In the summer of 2016, nine English 302 instructors, with support from grants from the GMU 4-VA OER initiative and the GMU College of Humanities and Social Sciences Term Faculty Development Fund, created an eleven-item collection of Open Educational Resources (OER) for English 302 -- creative commons licensed assignments and activities – and made them available to the English 302 instructor community as a whole via a Blackboard organization.
During spring and summer of 2018, with help from a second round of 4-VA OER funding, an eleven-member team will continue the project by transitioning the collection to a public-facing platform hosted by Mason Journals, and adding additional items developed by members of the composition program’s 2016-2017 learning communities, a professional development initiative funded by the Students as Scholars initiative.
In addition to making classroom-tested, peer-reviewed, learning goal-aligned curricular materials to the English 302 community (and, with the advent of the public-facing site, the larger composition community), the team has found that the process of creating and reviewing items for the collection offered members of the team opportunities for collaboration, conversation, and reflection on their own pedagogical practice. By the end of the current stage of the project, they hope to extend these opportunities to the English 302 instructor community as a whole by developing ongoing processes for submission and review.
March 06, 2018
