Course Conversion Fellowship: Winter 2026 Math
- Introductions to each other
- Crash Course in Open Education
- Slides
- Review of Grant Requirements & LOIs
- Projects that might be inspiring:
- Group and individual goal-setting and discussion
- Read Parts 1-3 of The OER Starter Kit Workbook by Abbey K. Elder & Stacy Katz
- Read and watch videos of this Math Chapter
- Read Anderson, Nikki. Enhancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) in Open Educational Resources (OER), Australian Edition.
- prepare 2 quotes/ideas/highlights you’d like to discuss to the next meeting
- Accept invite from OE@KCC Commons group
- Review your syllabus – are there any changes you’d like to make?
- Sign and return your LOI to Shawna.
- Email Shawna your “pre” syllabus so it can be archived for grant, along with average number of sections per year and students per section
- Do an environmental scan- what OER/ZTC exists already that might work for your course?
- Click on the icons here to find lots of existing materials to adopt/adapt
- Are there any syllabi for related courses on CUNY Academic Works?
- Prepare a very quick summary of what you found/didn’t find to share with the group at our next meeting.
- Write an introduction/goal-setting blog post for the OE@KCC blog and post it
- these instructions will walk you through how to make a post.
- Progress Check-in
- Discussion of Nikki Anderson’s Enhancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and accessibility in OER
- Activity: syllabus/course/assignment review for diversity, equity, and inclusion
- Begin to convert syllabus, identify gaps, and ask for help
- Read Parts 4-5 of The OER Starter Kit Workbook by Abbey K. Elder & Stacy Katz
- Read Bali, M. What is Open Pedagogy Anyway?
- Read Ahamad et al, “Chapter 4: Sample OER Activities and Worked Examples”
- Prepare two ways that you might be interested in opening your pedagogy that you’d like to discuss with the group (these could be your own, or other people’s ideas that you’d like to adapt).
- Continue converting syllabus

- Check-ins
- Sharing & Discussion of two ways we might each be interested in opening up our pedagogy
- Resources:
- “Chapter 5: Open Pedagogy” in A Graduate Student’s Guide to Open Education and Scholarship
- A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Your Students
- Open Pedagogy Slides with clickable links
- KCC Open Pedagogy Fellowship Website
- Information on Liquid Syllabus is here and here
- Check out KCeL’s liquid syllabus for inspiration
- Sample CUNY Commons Syllabus/Course Template you can clone if you like
- Catch up on reading from prior meetings
- Sketch out an open pedagogy assignment of some sort that you might try out
- Create a My Open Math login (if you don’t have one already)
- Keep working on your syllabus conversion (email our group with any questions or stumbling blocks!)
- Progress Check-in
- Exploration of My Open Math
- Read Anderson, Nikki. Accessibility, Usability, and Universal Design for Learning in Enhancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) in Open Educational Resources (OER), Australian Edition.
- Finish first draft of your converted syllabus and share with the group.
- Provide written feedback on the other two syllabi in before meeting 5.
- Make a practice mini-course in MyOpenMath with one assessment that has 3-5 questions. Share the course id and key to the group, and then join your colleagues’ class as a student and complete the assignments. Be prepared to discuss your experience (as the professor and as a student) in Meeting 5)
- Check-ins
- Peer Review Update- what did you learn?
- Accessibility: Best Practices
- Why & How
- Quick Start to Accessibility:
- Use accessible fonts and make sure any colors are high contrast
- Use Styles to Add Headings
- Use the styles hierarchically
- Once applied, you can use use styles for the outline, table of contents, and to easily make font/color/size choices consistently across a whole document
- Information & How-To use Styles
- Add Alt-text to images (how/why to alt-text)
- Make URLs descriptive links, not word salad
- Option 3 below is best practice. Can you see why?
- here’s some interesting information on links and accessibility: https://www.nysed.gov/webaccess/create-accessible-hypertext-links
- For interesting information on links and accessibility, click here
- Information on Creating Accessible Hyperlinks
- Option 3 below is best practice. Can you see why?
- Run Accessibility Checker in Microsoft Word and make any necessary changes (check the warnings as well as the broken)
- Other notes:
- Audio-visual materials need captions and transcripts
- Verify the materials you’re linking to are also accessible (for example, can you select the individual words of PDFs?)
- Resources:
- Make any necessary revisions to your Converted Syllabus
- Prepare to present and deposit
- Write one blog post and post it to the OE@KCC blog, reflecting on what you’ve done and learned throughout the year and any ways this project has informed your thinking about teaching and learning
- Feedback on syllabi
- Reminder of Grant Requirements
- Have your chair mark your class as ZTC in CUNYfirst going forward
- check it each semester and request it to be corrected if necessary)
- Add a notation: This is a Zero Textbook Cost Course.
- Add a CC license and deposit to CUNY Academic Works
- instructions for depositing
- Send the link to Shawna once it has been accepted
- Make final blog post (if you haven’t already)
- Have your chair mark your class as ZTC in CUNYfirst going forward
- Presentations
- Reflections on the Project & Suggestions for Improvement
- Deposit and Celebrate!!!

