Administrator’s Standards of Operation

Introduction

GoOpen CT is a movement of teachers, professors, students, leaders, and policy makers embracing the use of open educational resources (OER) across our state. To support these efforts, the Connecticut Commission for Educational Technology has invested in a statewide repository and supports the collaborative efforts of all educational stakeholders in the state. Connecticut’s OER repository is powered by ISKME and is part of the OER Commons network.

Benefits

By participating in this statewide K-20 effort, institutions will be able to highlight the innovative OER work happening within the classroom as well as collaborate on the adoption or creation of OER across all boundaries.

Each institutional space provides the opportunity for:

• Increases in the visibility of institutional and faculty efforts
• Increases in the discovery of those resources by others in and outside of the institution
• Increases in the access of affordable content to instructors and students
• Increases in local control of content collections
• Decreases in cost to obtain, create, maintain, and store content

Administrative Strategy

Goals

It is recommended that institutions pull together stakeholder groups to discuss the overall goals and usage of Go Open CT, as usage may influence administrative strategy and supports needed.

Some possible use-cases may be:

• Institution-Wide Only
• Departmental
• Special Projects
• Solicited Submissions vs. At-Will Submissions

Governance Structure & Process

Steering Committee

It is recommended that institutions form a standing Steering Committee that may aid in the following:

• Determining goals and scope of the effort
• Determining the model of submitting content (Auto-Acceptance vs. Review/Approve)
• Determining the role, size, and length of service for a Review Board
• Determining the institutional structure within Go Open CT (e.g., hubs, groups, folders)
• Defining an Appeals Process for any rejected works
• Defining Editing Privileges for staff reviewing/supporting submitted content (e.g., tags, spelling, licensing)
• Defining a Maintenance Schedule for any accepted works

TIP: A closed approach where each submission must be reviewed and approved prior to public access is a good safeguard against accidental submission of copyright protected or inaccessible content.

Review Board

If instituting a formal review and approval process, it is suggested that a Review Board be constructed of at least three individuals and scaled to match the intended usage.

While contributors are subject to the Go Open CT Terms of Use, errors and omissions may occur related to copyright, accessibility, and content functionality. Review Board members may consider reviewing the following elements:

• Copyright clearance of all content elements
• Proper Creative Commons Licensing (and attribution)
• Quality Assurance to ensure the content can be accessed, opened, and is in readable form
• Accessibility Check (WebAIM's WCAG 2 Checklist)
• Adherence to the Go Open CT Terms of Use
• Reviewing the content for non-public information (e.g., test banks)
• Reviewing/enhancing metadata/tags associated with the content
• Ensuring the content is placed in the appropriate structure (e.g., folder, group, hub)
• Providing guidance and remediation steps, if necessary

Organizational Structure

Each participating institution will be granted a hub site within Go Open CT. ISKME, the software developer, defines a hub as a “customizable, branded resource center…where a network of users can create and share collections, administer groups, and share news and events associated with a project or organization.”

Based on your administrative strategy, an institutional hub site may contain one or many groups and folders to separate and present content. Hub administrators will be able to customize the branding and description of the site as well as add/edit content sections and enable calendar events. Administrators will also be able to add existing or create new Collections of curated content. Existing and new Groups can be added in the same manner. Within the groups area, Folders can be created to categorize the content (e.g., discipline, level).

Training

While the repository provides a robust Go Open CT Help Center, administrator and contributor training may be necessary. It is recommended that institutional tutorials be created that match the administrative strategy and hub configuration. Training should be made available to both contributors and administrators/review board members.