1. Which materials do you have?
2. Which categories for the materials do you have?
   
3. Who will contribute content to SELF?
4. Who will the contents be made available to?
5. Will every user have the right to publish materials?
6. Can I be an author for SELF?
7. How can I generate content in the SELF Platform?
8. In which languages do you have materials?
9. What if a manual isn't available in my language?
10. Do I have to pay for the materials?
11. Can I use the materials commercially?
12. Can you tell me which Free Software applications you like best?
13. How can I determine the quality of the contents?
14. Who validates the learning materials that go into the SELF Platform?
15. Several licences conform to SELF's definition of Free Educational Material. Why such a strongly recommended default choice?

4.1 Which materials do you have?

The Learning Materials Expert Group has examined hundreds of documents on Free Software and Open Standards with the aim of providing the SELF Platform with an initial content of high quality, up-to-date materials. Here you can find a selection of materials that will be atomised and imported in the SELF Platform by the members of the SELF Consortium.

4.2 Which categories for the materials do you have?

All categories will be defined on this website extremely soon.

4.3 Who will contribute content to SELF?

Everybody who wants to! Contributing can be done in various ways. Please see our community page for more information.

4.4 Who will the contents be made available to?

The educational resources are accessible freely to everyone.

4.5 / 4.6 Will every user have the right to publish materials? / Can I be an author for SELF?

In principle, yes. The SELF Platform is concerned with enabling and facilitating member contribution. It is these members who contribute and publish materials. SELF will merely provide an environment in which this activity can be approached in a cooperative way. SELF's participation mechanisms will be geared towards advancing the project's specific goal of cooperative production of educational material.

So all users are encouraged to publish materials, as long as they are on-topic (i.e. they are related to Free Software and Open Standards), and meet licensing conditions necessary for cooperative production - essentially, the license permits redistribution and derivative works.

4.7 How can I generate content in the SELF Platform?

Please see our aTutor QuickGuide and our community section for Learning Materials.

4.8 In which languages do you have materials?

Our endeavours are to provide the materials in as many languages as possible.

4.9 What if a manual isn't available in my language?

You can join an existing Learning Material team or set up a new one in order to translate an exisitng manual into your own language. Please see here.

4.10 Do I have to pay for the materials?

No. All materials offered through the Platform are freely available.

4.11 Can I use the materials commercially?

Yes. While our primary objective is to support our mission for non-commercial purposes, others may benefit from our work, including commercially.

4.12 Can you tell me which FS applications you like best?

No. The SELF Platform offers materials on all kinds of Free Software applications with no pre-decided preferences. It is entirely up to you to decide which application you like best!

4.13 How can I determine the quality of the contents?

The SELF Platform keeps track of a number of key metrics on each learning object, including the feedback from the evaluation forms associated with them. When you locate a learning object that looks interesting, you will find next to it a quality rating computed by the system. You can also sort your search results on their quality indexes. By default, SELF uses a particular formula to assess the quality of a learning object from its metrics, but it offers alternative formulae, some provided by the platform itself, some by other users like you, or you can roll your own! (WARNING: Some Math Required).

4.14 Who validates the learning materials that goes in the SELF Platform?

The users themselves do, through their actions. Every time a user puts a learning object in her Bookshelf, she is demonstrating that it has caught enough of her attention to try to keep track of it. Every time a user includes the object into another, he is implicitly stating that it is good enough to use. For more structured metrics that cannot be explicitly inferred from user behavior (for example, clarity of exposition, or technical accuracy), objects have questionnaires attached to them, which can be filled out by any and all users.

4.15 Several licences conform to SELF's definition of Free Educational Material. Why such a strongly recommended default choice?

Each licence has different conditions and restrictions. As a result, some licences are incompatible with each other. In such cases it is not possible to combine two different materials into something new and build upon it. In order to minimise such issues, SELF follows the policy adopted also by Wikipedia, where all materials are published under a single licence, the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) with no Invariant Sections and no Front-Cover or Back-Cover texts. This allows maximal recombination of materials within SELF and between SELF and other sources, including Wikipedia. As SELF also includes pre-existing materials from other sources, it also allows other licences to be chosen. If you hold the Copyright in the material you are submitting, please consider accepting the default choice.