OpenLab Model Course Initiative, 2022: Checklist

If you have additional questions about how to accomplish anything in this checklist, please contact the OpenLab Community Team at openlab@citytech.cuny.edu. If you have questions related to course materials, attribution, and intellectual property and/or copyright please contact Cailean at ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu. 

Site Structure

  • Site Title and Tagline
    • Have you updated the default tagline? A format is provided for model courses; provide an appropriate tagline for course hubs. (These can be changed in Dashboard > Settings > General.)
  • Header image
    • Have you uploaded a header image (ideally Creative Commons licensed or in the public domain) that is different from the default header?
    • Have you provided attribution for the header image?
  • About information
    • Have you provided information about the site to orient users to it? (See the Math 1575 Course Hub for an example.)
  • Menu/Navigation
    • Have you adapted the custom menu to meet your needs?
    • Are your menu labels short, succinct, and readily understandable to students?
    • Does your menu contain the minimum number of items possible?
    • Have you checked the links by clicking on all menu items?
    • If you use dropdowns in your menu, have you included links to all dropdown items on the top-level page?
  • Widgets 
    • Have you edited the sidebar widgets from the default language, as applicable?

License and Attribution

Usability and Accessibility

Openness and Membership

(model courses are designed to be cloned by individual faculty members for use with their students)

(this is to avoid confusion; course hubs are not designed to be cloned by individual faculty members and used with their students)

Cleanup and Testing

  • Have you deleted or disabled unused content, pages, posts, categories, tags, images, or plugins? (All content in your model course site will be cloned, so you should remove anything that is unnecessary or could be confusing to students or faculty.)
  • For model courses, have you tested “shared cloning” of your model course, and made any needed fixes? (Watch for anything that could be confusing to a faculty member.)

Acknowledgements: This checklist is based on the OER Checklist by Andrew McKinney, Bree Zuckerman, and Cailean Cooney, with additional content from the COMD Model Course Development Guide by Jenna Spevack.