Avoiding Monotony

I've spent this term creating my all-OER Math 4 course, and I've been pretty successful at finding good OER materials to use with my courses. I have a textbook and supplementary resources from CK-12 , worksheets available free on the web from Kuta Software and math-drills.com , exercises and videos from My Open Math, some resources I've created myself, and a number of videos (primarily from Khan Academy). I feel like I'm off to a good start, but I've identified two things that I'd like to work on as I move forward in this project.

The first concern came to me in a faculty meeting the other day. We were talking about tutorial videos, and one of my colleagues made the comment that, "the Khan videos are pretty good, but I can only listen to that guy for so long." The comment struck me because while I do try to use a variety of resources, I know that I've relied on Khan Academy for many of the tutorial videos I've posted for students - and required as assigned watching. As I've previewed more and more of Khan's videos for classes, I know that I've grown irritated by some of Khan's vocal mannerisms, frequently repeated phrases, etc. I'm sure that my students must, too. Since that meeting, I've been working on finding other sources of tutorial videos that are high quality and engaging, so that I can "mix it up" a bit with students, or at least offer them alternative sources of information.

The other thing I'd like to address with my course offerings are that I have sections of my course that are rich with a variety of materials tailored to my course, and other sections that due to time constraints or other issues I put together more quickly, using more "generic" materials. I'd really like to go back, fill in the gaps, and clean up these weaker units.

As this term winds down and I prepare for spring term, I plan to spend quality time on the OER blogs and repositories, looking for materials that will solve some of these problems for me.