Educational resources don’t have to be digital to be open — but they often are. And as many proponents of “open” have pointed out, openly licensed materials give faculty “the opportunity to create a new relationship between learners and the information they access in the course.” Because open educational resources can be revised and remixed, they can be modified to support a wide range of student engagement. Students can read a static text, just as they would in a traditional textbook, but they can also collaboratively annotate materials, contribute to revisions and participate in the process of knowledge creation, interact with textual and nontextual media, and more.

So as educators we need to ask, how do we want our students to use the course materials we make available to them? And what platforms or formats will best support that use?

I’ve outlined a few tools and platforms with pedagogical applications below. Please take a moment to peruse them. As you do so, consider how you would like your students to engage with your course materials and what platform or format would best support that engagement. Most of these can be used in combination, so, for example, if you want to assign a textbook in Manifold and use Blackboard to keep track of student grades, or if you want to assign readings on a WordPress site and annotate them using Hypothesis, you can!

Recommended Tools, Technologies, and Platforms

Manifold

The CUNY Manifold platform allows registered users to create digital texts that can be collaboratively annotated. The platform supports multimedia content such as videos and images. Some faculty have used this platform to create textbooks like How to Code in Python 3; others have created digital editions of literature in the public domain, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; and still others have used the platform to publish edited collections of student work, like Structuring Equality. This platform is a good option if:

• you like the look and feel of a traditional textbook but want to include multimedia elements,
• you want to to encourage collaborative creation, or
• you want to use collaborative annotation to teach effective reading strategies or identify areas where your students are struggling with the material.

WordPress

WordPress installations like the CUNY Academic Commons allow faculty to create course sites with a high degree of freedom in the design, organization, and privacy. This means that you have a lot of control over how students engage with course materials, which can be great if you have a clear sense of what you want, but can be overwhelming (to you and your students!) if you don’t. WordPress is a good option if:

• you want students to interact with course materials in a less linear format than a traditional textbook,
• you want students to interact through course blogs or through public writing projects,
• you know that you will be changing or updating the course materials regularly,
• you’re assigning a lot of content from a variety of sources on the open web, or
• you want to control the look, feel, and privacy settings of your course site.

Blackboard

Every class at Queens College has an associated site in Blackboard. Experts can manipulate the look and feel of the site to support student blogs, organize materials and assignments, and keep track of grading. Because these sites require a log in, they allow you to include some copyrighted content, such as content available under fair use or content licensed by the Queens College Libraries. This also means that student privacy is protected. However, this platform does not support collaborative public writing projects or annotations, and while it is possible to link to material on the open web, it isn’t pretty. Blackboard is a good option if:

• you’re assigning copyrighted materials available through Course Reserves or the Queens College Library databases,
• you want to protect student privacy, or
• you are already familiar with the platform.

Open Author

OpenEd CUNY is a collection of resources created and curated by faculty across the CUNY campuses. These materials can be remixed, revised, associated with particular classes, downloaded as PDFs, printed, and more. Create media-rich materials using a standard template that makes it easy for other faculty members to benefit from your work. Materials include texts as well as “overviews, pedagogical supporting text, and instructions for both students and other users of the resource,” and, in Module creation, they can include sequenced tasks for step-by-step learning. Open Author might be a good option if:

• you are incorporating some materials created by your colleagues on OpenEd CUNY,
• you want to ensure that your work is easily reusable by your colleagues,
• you want to associate materials with a particular course on an ongoing basis, or
• you want to make sure that materials can be printed or downloaded.

Hypothesis

Hypothesis isn’t a platform, but it’s a Chrome extension that can help you enhance student engagement with materials. One of the challenges of designing a course using open educational resources is that the materials can seem disjointed; some require a relatively high level of fluency or familiarity with disciplinary jargon. Hypothesis can help you model effective reading habits and keep track of where students are getting stuck. Once the extension is installed, it can be used in Chrome to collaboratively annotate anything on the Internet. You can even form private groups so that students can see each other’s annotations without worrying that their notes are visible to the public. You might ask your students to use Hypothesis if:

• you’re concerned about students doing the reading,
• you want to see students’ questions about the reading before class,
• effective reading habits are a learning objective (or foundational skill) in your class, or
• you want students to interact with each other while centering the text.

Pressbooks

Pressbooks is a dynamic, web-based authoring tool that allows users to create, adapt, and adopt openly-licensed content on the fly. Pressbooks authors can create interactive content and assessments by using H5P and encourage annotations with Hypothes.is, both seamlessly integrated into the platform. CUNY’s installation of Pressbooks is supported the CUNY Office of Library Services and by OER Representatives on each campus. You might use Pressbooks if:

• you want the look and feel of a traditional textbook,
• you are interested in interactive elements like quizzes,
• you want to gather together materials from multiple openly licensed sources.

More!

These are just a few options; a few more are available in the Digital Scholarship Guide. I encourage you to play around with your options, and if you have any questions, please let me know!

Assignment

After you have looked through the platforms and tools suggested above, consider the materials you have assembled for your class, the organization of the topics, and your learning objectives. What format or combination of formats best supports your needs? Come to the seminar with a draft of your syllabus and some ideas about what platform would work well and what concerns you have. We will discuss your answers in our final seminar and, if possible, get started with developing the final course materials in their final homes.