Quality OER Made Easy With NROC’s HippoCampus

If Open Educational Resources (OER) are good and free, then why isn’t everyone using them? This is a question the team from the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) has been asking teachers at conferences around the country.

While awareness is the number one reason cited, the other primary reason is the time factor in seeking out resources that are

• Of consistent high quality (vetted),
• Curricula appropriate,
• Easy to adapt, and
• Maintained both editorially and technically.

The Hewlett-funded NROC project has focused on these concerns with the development of HippoCampus.org, a public website that offers over 2,500 multimedia learning objects in 34 course areas and 9 disciplines. A search feature across the HippoCampus database encourages cross-disciplinary uses of the resources at the site. This site is free to individual teachers and students across the world to support learning.

Central to NROC’s model for sustainability, which allows the content to be maintained and grown over time, are institutional memberships to the NROC Network. Organizations wishing to integrate the content into shared curriculum offered within institutional course management systems, or to host the content locally, are asked to help support the project through modest membership dues. iStream subscribers qualify for deeply discounted memberships and may access an advertising-free version of the HippoCampus site through the iStream community (http://www.league.org/istreamsite/nroc_index.cfm).

OER success is determined first and foremost by the number of folks accessing the material, so please spread the word about HippoCampus.org! To learn more about joining the NROC Network, please contact Terri at trowenhorst@montereyinstitute.org.