FAQs

This Community Course is designed to allow you to choose your own learning pathway. You can decide to have a learning experience that is completely self-paced, where you can choose what to explore, on your own time schedule. There are two self-paced options:

The Pathway to Discovery: If you choose to follow this approach, you will be exploring the courses and associated resources on your own. There’s no set pathway that you need to follow, and no milestones to reach. Just an open learning landscape for you to explore.

The Mapped Out Journey: The course has an established sequence of things to do, and ways to connect and communicate. If you want to earn a course badge, you will need to register with SUNY’s Center for Professional Development, participate in group conversations on Workplace, complete knowledge checks, and submit the Evidence of Learning exercise.

And two facilitated options:

The SUNY OER Community Learning Cohort: SUNY OER Services announces when facilitated Learning Cohorts are being offered. Each OER Community Learning cohort will be facilitated by a study group leader – a SUNY peer who has experience in finding, adopting, customizing, integrating, creating, licensing and publishing OER. As a group, you will move through the course and earn a course completion badge for participating in conversations, completing knowledge checks, and submitting evidence of learning exercises.

The Bespoke Group Cohort: Your campus may opt to offer this course through your campus LMS, or using the open content here. Options for interaction and learning activities are at the discretion of your campus facilitator.

Registration for all SUNY OER Community Learning Cohorts will be available through the SUNY Center for Professional Development (CPD). Review their Programs and Events Portal to see upcoming offerings.

Registration is free for all SUNY employees.

This Community Course consists of a course content area, group discussion areas, social media components, and feedback areas.

Course Content Area: This is the main course site where you will find the readings and learning activity instructions. You are here!

Group Discussion Areas: If you have registered for a SUNY Community Course cohort, you will be participating in a 2-week facilitated learning journey.  You will have access to private Study Group conversations in Facebook Workplace, where you will be participating in course conversations. If you are following one of the self-paced learning journey options, you can join the open SUNY OER Conversations Workplace group and join in conversation with other learners and OER advocates. If you don’t have a Workplace account yet, contact Kelly Williamson (kelly.williamson@suny.edu) to get started.

Social Media Components: This Community Course is a robust learning experience, enhanced by contributions made to the social media components by you and your colleagues! Read through these FAQs for more information about each of the Social Media Components, and how you can contribute to the content of the course.

Feedback Areas: You will be asked to fill out an end-of-course survey when you have completed this Community Course, and will have the opportunity to share the story of your learning journey.

The time it will take you depends on the learning pathway option that you have chosen.

The Pathway to Discovery: You can take as long as you like to explore the course and complete any of the learning activities.

The Mapped Out Journey: You can take as long as you like to explore the course and complete any of the learning activities. Remember, you need to register with SUNY’s Center for Professional Development, participate in conversations, complete knowledge checks, and submit evidence of learning exercises if you want to earn a course badge.

The SUNY OER Services Community Course Cohort: When offered,  a facilitated cohort is scheduled to last 2 weeks. Over the course of those two weeks, expect to spend approximately one hour a day (or 10 hours total) exploring content, participating in conversations, and completing learning activities.

The Bespoke Group Cohort: The course content, discussion questions, and knowledge checks are openly licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY license, and available in Pressbooks as a Lumen Course for integration into an LMS. If your campus is hosting a Bespoke Group Cohort, they will determine the duration of the course, and any learning pathway options available.

If you choose to follow the Mapped Out Journey or participate in the SUNY OER Community learning Cohort, you can earn a badge by registering with SUNY’s Center for Professional Development, completing short knowledge quizzes, participating in group conversations, and submitting Evidence of Learning exercises.

Course badges are issued by SUNY’s Center for Professional development. The email address you enter when submitting Evidence of Learning exercises will be used to award your badge via Acclaim. If you have an existing Acclaim account, please make sure to use the email address associated with that account.

If you participate in a SUNY Bespoke Group Cohort, your facilitator can work with SUNY OER Services and the CPD to issue badges to you upon completion of all activities.

We are using Workplace for all Community Course group discussions. If you are participating in a facilitated SUNY Community Course cohort, you will be added to a private Workplace group for your cohort discussions.

If you are participating in a self-paced learning journey, you can access the main OER conversation space on Workplace here:

https://sunyedu.facebook.com/groups/1613444515354868/

This Community Course has a variety of associated social media sites — set up as online community gathering places — for you to access and contribute to. If you read through these FAQs, you’ll find out more about why we’re including these sites in the course, and how you can connect with your colleagues, and share your learning journey experience with others.

SUNY OER Community Course Main Workplace Group
https://sunyedu.facebook.com/groups/1613444515354868/

# SUNYOERChat on Twitter
To contribute to the Community Course Twitter Feed, simply create a tweet using the #SUNYOERChat hashtag. Another quick and easy way to contribute! You can also search on #SUNYOERChat here:
https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=%23SUNYOERChat&src=typd

We encourage you to visit these sites to learn and share, and to explore and recommend other forms of social media applications to add to this shared learning experience.

If you’re participating in a SUNY OER Services Community Course cohort, please contact your cohort facilitator with any suggestions.

For all other pathways, please contact oer@suny.edu with suggestions. Be sure to include the title of the course and the section that you’d like to bring our attention to as part of the message.

We are committed to keeping this content up-to-date and meaningful to all users. We welcome your help in that effort.

Please reach out to oer@suny.edu.

The full OER Community Course Experience is comprised of 7 courses:

• Understanding OER
• Identifying, Finding, and Adopting OER
• Customizing and Integrating OER
• Creating Licensing and Publishing OER
• Sharing and Promoting OER
• Contributing to OER Research
• Open Pedagogy Master Class

Understanding OER introduces topics which are covered in-depth in the other six courses. Each of the courses offers the opportunity for you to earn a course completion badge.

These courses will be available in September 2018.

No. We expect most users will take “Understanding OER” as a starting point, and then move to the next section(s) that most speak to their interests in OER. There is no requirement to take all sections, nor to take them in any particular order. Each section has its own badge, so you can demonstrate exactly which parts you participated in.

We appreciate your interest! Most aspects of the course are open, and you’re welcome to read, watch, and make use of the self-test features as much as you’d like.

All course content is Creative Commons licensed, CC BY unless otherwise noted. We encourage you to make use of the course material in your own settings. Most source files are available within the course itself, and facilitator guides are available to guide you through the adaption and implementation process.

We cannot offer badges to non-SUNY affiliates. The descriptions of the Acclaim badges are open, and you are welcome to create your own badges, through your home institution, to demonstrate the completion of the work for your participants.

For information on OER initiatives:

SUNY OER Services
https://oer.suny.edu/
oer@SUNY.edu

For information on other professional development opportunities:

SUNY Center for Professional Development
http://cpd.suny.edu/

Do you have another question that is not answered here? Please email oer@suny.edu