Peer Review

College Composition I - ENG 111

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Mar 12, 2017 by Teacher Education

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

Pioneering zero textbook cost courses and degree programs since 2012, Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) is the first community college to fully share its OER degree pathways and courses for others to use and build on.

NOVA’s Extended Learning Institute (ELI) and Lumen Learning have teamed up to make these “zELI” courses and degree pathways broadly available to the education community. These courses fulfill all requirements for NOVA Associate’s degrees in General Studies and Social Sciences. Published with open, Creative Commons licenses, anyone can freely use, revise, remix and repurpose the courses.

Type of Material:

Online Course

Recommended Uses:

This online course can be used to teach English Composition. It is an Open education resource provided free of charge.

Technical Requirements:

Browser and system requirement for using this product can be verified at https://courses.candelalearning.com/zelixeng111/chapter/check-your-system/; open access book for College Composition 1.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

The major purpose of this website is to provide an open education resource that can be used to support English Composition. It includes four modules with activities and quizzes.

Target Student Population:

This course is for undergraduates, but can also be used by AP English high school students; the target audience includes both students and teachers.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

Familiarity with Blackboard

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:: This is a well designed course with scope and sequence. The materials are extensive. The price is right!
Concerns:: Some materials require a link to the VCCS library, and those will need to be revised based on the library links of the offering school.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:: This is a well designed course. It uses the theme of Social Justice to guide the writings of the students. Each unit leads into the next one, and all have exercises and graded activities.
Concerns:: Some teachers may prefer a different focus for their English comp class instead of Social Justice, but the materials presented give a good idea of how to construct an online course.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:: This is easy to use by the students. All links are clickable and having all the material in one page helps students in determining the process of the course. Once proper and full access has been established, the course is very intuitive.
Concerns:: While this textbook is Open Access and has content that can easily be adapted to other schools it appears that if the school is not a NVCC (Northern Virginia Community College) they would have to contact luminalearning.com tosecure rights to the tests and materials. We have checked with Lumen and Nick Johns quickly responded: "An educator can contact Lumen to request the implementation of our courseware in their LMS, which we offer for a fee. This does not in any way interfere with a teacher's ability to copy and use the open content from our catalog if they wish, whether contacting us or not." The teacher can still use the Open Access book with attribution as a guide.

Other Issues and Comments:: This is marketed for Blackboard. No information is available for other platforms such as Canvas or Moodle. The book is open access but unless you contract with Lumen, the materials must be implemented on your site by your staff. This may not be a problem because many institutions now have a standard format that they use for all their courses. The book can be used without the course content.
Creative Commons: