Continue to identify OER and other no-cost materials for your course, using the backward design process if it is helpful.
Before our last session on Thursday, June 24, post a comment below with responses to following questions:
- What OER and other no-cost materials have you found and/or plan to use in your course?
- How do these materials support the incorporation of asset-based pedagogies (e.g., trauma-informed pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, open pedagogy) into your course?
- How do the materials address these two principles of universal design for learning (UDL)?
- multiple means of engagement
- multiple means of representation
23 thoughts on “OER and Other No-cost Materials for Your Course”
What OER and other no-cost materials have you found and/or plan to use in your course?
How do these materials support the incorporation of asset-based pedagogies (e.g., trauma-informed pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, open pedagogy) into your course?
I am using the play BROKE-OLOGY by Nathan Louis Jackson. I have contacted the BMCC library and they are in the process of doing the legwork to make it available. It is my hope that my students will identify with the material of the play and that we will be able to tap into their collective experience to begin to bring the material to life for them in a vivid, striking way that illuminates what theater can have to do with them. This play incorporates multiple means of engagement in several ways; we will READ it, we will READ IT OUT LOUD, we will WATCH it, we will DRAW it, and we will WRITE about it. These means of engagement will also be used as means of representing the material, in the process of the student’s reflecting back their understanding of the material.
What OER and other no-cost materials have you found and/or plan to use in your course? To expand on the aspect of digital story telling I want to implement in These ideas from either National Geographic website https://www.nationalgeographic.org/education/professional-development/courses/storytelling-for-impact/ or https://edex.adobe.com/pd/course/get-started-with-digital-storytelling every semester I receive the Adobe Creative Cloud for my students and I feel that if students learned to leverage video, audio and graphics better it could be a game changer.
How do these materials support the incorporation of asset-based pedagogies (e.g., trauma-informed pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, open pedagogy) into your course? In terms of culturally sustaining pedagogy students can be assigned to tell a story relative to their personal experience.
How do the materials address these two principles of universal design for learning (UDL)?
multiple means of engagement – By empowering the student it gives them the opportunity to harness their potential creativity to create something cool and different through their lens.
multiple means of representation – As opposed to just providing posting printed text handouts it maybe necessary to include multimedia instruction and graphics to download
What OER and other no-cost materials have you found and/or plan to use in your course?
I plan to use several of the materials that I am using currently, that are available on the Common Lit site. I will have to download them and introduce them as the site labels them for a younger population. Some students would find that disparaging. I may use the novel On the Beach along with Elliot’s “Hollow Men” and the Showtime movie.
There are also Yale lectures on poetry and some literary terms, but the lectures are long. I will mark them optional or enrichment.
How do these materials support the incorporation of asset-based pedagogies (e.g., trauma-informed pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, open pedagogy) into your course?
The wide selection of literature I have chosen is based on the demographic that I have seen culturally present in my classes. I hope to have something for everyone. In lieu of this, I will allow and encourage students to present an example from their own cultural background as the basis of a written assignment. Although I believe we are at the end of the pandemic, I know certain students will still suffer trauma. I will build in “no new content” periods to allow students to “catch up.” There will also be flexible due dates for major writing assignments. The syllabus will be simplified and more user friendly than the current contract.
How do the materials address these two principles of universal design for learning (UDL)?
multiple means of engagement
multiple means of representation
There will be audio and video files for many if not all of the readings. I plan on encouraging students to provide graphics whenever practical. This can be the often requested “extra credit” assignment.
Students will be able to read it, hear it, watch it and write about it.
What OER and other no-cost materials have you found and/or plan to use in your course?
My CIS 440 (UNIX/Linux) course is mostly a lab-based and I now have a comprehensive list of labs titled NDG NetLab+ and published by NISGTC (logo below) under a very flexible Creative Commons license. This work is from 2015 so it is dated, but I can readily bring it up-to-date. There are also several open-source textbooks I will be reviewing for my class.
How do the materials address these two principles of universal design for learning (UDL)?
I will be incorporating tutorials and simulations from the Merlot Collection (see below) to further engage my students. I will also be adding Linux tutorial videos from YouTube.
How do these materials support the incorporation of asset-based pedagogies (e.g., trauma-informed pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, open pedagogy) into your course?
