OERs

AHTR has happily been the recipient of the good graces of CUNY (The City University of New York) for two recent projects. Last week we debuted several additions to the Visiting the Museum Resource. This week we are excited to announce the development of successful models for using Open Educational Resources (OERs). Created in collaboration with Baruch College at the City University of New York, AHTR’s OER Repository benefits from a New York State grant of $4,000,000 for CUNY to establish, sustain, and enhance ongoing Open Education Resource (OER) initiatives across its campuses. While there are now many resources available for art history faculty enabling us to move from the traditional textbook, it is not always clear how those sources can be incorporated in pedagogically sound ways into the courses we teach. The goal is to create a Repository that not only includes course content, but also offers insight into how these resources can be effectively used in class. The OERs materials added to AHTR will provide an overview of Open Educational Resources with a focus on OERs as an opportunity to expand pedagogical choices, develop student information literacy, introduce a wider variety of course materials, and embrace interdisciplinarity. We will focus on OERs that may be of special interest to art history (beyond the wonderful smarthistory.org and museum websites). AHTR will publish materials authored or curated by art history faculty that introduce the resources, sample assignments, and other teaching artifacts that including a brief description of an OER; an assignment,lesson plan, or in-class activity using one of the open texts or resources contributed; and an introduction to teaching the materials. All materials will be given a Creative Commons license in order to make it explicit that it can be used freely.

We are currently editing these resources and will be adding them through a new tab under Resources in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!