For Faculty Interested in creating Open Content or an Open Course from the Start

Letter Template - For Faculty Interested in creating Open Content or an Open Course from the Start Dear ____,

It was great to meet/speak with you and talk about not only making your courses a part of the Open.Michigan OER collection (open educational resources) but also about participating more in the open community on campus. Here are several resources which may be helpful as you plan for your course:

1) Introduction to Creative Commons licenses - I gave you a quick overview of the different types of creative commons license conditions (e.g. commercial vs. noncommercial; share alike for derivatives or future adaptations, etc). Here is a two page summary of those conditions: https://open.umich.edu/wiki/images/a/af/Cc_licenses.pdf. You can also use the CC license chooser to select a license for your work: http://creativecommons.org/license/.

2) Permission Forms - We have our own permission forms for faculty to select which Creative Commons license they would like to attach to their work. We recommend the CC BY or Attribution Only license since it is the most flexible and allows others to charge a fee to cover distribution costs (e.g. CDs), if necessary. Here is our online permission form: https://open.umich.edu/oerperm/U-M_Participants_OER_Permission-General.html.

3) Search engines for open content - This page contains a list of sites where you can find open content (e.g. public domain or Creative Commons), which will serve as your alternative to Google image search: https://open.umich.edu/wiki/Open_Content_Search.

4) Other useful documentation - We're working on some documentation to help faculty like you who are interested in creating OER. Here is our page in progress: https://open.umich.edu/wiki/Open_Content_How-to. You can view our published content at https://open.umich.edu/education.

5) Directory of open access journals - I mentioned this directory, which you might find useful in pulling out articles for your course (or for publishing your own work in the future): http://www.doaj.org/. You can also contact Melissa Levine (&lt;mslevine AT umich DOT edu&gt;, Lead Copyright Officer) for more information about open access mandates, including NIH's and U-M's current open access work.

6) SI 521 - OER at U-M - Joseph Hardin (&lt;hardin AT umich DOT edu&gt;, OER @ U-M) taught this course last year on open educational resources. His students also contributed to an open wikibook as a part of the course: http://mediaonion.com/si521/index.php/Main_Page. Joseph is also heavily engaged in Open.Michigan and has a lot of interest in researching openness in education.

Please send any questions that you have about the OER creation process to open.michigan AT umich DOT edu.

I look forward to working with you.

Regards, ________