Practice:OCL4Ed/Course guide/Assessment options

Three ways to engage in this course

 * 1) Self-directed interest: Learners in this category select concepts, topics and activities during the course according to personal interests. Sip and dip into sections of the course which you find interesting. A good way to interact with fellow participants is using microblog posts and selected forum posts is where appropriate. Many learners in this category participate actively during all sessions of the course, however there are no minimum participation requirements for self-interest learners.
 * 2) Certification for active participation: Certification for participation is based on the achieving the minimum participation metrics specified below. The  course offers two forms of certification for participation:
 * 3) * A free digital badge from the OER Foundation confirming that you have met the minimum participation requirements or
 * 4) * Certificate of participation issued as a PDF document confirming that you have met the minimum participation requirements. The issue of a PDF "Certificate of Participation" carries a nominal fee which contributes to the costs of issuing the Certificate.
 * 5) Learning for credit: Learners studying for credit are required to complete and submit the course assignment in addition to the minimum specified participation requirements. The formal assessment services will be provided by the UNESCO-COL Chair in OER at Otago Polytechnic. Otago Polytechnic provides formal assessment on a fee for service basis and successful achievement  will carry 5 credits towards the 15 credit Open Education Practice elective in the Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education.

Certification options and fees
You can participate in this course for free. In addition to the free learning, we offer a number of certification options:


 * Digital participation badge issued by the OER Foundation for learners who achieve the minimum specified participation requirements (Cost: Free).
 * Printed certificate of participation issued by the OER Foundation (Donation contributing towards the cost of issue NZ$10).
 * Micro-credential issued by Otago Polytechnic for successful learners who complete the formal assessment requirements. This micro-credential will carry credit towards the Open Education Practice Elective of the Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education to be offered by the OERu. (Cost: NZ$80)

Two categories of activities
Learning activities in this course are divided into two categories:

Registering usernames and IDs for tracking participation
Certification for participation is optional. Learners meeting the minimum participation specifications can apply for an OCL4Ed participation badge at no cost or request a pdf certificate of participation for a nominal fee. This is an experimental feature we are trialling with OCL4Ed 13.09.

Note that you will be required to register the following information on the course landing page before you commence activity on the course:


 * Your Google+ ID: Go to your profile page in Google+ and copy the URL. (You can also just use the 21 digit id number.)
 * Twitter nickname: that is the @Name. So for example, @Mackiwg would type Mackiwg on the registration page.
 * The URL of the public view of your blog, for example: http://yourblogname.wordpress.com or http://yourblogname.blogger.com (Note: Do not enter the URL of your dashboard page which you use for editing your blog.)

The participation certification is experimental and provided on an "AS-IS" and "AS-AVAILABLE" basis. Students are responsible for entering the correct information on registration. As this feature relies on 3rd party websites, we are unable to guarantee that these services will be operational for the duration of the course and we cannot guarantee that late registrations will track all your activity. Please note that the automated participation metric is final as we do not have the resources to attend to individual appeals in cases where the automated participation metrics may differ from what you believe these to be.