OER and Publishing Platforms: Vocat

• Screenshots at right taken from this useful, full tour of Vocat's primary features.
• There are also involved demos of Vocat interface and scenarios.

Developed by a team organized at Baruch College, Vocat is a full-featured platform for professors and students to share and interact with video, audio, and images.

Ideal Use: Creating a collaborative, private space for a group to upload and interact with media and each other.

Pros:

• As this tour helps illustrate, a prime feature of Vocat is the variety of media annotation and uploading possibilities for students, including highlighting and drawing on content.
• Professors and evaluators can take advantage of robust tracking and grading features for students and their courses and course projects.

Cons:

• The platform must be hosted and set up by the user, but it is available as an open-source code package with instructions for hosting out-of-the-box and with minimal cost and setup time via Amazon Web Services.
• There is no public-facing part of the course areas; all users (from professors to students) must log in via individual accounts with pre-determined sets of permissions.