Here are Open Educational Resources you could explore at your convenience for your Academic Excellence.

MIT OCW

As the forerunner of the Open Educational Resource movement, MIT’s Open CourseWare is still one of the most valuable OERs for both learners and teachers.

If you’re a student, you can use the course finder tool to browse courses by topics. When you find one you’re interested in, you can examine the course goals, key topics, and sequence to determine whether it will meet your needs. You can even cherry pick specific concepts you’d like to study from different courses rather than following just one course from beginning to end.

If you’re a teacher, you can use the OCW Educator Portal to sift through courses using terms like “Active Learning or “Instructional Design.” You can also access valuable teaching materials such as images, lecture slides, and videos from MITs leading researchers in the OCW resource library.

Lumen Learning

Although Lumen Learning isn’t entirely free to use, it is a great resource for affordable learning materials and courses. Teachers can use it to access digital content, supplemental materials, and customisable courses for more than 50 subjects. Students can use it to cut down on textbook costs by accessing affordable learning materials such as e-books, videos, and other interactive materials in one place. It can also improve learning outcomes by providing students with opportunities for real-time feedback.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is another open educational resource that’s geared both towards learners and educators. Learners can access educational content on a wide range of topics from science and engineering to computer programming, all from a personalised learning dashboard that enables them to study at their own pace. Teachers can make use of the practice exercises and instructional videos in their lesson planning, and the teacher dashboard makes it easy to check class performance at a glance, while also identifying any students who might be struggling.

Merlot

Merlot is the California State University’s collection of online learning and support materials, as well as content creation tools. It consists of more than 40,000 materials that are rated and peer-reviewed by researchers, educators, and learners. The learning materials are categorised into 22 different material types, including animation, case study, drill and practice, and simulation. Merlot members can also bookmark collections, leave comments and feedback, contribute their own materials, and even build their own courses.

OER Commons

OER Commons is a digital library of open educational resources created by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME). With over 70,000 educational resources from providers like the British Library and Harvard University, it’s a great tool for discovering and organising educational content. Open Educational Resource Commons is particularly useful for educators, as it allows them to build their own resources, lesson plans and courses, while using groups to collaborate with other educators in their network.

OpenStax

Based at Rice University, OpenStax is an educational initiative that provides students with free online access to high-quality peer-reviewed textbooks. Students can access textbooks for subjects like math and science, humanities, and business. The OpenStax Tutor, which is based on cognitive science principles and machine learning, also gives them access to online courseware and learning tools that will help them complete their course.

Academic Earth

Academic Earth brings together educational content and course materials from some of the best universities in the world, including Stanford, Princeton, U.C. Berkely, MIT, and Yale. Students can browse the library of more than 1,500 lecture videos, which are organised by the school, subject, and scholar, and then download the ones they like or even find curated playlists based on their interests.

Learningpod

In collaboration with OpenStax, Learningpod created question sets for OpenStax textbooks and is now said to be the largest library of free online practice questions in the world. With Learningpod, teachers can assign practice sets and track student progress, and students can prepare for tests with high quality practice questions and then view reports and graphs showing how they did and which areas may need improvement.

Open Culture

Open Culture was voted as the best Open Educational Resource in the Education Resource People’s Choice Awards conducted by Study.com. It’s a great place to find free cultural and educational media related to movies, language, literature, and more. Students and teachers can use it to access everything from MOOCs and certificate courses to audio books, e-books, and textbooks, as well as unmissable movies and lectures.

Open Learning Initiative

The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) was developed by representatives from Carnegie Mellon University, and provides academic and independent paid, but also open and free online courses. OLI’s content, instructional design, tools, and delivery platform are evidence-based, and its courses have been proven effective by both independent and internal studies. Teachers can use the courses as supplemental material or textbook replacements, whereas independent learners can use the self-guided courses informally to learn more about a subject they’re interested in.

Open Course Library

Managed by the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, this content is organized by course.

Open Education Consortium

The Open Education Consortium is a community of 240-plus schools as well as organizations and people who want to advance the idea of “open education.” It features an OER resource toolkit, webinars, in-person events and links to open textbooks.

OpenTextBookStore

This site offers a catalog of OER textbooks focusing on math.

Saylor.org

Saylor Academy’s resources cover content from art history to sociology with search filters that can help you locate just the right book, recording, presentation, video, chapter or image. For example, Melissa Barlett, instructor in biology for the Center for Life and Health Sciences at Mohawk Valley Community College (NY), uses this 535-page PDF curriculum in her college success class.

Spiral Physics

Monroe Community College (NY) professor Paul D’Alessandris’ calculus- and algebra-based introductory physics texts were written under an NSF grant, but when mainstream publishers expressed no interest, he placed it online for the entire English-reading world to grab.

Teach Astronomy

This online resource provides learning materials for introductory astronomy courses. At South Florida State College, Natural Science Department Chair Erik Christensen did a mashup with Teach Astronomy’s textbook and astronomy simulations and animations from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to eliminate the need for his students to buy a $165 textbook.

The Orange Grove

Plenty of state departments of education host digital repositories where their teachers can share content they’ve created. This one belongs to Florida, which has mandated that by 2015-2016 half of a K-12 district’s textbook budget has to be spent for digital content and schools need to adopt digital-only curriculum. The state’s colleges are already feeling the impact of those practices.

