The Center for Teaching and Learning’s OER Seminars began as part of a process of orienting Baruch College faculty who had agreed to participate in the initial year of state-funded OER projects at CUNY. We asked participants to attend two sessions introducing important issues such as copyright and open licensing, and finding and evaluating existing OER. In addition, faculty had follow-up meetings with CTL staff to discuss and support their process as they converted a course to “Zero Textbook Cost.”
Getting feedback from faculty was part of our process from the beginning, and in short order what we learned guided changes in our programming. A key innovation was moving the OER Seminars to before faculty committed to adopting OER or zero cost resources for their courses. After several iterations, we developed modules on the topics that had proven most useful and interesting to faculty. We now combine these in various ways to create and customize OER Seminars for different cohorts of faculty. These modules are presented as a slideshow during in-person sessions and shared by email afterward. All of our materials are Creative Commons licensed.
In their current form, the CTL’s OER Seminars are offered in one full-day session or two shorter sessions across different days, given to small groups of faculty, and feature a mix of presentations from the front and hands-on activities The 2019-2020 interdisciplinary seminars included modules on:
- Defining “Open Educational Resources” and “Zero Textbook Cost”
- Copyright basics
- Creative Commons licensing
- Introduction to OER repositories
- Backward course design
- Digital tools for creating OER
- Choosing platforms for course materials
- Accessibility
Here are example slide decks for a workshop in the two-session format:
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Because the content is intended to be customizable based on context, slides for each of the topics are also available as modules. They are Creative Commons licensed and can be downloaded below to facilitate teaching about OER in any context.