Makeover OER Materials

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What is a Makeover?

Definition

Makeover = Innovative technologies that have been applied to the original material(s) to transform them into more usable, UDL, and effective resources(s). Edits to the branding, scope, and sequence are made to the original content as well.

Example:

Original Material: Electronics/Avionics -This original material submitted to SkillsCommons by the Air Washington grant project consisted primarily of MS Word and PDF documents.

Madeover Material: Electricity Makeover – The SoftChalk authoring platform was used to makeover the original MS Word and PDF documents into more interactive and significantly more accessible learning materials that could accelerate students’ learning.

Makeover Showcase

Looking for more examples of Makeovers?  Check out the Makeover Showcase!


Types of Makeovers

Makeovers can be divided into two types. Content Makeovers and Packaging and Delivery Makeovers. Below you will find examples of how to implement these different types of makeovers.

Content Makeovers

Content Makeovers can be implemented to improve material by introducing more accessible forms of material, implement an interactive layout and improve content navigation, just to name a few. Below are two examples outlining content makeovers.

  • Developing an interactive self-paced lesson – adding context and remediation to allow students to complete the lesson independently. Interactive exercises, embedded video and online activities all contribute to a highly experiential learner experience.
  • Adding interactivity – Creating Interactive Learning Experiences from Word Docs: Applied SoftChalk authoring platform to transform Word docs and PDF’s into more interactive and significantly more accessible learning materials that could accelerate students’ learning
  • Applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles – Improving a PDF Newsletter making it more engaging, improving accessibility, incorporating interactivity and adding responsive design.

Packaging and Delivery Makeovers

Packaging and Delivery Makeovers are makeovers that change how content can be moved around, consumed and deployed.  Below are four examples of packaging and delivery makeovers.

  • Leveraging Your Learning Management System – Organizing OER into a convenient and instructional organized learning management system that enables immediate use of the learning materials. Applied the Blackboard Learn product to enable easier navigation and discovery.
  • Converting to an eBook – Creating a user-friendly eBook from Word doc’s and PDFs. Applied the VitaSource EPub platform using an open source tool to transform Word docs and PDF’s into an ebook format with all the search and annotation capabilities.
  • Moving video to hosting – Demonstrating how submissions that capture and preserve large video files should also provide a link to a hosted form of the video.
  • Converting to an Apple iBook – Demonstrating the capability of enhancing the presentation of instructional content (MS Word Documents) and supporting materials (MS PowerPoint Presentations).

NOTE: These “makeover” examples are used to illustrate the potential for creating derivative works with vendors and their products of all types (open source and proprietary/ “small” and “large” applications). Showcasing these examples does not constitute an endorsement or preference for these vendors or products by SkillsCommons. SkillsCommons is developing a program to enable organizations, industries, institutions, and individuals to showcase their makeover examples.