4.1: Content Standards
As you identify and vet instructional resources for use in your course, act as a filter — though lots of resources may address the same topic, you want to pick the one that will best enable learners to meet the course’s stated learning outcomes. If you are working from a list of suggested open resources, feel free to raise questions or suggest alternatives if the Saylor-identified resources are not appropriate for whatever reason. We rely on the experience and subject matter expertise of our consulting faculty, so please let us know if something won’t work, and we can collaboratively find a viable solution. A few criteria to consider as you’re evaluating open resources include:
- Is the content immediately relevant to the course learning outcomes?
- Is it pitched to the appropriate level of expertise?
- Does the content include some level of interaction?
- Is the content easy to access, easy to read/see/hear, and appears polished?
- Is the content culturally sensitive and free of inappropriate bias?
- Is the content accessible to all users, inclduing those with visual/hearing impairments?
Once you’ve identified the best content, you’ll need to incorporate it into your course. As you’re pairing content, you’ll be asked to provide some or all of the following information about your course resources: hyperlink to content, instructions, time estimate, license, and aligned learning outcomes. Each of these is explained in more detail below.
4.1.1: Link to Content
Please provide the URL to the resource. Saylor staff will format the link or capture the content for internal hosting. If only part of a resource is needed, please indicate which part so we may capture only the necessary material if the license allows such modification.
Resource variety: We welcome a wide variety of resource types (including print, video, audio, reflection tasks, research tasks, auto-graded assessments, self evaluations, discussion forum prompts, and so forth) to support a range of learning experiences. Therefore, some duplication in content coverage across different media is acceptable and even encouraged, not just because of preferences in media types, but also because the open nature of the courses means students often self-select the content they use in any given course. As you pull in content from wide-ranging sources, please keep in mind the necessity of contextualizing that content to the particular context of your Saylor course. Such contextualization is important to help students transfer concepts from various sources, and to provide a cohesive course experience. Additionally, you may consider course pacing as you make content decisions, avoiding back to back dense readings by interspersing text resources with video, simulations, or active learning experiences.
4.1.2: Instructions and Framing Notes
Aside from the resource itself, the instructions are the most important part of adding resources. It’s in the instructional prose that you can weave your resources into a cohesive course instead of a disparate collection of links. Please strive to include questions students should answer for themselves, connect concepts across resources and units, preemptively mediate potential trouble spots; and to make practical connections to real world situations. Your instructions should not only be practical ( e.g. “Read section 12.1”), but should also highlight important takeaways or connections between resources (“Pay particular attention to X, and recall how we discussed it in the previous subunit;” or “ Note that Y is critical for understanding Z, which will be discussed in detail throughout this course.") Use your instructions to scaffold the resource.
Audience: Please do keep in mind that our courses are designed for self-directed, asynchronous learning. Students will not receive feedback from professors and have no course-mediated contact with an instructor. For this reason, strive to intuit the questions and problems that students will face when working through your course, and work to address those questions in your prose..
Our audience includes:
- self-directed learners without access to traditional educational opportunities
- students enrolled in college looking for supplemental learning
- students seeking alternative credit opportunities (usually via our college partnerships)
- U.S. military deployed abroad
- employees seeking professional development/advancement opportunities
- instructors looking for educational materials
- high-school students looking for advanced materials
Because of this wide variety in audience, we encourage you to keep your prose as approachable and clear as possible. Avoid slangy phrasing, and jargon should also be kept to a minimum or glossed where appropriate. Please note that we enjoy an international audience, and colloquialisms may not translate in this environment. If you’d like to get a sense for our student body, please check out the “Introductions” thread on our discussion forum page. (You will need to create a free account to participate in the forums, but you can view others’ entries without one.) We encourage our students to introduce themselves here.
- It may not be possible -- or even desirable -- to include every element of effective instructional prose in every resource box; such variety breaks up the monotony of the course prose. The framing notes in PSYCH101: Introduction to Psychology are exemplary, as are those in MA001: Beginning Algebra. (Direct your attention to the lines that come after the word "Instructions" in each resource box.)
- self-directed learners without access to traditional educational opportunities
4.1.3: Time Estimates
Please provide an estimate of how long the “average student” should spend on the material. These serve as approximate measure of length of course to compare to standard semester and 3-credit course. Note that the widely accepted Carnegie Unit Expectations system includes the following estimates:
- Easy reading level (basic textbook information): 1 hour per 30 pages
- Primary text reading level (a novel or more analytical work): 1 hour per 20 pages
- Technical reading level: 1 hour per 15 pages
- Graduate reading level: 1 hour per 15 pages
- Easy writing assignment: 1 hour per 2 pages (500 words)
- Guided response assignment: 1 hour for 1.5 pages (375 words)
- Research-based writing assignment: 1 hour for 1.5 pages (375 words)
- Analytical/documented writing assignment: 1 hour for 1 page (250 words)
- Original research: 1 hour for 1 page (250 words)
The maximum time advisory for any one resource is 3 hours. If an assigned resource is going to exceed this study time, break the assigned sections down into more manageable assignments.
In addition to supporting resource sequencing, these time advisories are used to calculate unit and course-level estimates of the amount of study required. Saylor courses should approximate the work-load of a comparative course taught in a more traditional setting: a typical semester is 15 weeks long, and a typical 3-credit course includes about 90 hours of homework and 45 hours of classroom time (or a total of 135 hours of study for the entire semester). We understand that these time advisories are estimates. We also recognize that some courses and some students will naturally require more or less time than others.
In the past, we put a time estimate in every resource box -- how much time the average student might be expected to spend on that particular resource. Resource time estimates were aggregated to form subunit time advisories. Subunit time estimates were aggregated to form unit-level time advisories. The unit-level time advisories were summed to produce the course length calculation.
That method was flawed in two principle ways:
- The resource box time advisories were usually just a bit off. This is a result of a design decision that every resource time advisory needed to be rounded to the closest quarter-hour. Even if they're only somewhat inaccurate individually, when all that rounding is aggregated, it considerably throws off the true length the course in hours.
- It assumes that students' pace through the course is regular and steady and that they interact with every resource that we've provided. That's just not the case.
Just like we are simplifying how our students see Terms of Use and license information, Saylor needs that time advisory information on the back end, but it may do more harm than good to bother the student with that information so frequently.
- Easy reading level (basic textbook information): 1 hour per 30 pages
4.1.4: License
All content used in the course should be openly licensed. Please indicate the content license for each resource you use. Saylor staff will format the specific attributions as needed. Additionally, feel free to ask Saylor staff to advise on specific licensing questions.
Read this information on open content licenses, openly licensed educational resources (OER), and why Saylor Academy has decided to use this kind of material. At the bottom of the page, there are a few suggestions for where to find OERs: Creative Commons Search, Google Advanced Search, and Wikimedia Commons.
This page details why Saylor is interested in using OER. If you have any trouble locating open educational resources, or if you are unsure if a resource is open, please let the Saylor Academy staff member with whom you are working know.
We collect content licensing information on all the resources with which we build our courses. For a long while, we put this information next to each and every resource link. You can see how quickly that would become repetitive and distracting for students. Now we are putting all that information on it's own page. Students can reference it if they want, but it won't steal the show from the wonderful course narrative and instructional scaffolding you will be writing! Please visit the Terms of Use page for BUS305 at the link. Saylor staff members will compose this page using the link and license information you provide.
4.1.5: Learning Outcome Alignment
Indicate which unit-level learning outcomes each particular resource supports. All course material must be outcome aligned.