The Merlot Collection includes Linux tutorials and other reference materials published in Spanish and since this is my native language, I will be reviewing them for possible inclusion in my course.
Week 4 Posting
I have found OER textbooks online that are available and provide the all the information needed to design an OER course. The materials within these OER textbooks are very robust and contain in-depth information for the student to understand the topics discussed within the course.
2) By using a multiple amount of discussions, current information within industry and the news media, student from multiple populations and backgrounds will get involved with the material reviewed. There is a way to reach everyone through utilizing the various techniques in the transfer of information. I believe this OER concept has stressed this for all individuals in the seminar. It has stressed for me the many way to reach out to everyone in your classroom using multiple approaches rather than just one. The mode use to transfer the information is just as important as the information itself. You can increase your learning outcomes by selecting the different sources available and the various modes of delivery. I believe the students will be more involved with the process of learning by using OER.
3 )
a) It can provide a student with the insight of how these topic concepts could affect their decisions and life in general. Multiple means of engagement are important in the personal learning process rather than using one standard way of providing the transfer of information. It can also increase the ways a student may think about how they want to deliver their response on the topic being discussed.
b) Instead of using written Assignments, Discussion Boards, we can use other modes such as videos, downloaded materials, recorded lectures, current events to provide more understanding to the subject being reviewed. The teacher has the opportunity to be as creative as they want in the process of conveying the materials to the students.
CUNY provides free Wall Street Journal and NYTimes subscriptions to students. As I teach business courses, I provide students with the theoretical concepts and framework through my own notes. Then, I include articles from these two sources as examples of the topic under discussion and very many of the course assignments and exam analysis questions come from very recent articles and posted topic videos coming from those two sources. This provides students with specific current business and economic events that relate to the theoretical concepts and course learning outcomes. Learning outcomes for my courses include demonstrating ability to summarize and paraphrase current events and trends in marketing including information on potential careers, demonstrating the ability to seek, handle and interpret key economic and behavioral data which underpin marketing practice, Analyze marketing problems as they arise within a business organization and demonstrating the ability to identify key issues related to external environment & target market that may be impacting the situation. The WSJ and NYTimes articles address different social, cultural, political and income-based groups providing students with wider exposure and perspective.
What OER and other no-cost materials have you found and/or plan to use in your course? I’ve structured my Speech 100 course as a kind of ‘skills-workshop’: students work at improving their ability to make a presentation in front to an audience of their peers. The process begins with topic selection, followed by some basic research, writing a simple outline, and rehearsing the delivery of the speech. There are some speech terminology and vocabulary-building exercises throughout the semester, but the main thrust is developing confidence in front of an audience. To this end, the materials I use are largely self-created (i.e., inherently OER): outline templates, chapter summaries that explicate public speaking terms, explanation and instructions for preparing each speaking assignment, which become progressively more challenging as the semester unfolds.
How do these materials support the incorporation of asset-based pedagogies (e.g., trauma-informed pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, open pedagogy) into your course? Asset-based pedagogy is supported in my course in primarily two ways: 1) students are free to choose any material and any topic for their speech assignments; 2) my style has been, and always will be: tolerant, flexible, supportive, nurturing, encouraging, and positive. I embrace this approach for several reasons, but an important one is that this works best at engaging students and helping them to build confidence in speech-making.
How do the materials address these two principles of universal design for learning (UDL)?
multiple means of engagement
multiple means of representation
Wide-open choice in selecting topics. A range of options for speech presentation: in-person, over Zoom, pre-recorded. Variety of ways to accrue points toward the final course grade: short speaking assignments, quizzes, exams, longer speech assignments (informative and persuasive); participate as a chapter-summary leader, participate as an active provider of feedback to peers following speech presentations, etc.
I’ve found several OER Composition textbooks whose chapters I plan to excerpt throughout my modules. I’ve also found accessible OER versions of literature texts I had already been assigning (as photocopies), including the audio versions of two short stories. I hope to use several Crash Course videos with Mike Ruttnega. The anthology of student memoirs, “My Slipper Floated Away,” could be a great text for modeling personal writing and the value of students’ own lived experiences. I plan to include both the audiobook and ebook versions of course texts, when possible, in order to accommodate the different learning styles of my students. In addition to the Crash Course videos and audio files, I plan to include opportunities for video or audio assignments in response to those texts.
