Posts filed under ‘Open Course Library’
Press From Open Course Library Launch
Hot off the press…
Seattle Times: Low-cost textbooks for college students make debut
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016659112_opencourses01m.html
Plus a few others:
- Inside Higher Ed (Nov. 1, 2011)
- 97.3 KIRO FM (Oct. 31, 2011)
- opensource.com (Oct. 31, 2011)
- CBSPhilly.com (Oct. 31, 2011)
Open Course Library Launched
The highly anticipated Open Course Library was launched this morning during a telephone press conference.
During the call, reporters — from the Associated Press, Washington Post, USA Today, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Seattle Times, to name just a few — got in-depth information including new estimates of textbook savings to students and families, from our expert panel:
- Shaunta Hyde, State Board member, Director of Global Aviation Policy for Boeing Commercial Airplanes
- Tom Caswell, SBCTC, project lead and Open Education policy associate
- Reuven Carlyle, Washington State Representative, 36th District (D-Seattle), early champion of Open Education Resources in the state
- Nicole Allen, Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) textbook advocate, and a nationally recognized expert on textbook costs
- Michael Kenyon, Green River Community College mathematics instructor
- Lindsey Cassels, Clover Park Technical College esthetics sciences student
More details:
Read news release Open Course Library launch marks the beginning of the end of $200 textbooks
Listen to telephone press conference
Visit the Open Course Library
The Student PIRGs conducted an informal study to evaluate the Open Course Library’s impact on textbook costs. Read the report: Affordable Textbooks For Washington’s Students: A Cost Analysis of the Open Course Library
Open Course Library Wins OCW’s People’s Choice Award
Audience: All Users
News: The State Board’s Open Course Library (OCL) wins OpenCourseWare’s (OCW) People’s Choice Award for Most Accessible. In addition to the award it was also mentioned that voters liked that the OCL’s focus is targeted on lowering costs of textbooks for students.
To read more review the winner profile.
Open Course Library’s OER Matrix Gets Some Notice
Tom Caswell, our Open Education Program Manager, got some exposure from the United Nations’ UNESCO chair in eLearning and Stephen Downes (another OER blogger) for his work pulling together an OER (Open Education Resource) Matrix .
The OER Matrix is a collection of college-level OER links, organized by course and by repository. The OER Matrix Google spreadsheet is available to the OER community for viewing and editing here: http://bit.ly/oer-matrix
Washington’s Open Course Library in the Press
The Washington “Open Course Library” is in Newsweek. http://education.newsweek.com/2011/01/25/who-needs-textbooks.print.html
In addition, here are other recent stories on this project:
Seattle Times
Chronicle of Higher Education
Michael Eric Dyson Show (time index: 33:05)
KOHO Radio
Open Policy Report (p. 17)
Washington Open Course Library project featured in Chronicle of Higher Education
Our own Cable Green, Director of e-Learning and Open Education for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges is interviewed regarding the state’s Open Course Library Project. Read the article.
Open Course Library: Final Product and Master Course Shells
Audience: Open Course Library Developers and Development Teams
Here is some information on the final product and Master Course shells in WAOL ANGEL for the Open Course Library.
Open Course Library Final Product:
Since the content of the courses developed for the Open Course Library must be portable and easy to share, course developers will be required to do the following:
- Develop the content in an open technical format, specifically, the IMS Common Course Cartridge format.
- Place all content necessary to teach the course in a Master shell on WAOL ANGEL.
- WAOL has created a Master shell for each course in WAOL ANGEL. Since the Masters exist in the WAOL domain, users from any college domain can be connected to them. The courses use a common naming scheme: WAOL-OCL-Master-Course Name-CourseNumber.
- Developers and support staff can get access to their Master(s) by contacting the WAOL office staff: Mark Carbon mcarbon@sbctc.edu; Brook Bane bbane@sbctc.edu ; Monique Kovalenko mkovalenko@sbctc.edu
- Developers and support staff who do not already have an account on WAOL ANGEL can create one by using the self-registration tool. New users will need their Employee ID number and the passcode, which they can get from their elearning office. They should choose their own college domain for their account. Here’s the link to the WAOL ANGEL self-registration form. https://www.waol.org/admin/RequestAngelAccount.aspx
- If the course will be delivered using tools outside a learning management system, the content must include enough information so another instructor can set up and teach the course. For instance, if the course relies on an open source wiki, the WAOL ANGEL Master must include information on how to set up and use the wiki.
- Since all content must be portable, developers should not use the ANGEL Learning Object Repository as a development space for these courses.
After the course content and instructions have been added to the course master shells by the faculty developers and development teams, State Board staff will make the archives available within ANGEL and downloadable from the State Board website, and they will also transfer them to other open content repositories.
Please let us know if you have any questions or any problems in using the Master Course shells.
