OERu/Style guide

Guidelines for sub-elements of an OERu course

 * This guideline aims to promote consistency of language for OERu courses.
 * OERu courses will be subdivided into Units
 * Where possible, courses should not include more than three hierarchical levels
 * The preferred nomenclature is Course --> Unit --> (Free choice for naming of this level, eg section, lesson, study unit, etc)
 * Developers will have flexibility regarding preferred naming conventions for additional sub-levels, for example, sub-section, but should be used consistently within the specific course.


 * Note: These guidelines were adopted based on the recommendations of a rough consensus poll.

Guidelines for acknowledging original course contributors

 * When uploading learning materials for the first time in WikiEducator, the copyright of the original rights holder must be acknowledged in the comment summary box before saving the page. For example: Copyright: OER Foundation, under CC-BY license. Source: http://oerfoundation.org/files/OERu/OERu2011-11_Report-A.pdf . This should appear as the first edit comment on the relevant history page.
 * Copyright acknowledgement must be done in accordance with the requirements of the respective copyright license.
 * In the absence of this copyright acknowledgment, the page may be deleted without notice.
 * Where the original contributor (first person creating the page) has omitted this copyright acknowledgment, they should make an insignificant edit, for example adding a space and inserting the copyright acknowledgement in the edit comment which will appear on the history of the relevant page.
 * Each OERu course resource (a collection of pages) will contain a copyright page as a subpage of the respective collection acknowledging the original contributors and license. The copyright page must include a clear statement that subsequent versions are enhanced by the WikiEducator community. For consistency and the possible inclusion of machine-readable metadata, we recommend the use of Template:OERu_Copyright.  For example:


 * The OER Foundation, on behalf of the OERTen, will list the OERu courses and their original contributors on a public website.
 * Course developers should not include institutional logos of the original contributors on OERu course pages or navigation templates.

Course guide

 * Each OERu course should develop a generic introductory resource called a  Course guide
 * The Course guide should include a course overview, outcomes, list of resources and assignments.
 * To facilitate reuse across the OERu network, the Course guide should not include institution specific information, for example, university contact numbers. These will be provided by the respective institutions who decide to reuse OERu courses locally.
 * OERu partners are free to develop their own custom assessments. In cases where partners choose not to use the original assessments, they take responsibility for developing the customised assessments. (As a wiki, customised assessment pages can be incorporated into unique course collections for individual institutions.)

Community-based question and answer forum

 * The OERu 2012 prototype courses will trial AskBot as a question and answer database for content specific and general student support.
 * Further detail to be developed the wiki way.

Images

 * Images should be placed in a frame or thumbnail
 * Captions should be used within the frame or thumbnail
 * Metadata relating to attribution, license, source etc. should be included on the image page (not on the content page).
 * Layout considerations taking into account different screen sizes for viewing content and print-versions of the pages
 * Avoid placing images directly after each other - -separate with text
 * When using photos or images and aligning these left or right, we recommend an image size of 350 - 400 pixels, unless the context justifies a smaller or larger image. Larger images should be centered on the page.)
 * Before uploading a new image to WikiEducator, consider searching and using an image from commons.wikimedia.org, as these images are fully documented as to attribution, license, source, etc. and easy to add to any page on WikiEducator (see using an image from Wikimedia Commons). And of course you are encouraged to upload openly copyrighted images to commons.wikimedia as a way to "share the wealth" (upload instructions).

Editorial checklist

 * 1) Check the discussion tab for any outstanding or unresolved issues.
 * 2) Ensure that all internal links use the wiki syntax for internal links (i.e. Pipe and not Pipe )
 * 3) Check each image for proper metadata and license information, and verify the license at the source especially incorrect Creative Commons licenses, for example: re-licensing a CC-BY-NC-SA image as CC-BY in WikiEducator.