The California State University and MERLOT have partnered to showcase how and why faculty have adopted Open Educational Resources (OER) to facilitate equitable access to their students’ course materials. This Faculty Showcase represent Open Educational Practices where faculty are sharing their "know-how" for adopting OER in their courses. This open website exists for a freshman-level course in multimedia projection taught by Deidre Pike, Ph.D. at Humboldt State University. The website resource provides shared resources to tools that prepare today’s students for journalistic storytelling using Wordpress blogs, photography, audio podcasts, audio-visual slideshows, social media and video. The main motivation to adopt an open textbook was to provide an up-to-date, free, sharable resource for students. Students can access the site without a password, use and re-use content and even help peers and others learn the skills useful for any communication career.
Type of Material:
ePortfolio
Recommended Uses:
Refer to website for directions and tips on creatig digital stories with technology tools
Technical Requirements:
Works on Windows browsers
Identify Major Learning Goals:
For instructors: Incorporate CERs into instructional design
For students:
Shoot and edit photos, audio and video for print, televised and online publications.
Demonstrate traditional journalistic skills -- finding a story, interviewing knowledgeable sources, verifying facts, and structuring information into a digestible form.
Target Student Population:
College Lower Division, College Upper Division, journalism and communication studies students
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Basic ICT literacy skills, and basic journalism skills
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
The eportfolio describes the use of OERs for a journalism course, based on an experienced journalism instructor. The course website includes several digital storytelling tools, tips for using them, and student examples, Each medium and it resources are stand-alone, and may be used in several contexts. Most resource are attributed appropriately.
Concerns:
Very specific to this professor, course, and topic. Treatment and depth of mediums are uneven, and some examples are dated. Some links are not accessible outside of the university or are broken.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
The learning objectivess are clear, and reflect ICT litearcy standards. The materials all deal with digital productions but each medium works as a stand-alone module, which can be easily incorporated into assignments for different subjects and objectives. Using this webiste is useful for academic and professional life.
Concerns:
The quality and depth of coverage for the mediums is uneven, so learning is not always efficient. Very apparent it was build for this course and for this topic.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
This website embeds much media, and invites interaction in the use of the tools. The student examples help the user see feasible products. The website is easy to navigate independently, and there are many helpful videos and directions, even if no help feature is explicitly available.
Concerns:
From what I can best tell vidoes that are created for the textbook are in vimeo and not captioned. Videos that are borrowed rely on closed captioning of others and can't be edited. Either way, there are inconsistencies for accessibility. Overall the site has a good accessible layout but media, images, and video are lacking in that area.
Creative Commons:
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