Organizing Your Course Resources

Backward Design for Course Organization

Before delving into curating an OER it is good to consider the broader task of course curation. In other words, if you want to move your course over to be a zero textbook cost course or are unable to find a single OER resource, you may need to find a variety of OER resources to use throughout your course. You can then either use them separately or combine them into a single resource.

A course organization spreadsheet can help you organize and keep track of the resources for your course. The spreadsheet has room for all the information you will need to organize your course. The more completely you fill it out, the easier it will be when you are ready to make a single resource or integrate them into your online course.

Using the principles of backward design, you can start filling out a resource organizer such as the spreadsheets below. You will want to use the course outline, your syllabus, or other documents that break down the course into sections.

Template: Course Organization Spreadsheet (Google Sheets). To use this in your own Google Drive account, copy the template by selecting File, then "make a copy." You will then be able to edit your own copy of the spreadsheet.

Organizing Resources on a Spreadsheet

Below are the directions for using the spreadsheet templates above to organize resources for your course.

Copy the Google Sheet template by selecting File, then "make a copy." You will then be able to edit your own copy of the spreadsheet.
Using your course outline, syllabus, or other information, start by filling in the units of your course under the tab “Topic/Outcome/Lesson.” This will help you determine what sort of content you need to find for your course.
Think about how students are going to be assessed on the content. Do you already know what sort of evaluation method you will use? Fill this in now.
This next part is up to you. You can work systematically through your spreadsheet lesson by lesson, or you can fill out the spreadsheet as you find useful content.
To get a sense of what the spreadsheet will look like filled out, view a short example of the spreadsheet: Example of Template: Course Organization Spreadsheet (in Google Sheets).

Attributions

Spreadsheet adapted from "Getting Started: A Content Catalog," by Quill West, CCCOER, Licensed under CC BY 4.