large community of teachers, students, and researchers with the goal of facilitating learning and avoiding, when possible, duplication of efforts in creating teaching material. Contributions to expand the educational content of the OSSCAR project are welcome.

本文旨在介绍开放教室与科研软件服务平台（Open Software Services for Classrooms and Research，简称 OSSCAR）。该平台为构建与获取以网络应用形式呈现的教育资源提供了一个开放的协作环境，其中对多种部署方法进行了讨论与比较。为降低创建和使用新教育材料的工作量，OSSCAR 将已确立标准的软件工具与定制化的领域特定工具相结合。平台采用的技术解决方案旨在基于可靠性、可持续性、易于采纳与使用的原则进行描述和论证。以物理学、化学和材料科学领域的课程为例，展示了典型应用的风格和交互水平。所提供的工具操作简便，为教师、学生和研究人员提供了一个统一且开放的环境，使其能够充分利用，旨在促进学习，并在可能的情况下避免在创建教学材料过程中的重复劳动。欢迎为扩展 OSSCAR 项目的教育内容做出贡献。