Guidelines for Writing OER Curation Template

  1. Audience
    • High school teachers will be the primary audience who will read and use the OER.
    • High school students will read activity instructions & interact with the resources on the interactive flat panel (IFP), facilitated by the subject teacher. 
  2. Language 
    • Use very simple, easy to understand and grammatically correct language. Avoid jargon and complex sentences.
    • Brevity is key – keep the instructions as brief as possible while not missing out on the message that has to be conveyed. 
    • Instructions must be concise and specific. When a digital resource, or an affordance of the IFP is to be used, the instructions must include ‘what’, ‘how’ and the ‘where’ details. 
    • Use terms that are aligned with the textbook.
    • Use ‘Students’ instead of ‘Learners’. 
    • Use gender neutral language.
    • Use culturally sensitive language, images and artefacts.
    • Be consistent with language use and style across the OER templates.
  1. Learning Outcomes
    • Include a minimum of 1 learning outcome and a maximum of 4. The learning outcomes (refer to learning outcomes and academic standards in the  textbook) should be the kind that can be measured.
    • Begin with words such as ‘Explain’, ‘Analyse’, ‘Understand’ and so on.
  1. Activity, Teacher Notes and Assessment
    1. Please separate out (in different rows) ‘Activity’, ‘Teacher Notes’ and ‘Assessment’.
      This is important since the LMS team will take these instructions from the respective rows and paste them in the appropriate LMS interface, perhaps without reading through the instructions. Hence, clearly demarcated fields will help in authoring the content. 
    2. Activity: Students will read the text included under the head “Activity” facilitated by teachers.
      • Break down activity instructions into step-by-step action points. They must be easy for students to understand and help in conducting the activity with the digital interactive. Where appropriate, at the beginning, include a line about what the activity intends to do. 
      • There is no need to explicitly add a subheading “Activity Instructions”.
    3. Teacher Notes: Teachers will refer to these while preparing and planning for the class.
      • Include the intent of the activity, map it to the learning outcomes.
      • Suggest pedagogical prompts and teaching strategies.
      • Include Teacher Notes in the row after the Activity.
    4. Assessment:
      • Be specific about the assessment activity that can be done. Wherever possible, provide examples.
      • Where possible align with Higher Order Thinking questions from the textbook.
      • In grade 10, suggest an assessment that can help in the board exam.
    5. Avoid using the words ‘ teachers’ or ‘students’ in the instructions to the extent possible. Use “you” for Activity instructions (directed at students) as well as Teacher Notes (directed at teachers). Please refer to the model template annexed below.
      • Activity example: Measure the length of the sides of the quadrilateral using the ‘scale’ feature of the IFP. 
      • Teacher Notes example: Help students notice that there are equal numbers of positive and negative charges on the sweater, on the balloon and on the wall. 
    6. Wherever possible, give reference to page number in the textbook so that teachers and students can relate the OER with the textbook chapter.
      Example: (refer to page 65 in the textbook)
    7. Suggested Time:
      • Add a row ‘Total Time Required’ (after Learning Outcomes) and indicate the approximate overall time required (in minutes) to implement all the activities and assessment within the OER template. 
      • Also, in case of multiple activities within a template, the subject group may decide to indicate the time required for each activity in the ‘Suggested Time’ column. For instance, if there are 2 activities in a template, the ‘Suggested Time’ can be indicated for each of them separately, so that teacher can plan the class accordingly. 
    8. LMS view: On the learning management system (LMS) Activity text will appear just before the interactive resource which will be embedded either below the instructional text or in a next tab (there won’t be any links to click per se). Whereas, the teacher notes will appear as a distinct collapsible section or a separate tab for teachers to refer to.
      Example LMS view (for reference only, not the actual LMS): https://clixplatform.tiss.edu/raju.sambari%40tiss.edu/course/content/ 
  2. Resources
    • Download the resource, place it on the designated folder on the drive and provide the drive link of the file (resource) in the template. 
    • Follow the naming convention for resources should be as indicated in section 6.5 
    • Slide deck (PPT) and PDF can be made interactive using H5P:
      1. https://h5p.org/presentation  or
      2. https://h5p.org/image-slider 
    • Online only resources
      1. If there are any resources of good quality which are available only in online mode, then these can also be included.
      2. In such cases under the Activity include a line: Please connect the IFP with the internet before engaging with <name-of-interactive>.
      3. Wherever possible provide an alternative offline resource, on the concept so that schools which could not connect to the internet can still cover the concept.
    • Proprietary resources generally do not allow download and offline distribution (please check Terms of Use page on the website). To seek permission to download and distribute for offline usage, proprietary resources need to be contacted. Please fill the details in this sheet and let soham.bhattachrya@clixindia.org, raju.sambari@clixindia.org, sadaqat.mulla@clixindia.org  know.
    • Cite the source from which a resource has been taken and give attribution as outlined in section 8.2 below under the License & Attribution.
  1. Formatting
    • Template: Use the standard template and ensure placement of SCERT logo (on the top left corner) and TISS logo (on the top right corner). 
    • Use consistent formatting styles for text and multimedia across the templates. 
    • Text:
      1. Use ‘Arial’ fonts of size ‘12’
      2. 1.15 line spacing
      3. 10 for para spacing 
    • Date of Curation: XXth Month YYYY (Ex. 27th June 2023)
    • Naming convention:
      1. For the OER template: Subject-Grade<X>-Chapter<No.>-<Chapter-Name>-OER<No.>
        Example: Mathematics-Grade8-Chapter1-Rational Numbers-OER1
      2. For resources (need to be uploaded on the subject-wise drive folder “2.Resources” ):
        Subject-Grade <X>-Chapter<No.>-<Chapter Name>-OER<No.>- R<No.>

    Example: BioScience-Grade8-Chapter1-What is Science?-OER1-R1

    1. Authorship and Credits
      1. Curation has been a collaborative work. Give credits to different contributors as shown below: 
    CuratorsRP(s) followed by RA(s) Please note that while RPs are mentioned in both these rows  here, in the actual template,  RP names shall be written in only one of these rows, in accordance with point 2 of ‘Note’ given below this table 
    Review by Subject Matter ExpertRP(s) followed by SME followed by TISS faculty
    Review for Quality Control  QC Reviewer
    Review by SCERTSCERT Reviewer
    Note: Within a given sequence, names should be added in alphabetical order of first names. Ensure that the full name (first name and the surname) are provided.In cases where a person has contributed in more than one capacity, the name should appear only once in the primary role played for particular OER curation. The same name need not repeat.Add the name of the QC Reviewer and SCERT Reviewer after their respective reviews are done. 
    1. License & Attribution  
      • For every single resource (image, audio, video, interactive, animation, simulation, pdf etc.) that you have not created and taken from anywhere else, check the License details and Terms of Use page of the website (usually found at the bottom of webpage as a footer) to find out the exact terms under which the resource is available. Accordingly, indicate the license and attribution details for each resource below the resource link in the format given below.
      • Format for indicating License & Attribution of resources:
      • You are encouraged to explore the links below to develop a deeper understanding about open licenses.
        1. How to give CC attribution https://creativecommons.org/use-remix/attribution/ 
        2. Recommended practices for attribution https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Recommended_practices_for_attribution 
        3. What is a Creative Commons License? (CC Video Link)  
      • The overall OER template and individual H5P interactives will also be released under an open licence, details of which are being worked upon and will be communicated in due course.
    2. Model template