DScribe Process

dScribe Process

= Outline of the dScribe Process =

What is the dScribe Process?

 * dScribe is a participatory and collaborative initiative that brings together students, staff, faculty, and other self-motivated learners to work together toward the common goal of creating an open university.
 * dScribe engage in a variety of activities, including
 * open content production
 * open advocacy, promotion, and awareness
 * - open training
 * - open network and community building
 * - open resources identification, gathering, and recruiting
 * - open research

Course Content: students, staff, faculty and others work together

 * 1) Make Contact/Select License
 * Prior to the semester, a dScribe2 or member of the OER team meets with a faculty member about his or her interest in making lectures, syllabi, writings, websites or other educational materials openly licensed and available as OER. In this initial stage, the dScribe2 assists the faculty select and apply a Creative Commons license (or other Open Content License) to the selected course materials. If the faculty member elects to work with a student dScribe, the dScribe2 and faculty begin the process of recruiting a student enrolled in the faculty’s course to work as a dScribe. Some dScribes work on courses they have previously had. The preference is to work with the faculty as far in advance of the course as possible to ensure enough time for the student to become familiar with the material as well as to receive training in the dScribe methodology.
 * More details.
 * 1) Training
 * Once a dScribe is selected, the dScribe attends a training course led by more experienced dScribe2s and members of the OER team. Here, the dScribe


 * - learns about the movement on behalf of educators, professionals, and other creative people to share what they create as Open Educational Resources
 * - gains an understanding of the basics of copyright and why simply publishing and sharing what we create can create issues
 * - learns about ways to share content by selecting and applying Open Licensing
 * - develops techniques for soliciting educational material from faculty and students
 * - uses OERca, the web-based software our team has built to manage the gathering and clearing of content solicited from faculty and students
 * - develops a solid familiarity of places to find and share open content, including photos, educational content, music, documents, etc.
 * - becomes familiar the method of identifying and suggesting resolutions for copyright and privacy concerns within educational materials.


 * More details.


 * 1) Get Source Materials
 * Prior and during the training session, the faculty and dScribe work together to ensure that they have identified (and gathered as much as) the course material to be published as OER. Furthermore, dScribe ensures that the faculty or other participant will provide the educational materials in native file formats, e.g. MS PowerPoint (.ppt), MS Word (.doc), OpenOffice.org Writer (.odt). This ensures that we can make necessary edits to the content.
 * 1) Clear Materials
 * As the semester progresses, the dScribe uses their knowledge of the dScribe clearing and publishing process to review the faculty’s course materials, identifying copyright and other similar concerns. The dScribe uses OERca to keep track of these concerns, to recommended actions as he/she clears specific content, and to escalate questions to both the faculty and the assigned dScribe2. While face to face meetings provide the best result in creating OER, the benefit of OERca is the opportunity it gives all involved to collaborate remotely and work at their own pace.
 * More details.
 * 1) Edit Materials
 * After the material has been vetted for general content questions as well as potential copyright and privacy issues, the dScribe edits the material, inserting the necessary licensing information and citations into the given material.
 * More details.
 * 1) Publish Materials!
 * With the edits complete, the dScribe2 and faculty reviews the material, suggests any changes, and gives the Open.Michigan publishing team final notice to publish the material to the Open.Michigan OER website or other open content site.
 * More details.