A Course Hub is a central repository of resources for a course, including the course outline, online lessons, help and support materials, and more. It is intended for both students and faculty. Although Course Hubs are hosted on the OpenLab, they are publicly available and for use by all faculty (whether using Blackboard, OpenLab, or another platform).
Course Hubs are designed to be a resource repository and are not intended for direct communication between students and the faculty member. If you are building a Course Hub, it is helpful to create a corresponding Model Course that links to the Course Hub resources and can be cloned by faculty. For more information discuss with your workshop coordinators and see Model Course Development guide.
A Course Hub…
- provides a shared, centralized collection of course resources for easy updating and communications.
- contains shared resources, including the syllabus, lessons, support materials, and more.
- is an OpenLab Project that can be used by faculty and students in conjunction with a cloned Model Course. A cloned Model Course houses section-specific information with links to resources and lessons on the Course Hub.
- can be developed for both students and faculty, for faculty only, or for students only.
- is created by the course coordinator and/or faculty member(s) with subject matter expertise.
- is identified with a ‘Department Resource’ badge on the OpenLab.
- is considered an open education resource (OER). An OER uses a Creative Commons license which lets others edit and remix the material.
- has been approved by the course coordinator or Department Chair.
Goals and Benefits
- To provide students with access to high-quality course content for a unified approach to distance, hybrid, and in-person teaching.
- To ensure continuity of curriculum.
- To reduce redundant work for Course Coordinators and teaching faculty.
- To promote the use of best practices and consistent approaches using web-enhanced course materials and methods.
- To encourage the use of open educational resources and open pedagogical methods to equalize access to educational materials.
- To lower barriers to entry for faculty who have less experience with technology and digital pedagogy.
Course Hub Examples
Below is an example of a Course Hub that was built for MAT 1275 College Algebra and Trigonometry.
Current, past, or future students in MAT 1275, find basic course information (like the syllabus), online lessons for each day of the course, and links to support materials like review sheets, tutoring information, WeBWorK help, and more.
Faculty members teaching MAT 1275 find information from the department, faculty resources for using WeBWorK, and training and other support materials.
Additional Course Hubs
Browse the complete list of Department-approved Course Hubs found in the Projects section of the OpenLab with the badge “Department Resource.”
