We describe an open educational environment aiming at courseware management, re-usability and use within the Virtual University Upper-Rhine (VIROR). A simple model which allows local institutions to remain fully responsible concerning their pedagogical contributions is presented. Long-term usability is guaranteed by enabling authors to use flexible document formats and modalities while integrating pedagogical metadata standards. The well-known effort in courseware authoring is divided between content providers who use their well-known authoring tools, and course managers, who are supported by appropriate course management systems. This is achieved by modularization and re-usability of pedagogically suitable content. In order to ensure uniform system- and language-independent reusability, the most crucial issue is the semantic indexing process which is described in detail by proposing a workflow aiming at integrating the individual participants’ tasks which are necessary to contribute, control and validate educational content.