Resource approval process

A proposal for updating the review process

The purpose of this document is to describe a vision on how the resource approval process might evolve in a future iteration of the Curated Courses project.

Current Resource Approval Process

  • Via "Add resource" the submitter provides some metadata at https://curatedcourses.org/assets/new
  • This adds the resource to the moderation queue
  • A moderator can then click “approve” which makes the resource show up publicly
  • There is currently no feedback mechanism to the submitter

Metadata to be Collected in the New Approval Process

  • Approval date
  • Last successful use
  • Last successful URL download
  • Submitter user (so we can bug that person when the url breaks)
  • Metadata should include video length

Where does this all fit into our tagging system?

Ideas for the New Approval Process

We are pretty much conflating mathreviews and a journal review process.

  • First: Math is right? Education is right?
  • Then: tags are right? If not, how should they be revised?
  • Is the resources small enough to be reusable?
  • Is the existence of source part of the approval process?
  • Accessibility approval? The tex for slides is a way of dealing with accessibility. We shouldn't reject on basis of accessibility but there should be feedback to iterate on best practices.
  • Is this resource actually licensed for inclusion in the repository?
  • Is the resource actually free of cost? Openly licensed?
  • Follow journal model: submit something, get it either accepted, rejected, or send back for edits
  • Multiple tiers to filter quickly
  • Is a blinded review process possible?
  • Starring system? Upvoting? Downvoting?

Comments and Questions

  • We don't want to approve "my linear algebra website" but rather "a great video from your website."
  • Is a textbook a resource that we want to include?
  • A tag or way of noting a "larger" reference
  • Content being used recently and not downvoted is evidence of goodness
  • Is this useful pedagogically? Or is it something just reading a book outloud?
  • Is this new or does this already exist?
  • Should students be reviewing?

Identifying Duplicates

Do we want 50 videos on row reduction?

  • Find a way to identify child resources
  • Identify pre- and post- activities? This is a matter of opinion?
  • How do we identify "Questions" related to a video?

CV-able stuff

Our vision is to find a way to have our review system aid in promoting the fact that creation of good educational resources is an activity that should "count" in tenure and promotion decisions. Ideally an accepted, refereed set of open educational resources should count as a "publication". How do we get there?

  • Promoting to societies (AMS, AWM, MAA, SIAM, etc.)
  • Should the creative use of OER's be a CVable activity?
  • How does this solve someone's problem? What's better about this than just using khan academy videos? Or something like 3Blue1Brown?

Tags

  • There should be some explanation about the tags
  • Titles are not so useful we refer to papers by author because that encodes more information
  • Principles about titles: no abbreviations for instance
  • Hover over tags, various ways of displaying the title of a tag
  • Ellipsis can be used to save space