Uploading Process
Answer: Yes. Please choose one lead college in the consortium to submit each of the types of curriculum so it’s only submitted into www.skillscommons.org once for the entire consortium. You should tag/reference the other consortium members who also used the same curriculum in the description field.
If there is a substantial variation that may be of interest to others, you might want to post both versions in that case and explain the difference.
Answer: Many of the Grantees have found it more manageable if they have a few people designated to upload the material. We recommend each grant designating a person (or a few people) who will become skilled in uploading and cataloging the materials. You will likely have few problems and can develop efficiencies by managing the uploading process. Ultimately, it is up to you how you want to manage the process.
Here is a link to a brief form that needs to be completed for those who want to have a user account setup on SkillsCommons to contribute material: Create New Account Form
Answer:
Learning Resources are the materials that are used for teaching a course. See a list of all Learning Resource Material Types.
Program Support Materials are the materials used to administrate or support the course. See a list of all Program Support Material Types.
Answer: SOMETIMES YES – SOMETIMES NO Although program management and implementation tools, outreach materials, and other program support materials are tangible items that could be considered “works” produced through your grant project, these items are not necessarily considered deliverables unless explicitly described as such in a grantee’s SOW. Grantees should use their discretion in consultation with their FPO about which of these to submit to the Department.
In determining whether to submit an item, grantees should keep in mind that some of these materials that support your curricula and course materials may be necessary in order to understand, learn from, and replicate your work. These may include course descriptions, outreach materials, such as those that describe the programs of study for your workforce system and other stakeholders and partners, or materials that document best practices in grant management. In other cases, these materials may be research studies on how to better serve a specific target population. These materials would be considered important to understanding your grant program of study deliverables and should be submitted together with the curricula and course materials using http://www.skillscommons.org/ with open license and disclaimers, as appropriate. In the repository, these should be identified and categorized as “Program Support Materials” using the appropriate meta-data schema.
Other items, such as meeting minutes, organizational charts, institutional policies, that are created as a result of the operation of your grant program may provide useful information for understanding the administration of grant activities at your institution. In cases where these items are more appropriately considered records, grantees should follow their institution’s policy on records management, which should be in alignment with Federal record-keeping requirements.
Answer: Skills Commons should contain an original, complete copy of the material being hosted.
Answer: The Based on URL can be linked to anything even a proprietary source that you are noting in the introduction of the deliverable.
Answer: There are no character limits for the SkillsCommons.org form fields.
Answer: The embargo feature is for restricting access to assessments.
The embargo feature restricts access to files that are attached to submissions. You can place an embargo date on the file. If a user clicks on an embargoed file a message will appear letting them know that the file is restricted. They can at that time request access to the file. An email will be sent to the submitter letting them know that this person has requested access. It is then up to the original submitter (who uploaded the file) whether or not to allow this person access. If the submitter allows access then an email will be sent to the requester with a link to download the file. It is up to the submitter who gets this request to verify who the person is making the request and also up to the submitter on whether or not to approve it.
Please refer to our Embargo Guide for more information.