What OER and other no-cost materials have you found and/or plan to use in your course?
I plan to use several websites and research centers. Some of the sites provide quantitative information, while others give access to downloadable books and articles. I also plan to use documentaries and archives.
How do these materials support the incorporation of asset-based pedagogies (e.g., trauma-informed pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, open pedagogy) into your course?
For example, the http://dominicanmusicusa.com/ site provides historical information about Dominicans’ involvement and impact on music in the US. Students can listen, learn, and compare, allowing students the opportunity to express their pride in their culture. Also, the Dominican Landmarks http://www.dominicanlandmarks.com/ site provides a locator for things Dominican around the world.
How do the materials address these two principles of universal design for learning (UDL)?
multiple means of engagement: allow for interactive assignments such as locating things Dominican geographically.
multiple means of representation: Students can feel identified through the several items related to Dominican history, such as parks, community centers, schools, etc.
It took me a long time to find a finance textbook I liked enough, but I did thanks to Merlot. I’m still looking for another one because some things are missing from it. The truth is, I don’t even like the one that is required for the class and have long told my students to go to the BMCC library or the NYPL to borrow any Introduction to Finance textbook to use as a resource. These texts are usually outdated by the time they are printed anyway.
I always present my students with the current happenings of the market. It excites them to be in the know as it’s more tangible. But to lay the groundwork, I can use lots of examples. Multimedia keeps it interesting. We’ve studied the words of a Jay-Z song most students seem to know very well.
I can also read them the Shel Silverstein’s book, The Giving Tree, which for our purposes equates to understanding debt vs. equity. And there are other books like this too that serve to capture their attention with the metaphors. These stories stay with them.
As for integrating culturally relevant material, I’ve written it before, I incorporate minority-owned businesses and minority-inspired businesses into our discussions which are always lively. And the material for that comes from magazines, podcasts, and their lives.
Documentaries provide students with a knowledge of the topics discussed weekly, while also bringing a new angle on the topic. This way, students are more comfortable expressing themselves. Today, I believe it is essential to have a space for multimedia to reach especially those who have gone through a trauma that unfortunately has become more difficult for them to concentrate. Thus, videos also bring recent examples of society that students can identify with reaching to the most timid. I found this list here of documentaries http://sociology101.pbworks.com/w/page/122626035/Documentaries and had already used some of them in the past. I will continue to use this type of multimedia because I know how documentaries have the power to engage this generation and generate interesting discussions for the classroom, so instead of just using the discussion forums or writing papers. I am a firm believer in incorporating video into my course to give students another approach in learning.
In addition to the OER/ZTC that the Speech Department at BMCC hopes to launch in the fall, I found another OER textbook online that I can incorporate into the SPE 100 class. The course also has many TED Talks and YouTube videos I can link to the Open Lab.
The selected TED Talks and YouTube videos address diverse topics and give students many opportunities to interpret, analyze, and bring their experiences to the classroom. In addition, I give students the freedom to select topics for their informative and persuasive presentations that represent their ideals or address subjects of great concern to them.
For the prepared speeches, the students select various types of aids to reinforce their main points, and such liberty uses multiple means of engagement and representation.
What OER and other no-cost materials have you found and/or plan to use in your course?
-I found more OER textbooks, after reviewing them, I decided to use them for specific concepts and exercises. I also feel more confident in using youtube videos published by their author, especially the Communication Coach channel.
How do the materials address these two principles of universal design for learning (UDL)?
-I found that students respond to videos and music with more engagement and attention to the tasks. I am incorporating more videos in my assignments, teaching concepts, and examples.
-How do these materials support the incorporation of asset-based pedagogies (e.g., trauma-informed pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, open pedagogy) into your course?
-Some of the youtube videos and Ted talks address some of these issues, a great discussion starter is Camile Brown’s Visual History of Social Dance or Harry Shearer’s videos to learn and discuss ethics.
