Cates and Mattke: Science Museum Websites Study 2009

Categories of Open Educational Resources Found on U.S. Science Museum Websites
(Based on Varisco & Cates, 2005, as modified in Cates & Varisco, 2007 and Cates & Mattke, 2009)

Contact: ward.cates@lehigh.edu

Category	Description
Online Instruction	A unit of instruction to be completed online that (1) has a stated or implicit goal or goals, (2) systematically provides related content to learners, and (3) employs one or more assessment activity to measure learner mastery of covered content.
Online Learning Activities	Activities designed to allow learners to explore some aspect of a site’s educational offerings by completing an activity online. Online learning activities differ from online instruction in both their comprehensiveness and the extent to which they specify an explicit or implicit goal and include assessment activities specifically related to the content provided within an online instructional unit.
Teacher Resources	Often provided as Word or PDF documents to be used offline in the classroom, these resources may include lesson plans matched to on-site visits (offering combinations of pre-visit, visit-support, and post-visit materials), alignment charts with state or national learning standards for educational activities, professional development materials designed to enhance teacher use of online OERs, and reproducible classroom worksheets for use with students.
Online Exhibits	Materials similar to those one might see in an actual physical exhibit: images, explanatory texts, possibly video and audio clips, and so on. Virtual Reality videos of a site or its holdings without explanatory audio qualify as online exhibits.
Guided Tours	Online explorations of a site and its collections. Guided Tours feature explanatory audio or video with accompanying explanatory audio. They are intended to give a systematic, directed experience using a pre-defined sequence. Virtual Reality videos with explanatory audio fit into this category.
Collections	Wide-ranging assortment of the foremost categories of interest within a site’s holdings. At a minimum, Collections present major collection classes of a site’s holdings and, at times, may be accompanied by descriptions of types within each collection class. Classes within the collection show a minimum of five images and usually offer annotations and/or descriptions of the items in the collection.
Lectures/ Demonstrations	Compact topic-based information developed around themes or topics. These are often text-based,“ frequently with photographs or illustrations. Lectures/demonstrations may also be video- or audio-based, but are generally linear in structure and do not offer learners interactivity.
Research Databases	Online access to digitized documents, images, and audio and video files. Research databases must provide access to actual OERs (as opposed to library call number or checkout status) in order to qualify.
Learning Links	Links that connect to OERs outside the site’s Website. Such links must be focused on education (not tourism or some other non-educational purpose). Learning links may connect directly to OERs or may connect to Websites on which one may find OERs.
Communication Tools	A variety of synchronous and asynchronous online telecommunication tools, including at a minimum email, but also such tools as online surveys, newsletter and email sign-ups, message boards, list servers, bulletin boards, videoconferencing and social networking tools (for instance, chats, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter).
Miscellaneous Other Resources	Educational materials that don’t fit into one of the other categories. These include such things as printable guidebooks, white papers, reports, and either online or printable glossaries of terms.