Teaching Material Evaluation Criteria

This is a thought experiment

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to outline the criteria to be used for endorsing teaching material developed by OSGeo members and offered through the OSGeo site.

The edu Committee would be expected to either develop course material (in which case, it would be automatically "evaluated") or evaluate course material developed by others and submitted for evaluation. Once evaluated, the edu Committee would submit the course material to the Certification_Committee with a recommendation for recognition.

Different levels of recognition are possible -- "recognized," "certified," "endorsed."

Criteria

Required

1. Open-source-ness
   1. Software covered in the course is under an OSI approved license
   2. Material and data are available under an open content license (cf Open Knowledge Definition)
2. Peer-review-ness
   1. The material has been reviewed and admired by at least 2 people on the Edu committee
   2. Course-material has been available on the edu/OSGeo wiki for at least
3. Content quality
   1. Level of instruction
   2. Expected knowledge/training acquired after the course (what will the participant be able to do after going through the course)
   3. Length of course
   4. Physical presence required, or online (distance learning) course
   5. Kind of recognition given (certificate, diploma, degree)
   6. Breadth of course (how much ground do the various course components cover)
   7. Depth of course (how much in detail each course component is taught)
   8. Tutorial comes with metadata identifying author, date, length/timespan, audience type

Desirable

1. At least software from one OSGeo Software project is used

Levels of Recognition

1. Recognized

The edu Committee recognizes the course work to be of a certain quality (typically given to courses not prepared by the Committee, but submitted to it for recognition).

1. Endorsed

The edu Committee endorses the course work for inclusion in some broader course.

1. Certified

The edu Committee has been involved in, and certifies the course to be of a certain quality, intended to achieve a certain purpose (the highest level of recognition)