OpenWetWare:FAQ/Courses

Why should I host a course on OpenWetWare?

There are several motivations for hosting a course on OpenWetWare ...

1. Enhance student participation in the course. Students have the ability to edit any page on OpenWetWare. So by placing course materials here, you are giving them the ability to revise (and improve) course content.
2. Promote reuse of course materials. All content on OpenWetWare is dual-licensed under the Creative Commons Atrribution ShareAlike and GFDL copyright licenses. Thus, you are making your course materials freely available for others to reuse. Moreover, the wiki format allows people to more easily copy and modify your materials (as compared to static websites and PDF files) so you are also making it easier for others to build upon your work.
3. Facilitate collaborative course development. Many courses are developed jointly among multiple faculty and teaching assistants. Placing the materials on OpenWetWare makes it easy to work together on developing course materials (as compared to emailing word documents back and forth).

Why shouldn't I host a course on OpenWetWare?

A common concern among many OpenWetWare users is that someone may accidentally or intentionally modify a page. However, all changes and updates are tracked and can be easily reverted. Nevertheless, course instructors do need to monitor their course site closely to ensure that errors are not introduced and propagated around the class.

Note that the primary reason to put a course on OpenWetWare is to enable students to edit course materials and the course site. If you're not interested in having students edit the course pages, then it might not be wise to post your materials to OpenWetWare. We give anyone in biology and biological engineering an OpenWetWare account (who requests one).

Am I surrendering copyright to my course materials?

No, you retain copyright to all materials you upload or write on OpenWetWare. You can later republish and relicense them in any way you like. However, you can never retract the Creative Commons Atrribution ShareAlike and GFDL licenses for the versions you placed here.

What courses are hosted on OpenWetWare?

See the list of past and present courses hosted on OpenWetWare.

How do I start?

See the tutorial on running a course on OpenWetWare.