I found a textbook that is suitable for my course called Psychology 2e on oercommons.org. It is a free textbook and it comes with additional content which focuses on key terms, summary, and various forms of questions for students to dig deeper and apply what they’re learning to personal experiences. I think that the way that I deliver the course content and because general psychology broadly covers many topics, I incorporate CSP and a little trauma-informed pedagogy via discussions. The personal application questions included allow students do this directly and prompt them to engage with the material using photos and reflection. The text itself includes visual images, videos, and links to related articles to address multiple means of engagement and representation. I plan to utilize some of these to supplement discussion questions throughout the course. I think that creating slides from this text will allow me the flexibility to include the most current and relevant media to the course information.
I have found many excellent sources on You Tube; Crash Couse Psychology, Brain Games, Ted Talks, all have great presentations for psychology.
For more detailed content, I have found several psychology textbooks and associated materials in the OER sources provided by BMCC. These material will help me customize my course to include asset based pedagogy. The material address UDL by presenting the material in many formats; video, text, slides, and memes, and by including different activities for the students to demonstrate learning goals (quizzes, wiritng assignments, discussion boards and class group activities).
I reviewed my upcoming summer class (ENG 201:Intro to Literature) for which I am using last summer’s course map. I realized immediately that I need to do a fair use analysis of a History Channel video that I use and two texts that I use from the internet as pdfs. One is from a Glance textbook (lots of these excerpts online) but I now realize that it is probably in violation of copyright. Another is a weird pdf copy of Oedipus Rex which I will look up to find out the copyright info. There are lots of copies to choose from so now I’ll make sure I’m using one that is legal. I’ve been teaching 201 as a fully online class for a few years so this training has been very helpful for helping me understand how to choose my OER or ZTC materials. I use a great John Green Crash Course video for Oedipus Rex so I can keep that. And I’ll use the OER materials on fairy tales (Fairy Talez) for my unit on myths and folklore.
For multiple means of learning and engagement, I think the key is interaction. In other words, we shouldn’t have lecture-based classes but design it more like this OER training. I plan to use more group/team work, more instant quizzes/ polls, and more one-on-one with students who need/ask for that.
So far, my primary collection of materials has been a combination of a new OER textbook which I plan to use along with some videos I’ve found about various concepts. I hope these materials will help students who have low/no income afford their textbooks and allow them to feel at ease as they read the materials. The videos I hope will be helpful until I am able to have students create new videos for future cohorts.
Also…sorry for the late post.
Some tools I have found for OER resources include the textbooks recommended by the BMCC Library – especially Stand Up Speak Out (https://open.lib.umn.edu/publicspeaking/) – I think this textbook meets students where they are, creates ease of access, and the title will resonate with students who participate in BLM (and other) marches/movement(s).
I’ve also found life hack examples (for my life hack assignment) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVr3IL5cDkg – this assignment helps students perform their roles as knowledge creators who are part of the academic community. This assignment will also make use of UDL – enabling students to engage in multiple ways with public speaking and sharing knowledge.
In exploring outlines & works cited pages, I’m looking forward to sending students to Excelsior OWL. https://owl.excelsior.edu/
Outlining and citing are two of the most foundational skills in SPE100, and having a free, extensive, easy to access site where students can find guides that will serve them throughout their college careers (and beyond).
In my examples of public speaking, I am restructuring; programming TED Talks that only feature BIPOC & women speakers, so each student sees themselves reflected in public speaking, and to highlight the multitudes of cultural experiences.
I am using OpenStax math books, my own course notes, free homework system, paper homework (created by math faculty at BMCC), and Videos (most created by math faculty at BMCC).
I am currently working on creating problem-posing-type activities/assignments. If it works well, this will help students understand the course material deeply. Some colleagues in my department create their own Youtube videos. These videos provide students an option (or extra resources) to choose the teaching style they prefer.
