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.
In the first year we asked participants to attend two sessions introducing topics such as copyright, 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 before faculty committed to adopting OER or zero-cost resources for their courses. We also developed modules on the topics that had proven most useful and interesting to faculty, as well as on new topics relevant to the developing field of open education. We now combine these in various ways to create and customize OER Seminars for each faculty cohort. These modules are presented as a slideshow during in-person sessions and shared by email afterward. All of our materials are Creative Commons licensed.
Because the content is intended to be shareable and customizable based on context, slides for subtopics are available as downloadable modules below. They are Creative Commons licensed and we are happy to share them to facilitate teaching about OER.