CityTech Stories Podcast – OER Faculty Fellows

We’re excited to announce a new edition of CityTech Stories, the official podcast of the Ursula C. Schwerin Library. Most recently, we featured Prof. Colleen Birchett, and Prof. Christopher Swift, who spoke of their experiences using Open Educational Resources – materials that are hosted online, free of charge for use by students and faculty alike.
Through the Open Educational Resources Faculty Fellowship, designed by librarian Cailean Cooney, participants get an in-depth look at the economics of the scholarly landscape. In the move towards open resources, faculty are encouraged to seek out material in their discipline through various OER repositories, and Open Access publications. In the podcast above, Prof. Colleen Birchett speaks about her own path towards implementing OER, for the course Home Away From Home: Stories from the Diaspora, and impacts on both course design and content. An excerpt from her interview: “One of the limitations that I’ve faced as an instructor is the fixed content in a given textbook: someone else decides, and that’s their worldview, and their pedagogical view. Whose voices get heard and whose don’t?”
“Chinatown, Grant Avenue, San Francisco, California” by Ken Lund is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
We’re so happy to present these excellent reflections by CityTech faculty, a window into the innovative pedagogy that continues to be inspired by the Fellowship. Thank you for listening!

Spotlight on an OER

As you work on developing your course site, it’s helpful to see what others have done at CityTech. Below is an OER course site developed through the OER programming here at CityTech, by Prof. Theodora Siranian.

The site’s clean appearance is amplified by a photo of the Brooklyn Bridge, which helps orient visitors to its content. The overall cohesion  is supported by the layout: students can quickly navigate to their Syllabus, Research Project, and Essay Assignments from the main menu bar.

Prof. Siranian notes the program, “helped me create an open-access, resource-sharing site for my English 1101 course. This site provides my students with cost-free access to the course’s entire curriculum, and creates a wonderful digital synthesis between classroom activities, homework, and long-term projects.” 

If students are seeking additional writing resources, those are also available under “Helpful Style & Grammar Resources,” such as the Purdue OWL site, and Excelsior OWL. CityTech resources, such as links to the Atrium Learning Center and New Student Center are found on the homepage, where students are most likely to find them.

Prof. Siranian’s site achieves visual simplicity, while also providing a direct path to important content. She also confirmed that the student experience has been strongly positive: the class “has been extremely receptive to [the site’s] accessibility and cohesion.”