What OER and other no-cost materials have you found and/or plan to use in your course? So far I plan to use the following no-cost material to support my course design:
1. Chapters from a textbook I will use in my course: “Theatrical Worlds” by Charlie Mitchell (CC-BY-NC)
2. A YouTube video introducing Theatre: “What is Theatre” – Crash Course video
3. A student assignment I created with Fair Use materials: “What is Theatre; From My Perspective” – (7) Very brief YouTube video clips:
• “Hamilton”: https://youtu.be/0ECzlMYRKLg
• “Obama” by Jay-Z: https://youtu.be/U496VPVT9y8
• “Kabuki” Theatre: https://youtu.be/67-bgSFJiKc
• “Carmen” Opera: https://youtu.be/KJ_HHRJf0xg
• “In the Air Tonight” Phil Collins: https://youtu.be/manxPVTLth8
• “Rosencrantz”: https://youtu.be/-t5UTLkfoUs
• Old Time Fashion Preaching Part 1: https://youtu.be/QYlW37jZrRA
4. A YouTube video of: “Hamlet” – YouTube video
5. “Character Development” an article suggestive of an outline and structure that can support building characters for stories and playwriting. (CC-NC-ND)
How do these materials support the incorporation of asset-based pedagogies (e.g., trauma-informed pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, open pedagogy) into your course? The introductory assignment, “What is Theatre?” is designed with a collection of small clips depicting an artistic mix of cultures, age groups, languages, a touch religion and a leap into the political arena supported by a hip-hop icon. All which are open pedagogical materials.
How do the materials address these two principles of universal design for learning (UDL)?
multiple means of engagement: I added the, “Hamlet” video, as an additional option to reading the play; which I will also provide.
multiple means of representation: Concerning the assignment, “What is Theatre?”, I will provide an option for the students to either video or audio record their responses to the prompts, as an extra credit option.
Exploring the Theme of Death Using Trauma-informed Teaching and Learning
“Trauma-informed pedagogy requires having a keen awareness of our students’ past and present experiences on students’ well-being.” (Mays Imad)
For this theme for my CRT 100.5 course, I will be using OER and other non-course materials including articles from various websites, Youtube videos, images, and CATW materials that I have created.
1. Examining an image:
Albrecht Durer – Melancholy, 1514; Wikimedia. Ironically, Durer was the first artist in history who filed a lawsuit against a fellow artist who copied not only some of his woodcut prints but he also forged Durer’s famous AD monogram-the very first registered trademark in the history of art.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:D%C3%BCrer_Melancholia_I.jpg
2. Memento Mori:
Youtube Video: Art 101: What is a Memento Mori? P.S. You are going to die; CBC Arts channel — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7riwDPlEAM
3. Reading/Annotation using the Kami app:
Excerpts from Tennessee Williams’ Notebooks (Bradham Thornton, Margaret. Tennessee Williams Notebooks, Yale University Press, University of the South, 2006. pp. 267, 739. From the Internet.)
4. Discussion about revolution, execution and death via art:
Youtube video: Smarthistory: Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat. Website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw2_hv439Fg
5. Writing about death in the format of a CATW essay: Erika Hayasaki, The Death Class: A True Story About Life, 2014
The materials that I use for this theme for the combined courses of Critical Thinking and ESL 95 Intensive Writing allows students the opportunity to share their own stories of trauma during the pandemic, as well as experiencing death in their own family and/or community. The universal theme of death in art and music will help students to be engaged in classroom discussions, reading and writing about the often-taboo issues like disease, death, mourning, etc. The theme will also allow an opportunity for further exploration of such controversial but typical issues in critical thinking, such as the death penalty and euthanasia. Each culture has its own way of dealing with disease and death, so our diverse student body will afford the opportunity to share their own cultural norms and experiences caring for or losing loved ones.
Exploring the Theme of Death Using Trauma
What OER and other no-cost materials have you found and/or plan to use in your course?
– Understanding Basic Music Theory (OpenStax CNX), will supplement with Open Music Theory x CUNY for most text-based resources
– Online resources for additional practice: https://www.teoria.com/, virtual piano keyboard https://www.onlinepianist.com/virtual-piano
– Exercises, homework, assessments I have created
How do these materials support the incorporation of asset-based pedagogies (e.g., trauma-informed pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, open pedagogy) into your course?
– These resources are easily accessible, zero-cost and will be delivered to students though a variety of digital mechanisms
How do the materials address these two principles of universal design for learning (UDL)?
multiple means of engagement – “analog” exercises they can write physically at home and send scans/pictures, online music notation exercises, identification, videos, teoria.com exercises
multiple means of representation – information provided during class meetings, “textbook”, other digital resources