Inquiry & OER Creation

Online Course

Welcome!

I'm Joan Upell and I'll be your instructor for TIE's Reaching Out: Inquiry & OER Creation online course. For the majority of my 40 years in education I've been a school librarian at K-5, K-8, and K-12 buildings. However, English teacher, college adjunct instructor, state consultant, and now working with TIE on the Reaching Out project are all part of those years too. I'm excited to get started on this professional development opportunity with you.

Please feel free to contact me at any time with any questions or concerns you may have about the course or the Reaching Out project:

Email: joan.upell@gmail.com Twitter: @wowapi Text: 605/200-1102 Facebook: facebook.com/joan.upell

Inquiry & OER Creation Course Syllabus

Course Timeline: Spring 2021

Inquiry & OER Creation is an asynchronous course and may be completed at your own pace. The course will be open from January 15, 2021 to April 30, 2021. Readings/viewings, activities and assignments are designed to equal a total of 15 hours of your time as required to earn one graduate college credit.

Course Description

Personal choice and voice are key components to successful face-to-face and virtual learning for today’s K-12 students. Open Educational Resources can support these strategies of inquiry and personalized learning in many formats. Through the readings, digital tool exploration, and OER creation activity in this course, school librarians will further develop their digital expertise in creating student-centered (voice and choice) curriculum and instruction.

Course Objectives

Explore and apply inquiry and personalized learning skills to the online environment

Collaborate with colleagues to expand student-centered curriculum and instruction

Create and upload OER content to the OER Commons platform

Collaborate with other librarians via online platforms

Evaluation Criteria

Participants will complete assigned reading and activities.

Participants will collaborate with classmates in online discussions.

Participants will collaborate with a colleague/s to contribute a resource to OER Commons

Course Evaluation

Assigned reading and activity completion 35 pts

Online discussion participation 10 pts

Final Project 35 pts

Course Reflection 20 pts

Grading: 90-100 A ; 80-89 B ; 70-79 C ; 60-69 D ; Below 60 F

Course Navigation

Each unit of the course is linked in the headers below with individual pages. Activities and assignments are linked beneath each unit. You may also access units by clicking on their headers listed in the upper right of this page.

Unit 1: Inquiry

  • Unit 1, Activity 1

  • Unit 1, Activity 2

Unit 2: Personalized Learning

  • Unit 2, Activity 1

  • Unit 2, Activity 2

Unit 3: OER Creation

  • Unit 3, Activity 1

  • Unit 3, Activity 2

Unit 4: Final Project and Course Reflection

  • Unit 4: Final Project

  • Unit 4: Course Reflection

Core Course Resources:

Course Activities and Assignments will require that you access the resources listed below, post to Facebook and/or Twitter, and submit some shared documents via Google Drive.

Chart a New Course: A Guide to Teaching Essential Skills for Tomorrow's World by Rachelle Dene Poth

AASL National School Library Standards and Crosswalks

OER Commons


This project was made possible in part by IMLS, grant RE-7018-0050-18.