READ MORE

Here are tips you can follow in reading dificult materials;

• Read the title and the first paragraph.
• If there is a summary at the end of a chapter, read it. Get grasp of how the material is organised. If you need more background seek another source. Now decide if you have enough background to begin reading.
• Look for main ideas
• Look for titles, headings, and subheadings. Pick out topic sentences. Utilise graphs, charts and diagrams. Take notes while you read.
• Look up words
• Look up words whose meanings are important to your understanding of the material, but you cannot discern from the content.
• Monitor your comprehension
• Periodically stop and ask yourself, ‘’what have I learned’’ connect this to what you already know.
• Reread
• If you do not comprehend an idea, go back and reread. Restate difficult ideas in your own words.
• Read to the end
• Do not get discouraged and stop reading. Ideas can become clearer the more you read.

When you finish reading, review to see what you have learned, and reread those ideas that are not clear.

Have you ever read a book? How well did you understand what you read,? or do you find it difficult to finish any book you decide to read? Reading is the process of looking g at a series of writer symbols and getting meaning from them. Some people can read for several hours at a stretch with perfect concentration and understanding, some read for only 3hours and get tired. Our individual brains have different capacities to understand what you read?

Reading is the process of looking at a series of written symbols and getting meaning from it .Some people can read for seven hours at a stretch with perfect concentration and understanding. Some read for only three hours, and feel the need to engage in some other activities before they return to reading. Our individual brains have different capacities for absorbing and understanding what is read.

SKILLS NEEDED TO IMPROVE READING

• Pick up a book. Try finding something to read that interest you. Explore news papers, magazines, novels etc
• Practice your reading habit. Now that you have found what you like to read, you can set a goal of 20 minutes a day of reading. After you have achieved this, you can increase the time to 1 hour a day
• Do not give up. Winners never quit. If you find you cannot complete the task in the first place, do not be discouraged.
• Do not put too much pressure on yourself. When you find yourself being stressed while reading a book, do not continue reading under pressure.
• Before you read a book, go through the table of contents first, in other to form an idea of what you are about to read

It may surprise you that I am talking about failure. Every average Nigerian would quickly reject it with the following sayings; “ it is not my portion” “ back to sender” “God forbid” and many other phrases like that which are actually misleading so many young people today to believe that any time you experience failure in any activity you engage in, that something evil is responsible for it. I am not here to talk about religion or religious beliefs. However, just as Senator Ben Murray Bruce would say, I want to make common sense, hope you would be willing to reason with me.
Failure in itself is not a bad thing, it depends on how we see it. I want to begin my discussion with the following quotes.

⦁ You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try – Beverly Sills (1929)
⦁ Nobody cleared a path for themselves by giving up. – Alacia Bessette (2010)
⦁ If at first you don’t succeed, find out if the loser gets anything. – Bill Lyon.

I am discussing failure as a topic, because, the results of the last session’s examinations are already being released by different departments. Many people would record success, while many may fail one or two courses. How you handle your failure would determine your success in subsequent examinations. Therefore, rather than looking for the causes of your failure from the outside, I want to encourage you to take out time to review what factors actually contributed to your failure. It may be:

1. Lack of adequate time to study,
2. Inappropriate study habit, study skills and attitude,
3. Examination anxiety,
4. Over-confidence,
5. Misplacing your priority during examination period, that is, ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’,
6. Hoping that there are other shortcuts to success, which may disappoint you at last.

After you have reviewed the factors listed above, you would definitely identity one problem or the other that contributed to your failure. You therefore need to consciously work on that problem in order to overcome it before the next examination. Let me conclude with the following quote.

“Don’t be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.’’
John Keats

English lyric poet (1795 – 1821)

Thank You.

This phrase usually trails any regret for not succeeding in any endavour that an individual has embarked on. For instance, educational pursuit. Let me start by seeking your views about the phrase. Do you think it can be avoided by an individual? Let me hear your views. As an individual, I feel that the phrase would only come to an individual who does not do what he is supposed to do at the right time he or she is supposed to do it.

We have discussed a lot of things on this blog that would help you as a student to really face your studies squarely in other not to have any regrets at the end of your stay here in CDL&CE Uniabuja. I know you would do so Check out the last post on this blog and truly follow what is said there.

I promise you your being in CDL&CE Uniabuja will worth its while at the end of your studies here. You can always rely on the counsellors to assist you with any challenge that may want to hinder you from succeeding.

Takecare.

A stitch in time, they say, saves nine. In any activity one has set out to do, it is possible for one to monitor whether one is achieving or failing. Achievement is not a one time thing it comes through incremental effort and steady progression. As you have started this session, The counselling unit is encouraging you to set your achievement clock. That is, try on daily basis to check the activities you carried out that are closely connected to your academic pursuit. You need to time yourself everyday. Never you go to bed everyday without asking yourself what you have done towards achieving your academic goal. Set your achievement clock; promise yourself that no day shall pass by without you accomplishing at least one assignment towards your success in your academics.

The activities include:

• Checking the LMS to see if you have any assignment or task to be done
• Browsing the Net to get more materials on the courses you are offering
• Reading at least a study session from one of your courses
• Noting down gray areas in your modules which will form part of your discussions with your facilitators
• Doing your assignments to meet up submission deadlines.
• Practising with past questions on the courses you are offering for the session
• Joining a study group ( it is advisable not to be more than 5 members in a group)
• Having general positive attitude and disposition towards your academic pursuit.

DO NOT WAIT TILL RESIDENTIAL, START NOW. IT PAYS TO BE PREPARED

GOOD LUCK

We are happy to inform all Applicants of the 2021/2022 Session Admission Exercise that the First Batch Admission List is now out. TYPE TO SEARCH YOUR NAME FROM SUCCESSFUL APPLICANTS (1ST BATCH) BELOW.