Dear Colleagues,
We wanted to share this information from UUP Central:
UUP learned yesterday that it’s not taking profiteers long to try to cash-in on COVID-19. In the rush to move coursework to ‘distance learning’ options, the SUNY Open Education Resources (OER) Services pushed the information below to campuses in an attempt to get colleges to encourage their faculty to register for their ‘free’ online education ‘shells’ that can be used to start basic online course construction seemingly saving the instructor time (see below). Also, if this format is used the students can get ‘free’ e-books that follow the OER course. Seems like a win-win? However, the quality of the materials (offered by Lumen Reading) is very low quality, forces the instructor to follow materials built-into the course which is a challenge to academic freedom and allows Lumen to collect data on course materials and users to market to in the future. It’s basically a loss-leader for Lumen to gain data. UUP is also concerned that copyrights to instructor works may not apply (as much of the material comes from Lumen), and review for tenure may be compromised if the work is not found to be of sufficient rigger by a tenure committee or supervisory reviewer. In short, we’re recommending that members stay away from this Trojan Horse.
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Given recent developments we are reaching out to make sure all SUNY faculty are aware of the high-quality digital course materials and related instructional technologies available through SUNY’s Ready-to-Adopt Course Catalog. All of these offerings:
- Are available to SUNY students and faculty at NO COST
- Include ancillary materials (e.g slides, assignments, test banks, etc.)
- Meet accessibility standards
- Seamlessly integrates with your Learning Management System (LMS)
Courses, which can be requested through the catalog, can be set up within a few minutes and customized to meet your own needs.
To assist faculty who need to move courses online, we will be offering a series of webinars which will provide an overview of the set up process and best practices for online delivery. Currently scheduled webinars include:
- Friday, March 13th: 10 am – 11 am [REGISTER]
- Friday, March 13th: 11 am – 12 noon [REGISTER]
- Friday, March 13th: 1 pm – 2 pm [REGISTER]
- Friday, March 13th: 2 pm – 3 pm [REGISTER]
- Saturday, March 14th: 10 am – 11 am [REGISTER]
- Saturday, March 14th: 12 noon – 1 pm [REGISTER]
- Sunday, March 15th: 12 noon – 1 pm [REGISTER]
SUNY’s Ready-to-Adopt OER Courses are supported through a partnership between SUNY OER Services, Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI) and Lumen Learning.
Mark McBride
Library Senior Strategist
Office of Library and Information Services
The State University of New York
State University Plaza – Albany, New York 12246
Tel: 518.320.1655 Fax: 518.320.1554
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