What Is This?

What is this?

"Where am I?" would have been my first question, but this one's good, too.  We're glad that you asked. 

What is this?  This is a free and open course designed to nutshell open-resource philosophy as well as encourage instructors of composition and rhetoric to participate in generating, collecting, licensing, and sharing free and modifiable educational resources. 

Whew!  That was a mouthful.  Perhaps a catchier intro is necessary (take your own advice, teacher).  Start again.

What is this?  This is a free and open course designed to let you in on some cutting-edge ideas for improving student learning while actually reducing your long-term workload and keeping your use of materials legal in the information age. 

Too good to be true?  Not at all. 

With open educational resources, you've got the whole world ready to back you up.  Think back on all the times you've thought, "Wow.  It would be great if I could just pluck a handout about parallelism out of the ether and use it as I see fit without worrying about getting sued."  Now read this: You can with OER, and you don't have to worry about stepping on anyone's copyright toes.

Byte: Sometimes you'll see a sentence or two emboldened like this.  These "Bytes" are vital points, so read them!

Byte: (Already another one...)  For those educators out there in a field other than composition, rhetoric, and literature, don't think this MOOC isn't for you.  A considerable portion of this course will be relevant to anyone interested in getting familiar with open resources.

Depending on your method of operation and internet connection speed, this course should take somewhere between 2 and 3 hours to complete.

Click the little "next" button at the lower right to continue with the tutorial.