Frequently Asked Questions
The following Frequently Asked Questions have arised from the faculty members' participation in the "Open Courses" project:
The course material is already on CoMPUs, which are the additional benefits arising from this project?
It has been observed that many faculty members use the CoMPUs platform as a repository of their educational material, without having a common structure, providing sufficient information about their courses, and organizing their material in a proper way. This is case mostly because a lot of the faculty members may not have the technical skills in order to fulfill this duty sufficently. This project aims to upgrade the course content and structure according to specific standards. The development process of the Open Courses will be held by the support team.
The support team:
- Will reorganize the courses' structure and content, so that it will meet the project specifications.
- Will format the educational material, such as slides and notes, in such a way so that it can be accessible to people with disabilities.
- Will have an advisory role in collaboration with the faculty member for any issues concerning copyright.
- Will record and process multimedia content, such as videoconferences.
In addition, the Open Courses will be available through the national horizontal open course portal.
How long will it take to develop an Open Course
The courses are divided in two categories: in courses which follow the minimum standards and in courses which follow the full standards. The course development will be taken over by the support group. The role of a faculty member will be advisory, that means he will provide the educational material along with guidelines for the support team and will check the final result before it gets published.
The process of developing a course with full specifications is more time consuming, since the faculty member should check the videoconferences.
I have educational material but it is not in digital format
The support group can digitize the material, in case it is just a small part of the total content, since the project relies on the fact that most faculty members already have the educational material they use in their lectures in digital format
How often will the videorecordings take place?
The courses which follow the full standars must be videotaped in their entirety. For example, a 4-hour course per week will result in recording a total of 52 hours. The material will correspond to a specific academic semester and it will be available as the multimedia content of the Open Course.
Some sections of the course can be filmed again in the next available semester, provided that this process will be realized in an automatic way, providing an update of the Open Course. This does not mean that each academic year, a new Open Course will be created by taking advantage of the project resources.
How can I protect the educational material from plagiarism?
This can be realized by choosing specific licenses for the availability of the educational material. The project will use the Creative Commons licence. This type of license will be selected in collaboration with the faculty members, which will be provided with guidance for copyright management.
Is there a fee for the participation of a faculty member?
The faculty members involved in the development of courses which follow the full standards will be paid for every digital Lesson with type A+.
