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  • Created 13 Oct 2017

As part of the NEON Faculty Mentoring Network, we encourage all participants to share their materials as Open Educational Resources.  There are many sharing platforms out there (QUBESHub, Course Source, SERC - The Science Education Resource Center, lab websites, GitHub accounts, etc) but we'll be providing directions on adding materials to the QUBESHub platform as part of the FMN. A downloadable version of these instruction can also be found in the Collections.

If you have problems submitting the publication, we are happy to help by either walking through it with you while you screen share or by posting the materials for you.  If you want us to post the materials for you, please fill out the following information so that we can include the correct information in the submission. 

When you are ready to submit your documents, the co-facilitators are available to review your materials before posting the final version to QUBES. You are welcome to separately submit your materials to a journal or different venue, and we are happy to be of assistance in this process.

On QUBES your teaching materials can be found several ways:

In order to be recognized as a NEON Data Education Fellow, you must provide a completed submission to share publicly on QUBES. The NEON QUBES publication page is also featured resource on the NEON teaching modules page.

To publish a NEON data tutorial (online, self-paced learning), talk to Megan about using GitHub-based templates and further review with NEON scientists.

What to Submit

There is no strict guidelines as to what constitutes a QUBES teaching module publication, however, you should present materials in a way that allows other faculty members to easily preview and use your materials. 

You should always supply a cover image with your publication. Any image related to the content of the module that can be used as the thumbnail for the image (.jpg and .png are acceptable). If you want a photo credit on the image, you’ll need to add that prior to upload.  Please make sure you have rights to share this image (your own photo or a creative commons image from a source such as Wikimedia commons).

If you are submitting a new resource there are several different types of documents that you should consider including in your publication:

You should consider including the following files include:

  • Faculty Notes/Instructions (strongly recommended) that clearly lays out how the module should be used. Including the following types of details is very helpful:
    • Overview of the module – could be the same, or an expanded version of, the text entered as the Publication Description on QUBES. Having all the information in the downloaded files will be of great use to the future instructor.  The overview should provide the conceptual context for the resource.
    • Learning Objectives – student centered, assessable learning objectives
    • A description of the data and its source
    • Challenges to Address – are there areas that your students frequently have trouble or common misconceptions that the instructor should be aware of.  If you have ways you deal with them in your classroom be sure to provide these.
    • Assessment strategy – provide suggestions (and, were appropriate, upload other documents) for assessing the learning objectives of the module content.
  • Student Instructions/Handouts  – provide the documents that you provide to the students where appropriate. 
  • Data file(s) (.xls or .csv or as appropriate) or instructions on how to download the data
  • Protocol documents & metadata files (or links to metadata) – it is important that faculty and students know how the data were collected and have access to other metadata about the data. 
  • Supplemental materials (R scripts, sample student work, etc.).

If you are modifying  an existing resource, types and detail of the materials provided will depend on how much modification you did. You should always submit a cover image so that your publication will appear unique.  At a minimum, you should provide clear faculty notes with the details of how you have modified the lesson and any of the related materials with modifications. In addition, we recommend that the title of you modification indicate how it is different from the original and that the first part of the title be unique from the original. 

Submitting to QUBESHub - New (Original) Teaching Modules

Please see the schedule for the current FMN to this years due dates.  Miss the due date?  Don't worry, you can add you materials at any point (even years later).  

Your final product consists of any powerpoints, worksheets, assessments, etc, that you created, and a set of teaching notes (a template provided by QUBES can be found here). Information from you implementation plan can also be useful to people considering using these materials.

Instructions for submitting your final products are below, please follow these steps in order for each of the materials you submit.

  1. To start, navigate to the NEON FMN projects page and then select the appropriate project for the semester you participated in the NEON FMN: qubeshub.org/community/groups/neon2018/projects   (hint: make sure you are signed into QUBES or else you won't have access to this page)
  2. Click on the green "Start a new publication" button & select "QUBES Resource"
  3. Either upload or select your uploaded files from the linked FMN repository in the "Primary File(s)" section. You can also include links to external websites (i.e. a link to a YouTube video or supplemental reading) in the "External Link(s)" section. You will not have anything to upload to the "Other QUBES Resource(s)" or "Database(s)" sections, so you can leave this blank. If this uploading process takes a long time, refresh your page.  Frequently the upload actually occurs but the information doesn't show up on the page correctly until you refresh. 
  4. Select Next. 
  5. Fill in the title, abstract (a brief description of the material - consider adding your learning objectives here too) and description (how was this implemented)
  6. Select Next
  7. You will list yourself as the author of this QUBES Resource. Your materials and teacher notes will be attributed to you. Select Next.
  8. The "Extras" page is an optional place to add additional images or documents to your product. If you have typed up your teaching notes, this would be the place to add them. 
  9. Select Next.
  10. Choose a publication license. The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International is the default option that QUBES recommends. This license allows for sharing adaptations of the work, as long as all adaptations are shared alike. It also allows for commercial sharing of the work.
  11. Selecting "Save Selection" will show the full details of the license. You must check the box indicating that you have read the terms and conditions of the license.
  12. The next page is for adding Tags to your product. The overarching category of "Teaching Materials" has already been selected as the default. Please select an Audience Level, Instructional Setting, and Activity Length. Be as specific as possible, as adding additional tags will help your resource be found and used more effectively. We would encourage you to add as many tags as you would like. 
  13. The final page is for optional release notes. If you wish to add any other notes about your implementation, adaptation or materials, include them here. You can think of this as the extra information you would find in a README file. 
  14. Select Next to review the publication record where you can preview the QUBES display, indicate publishing settings (please keep this as immediate release and "publish draft" to make sure you get a DOI and we can post it, unless you have a reason not to do so). 
  15. You will also have a chance to leave any final comments to the website administrators before you agree to the QUBES terms. 
  16. If everything looks good to go, select "Submit draft" and you are all set.

Repeat this process for any final product you are submitting for this FMN. If you have any questions, please let Deb Rook (QUBES FMN Manager) know.  

Submitting to QUBESHub - Adaptations to Teaching Modules

Your final products of the FMN may consist of modifications you made to an existing teaching module that is currently published on QUBESHub including new faculty instructions, any worksheets, assessments, etc, that you created, and a set of teaching notes (the QUBES provided template can be found here). Information from you implementation of the Module is useful to people considering using these materials.

Instructions for submitting your final products are below. You will be submitting a modification of an existing QUBES resource, so please follow these steps in order for each of the modifications you submit.

  1. Navigate to the module that you modified on QUBES Hub.
  2. In the right sidebar, click on the green “Adapt” button, this will open a pop-up window in your screen. Select “Add to an existing project” to add this to our FMN project called “NEON FMN [semester year] Publications”. 
  3. You will be brought to a new page with a note at the top that says “Publication successfully forked.” To enter information about your modifications, select the word "Content".
  4. Remove the original files/links. Either upload or select your uploaded files from the linked FMN repository in the "Primary File(s)" section. You can also include links to external websites (i.e. a link to a YouTube video or supplemental reading) in the "External Link(s)" section. You will not have anything to upload to the "Other QUBES Resource(s)" or "Database(s)" sections, so you can leave this blank. 
  5. Select Next.
  6. From this point forward, elements will be populated based on the original materials- please delete and add your own.
    Fill in the title (did you change the module name?), abstract (a brief description of the material - consider adding your learning objectives here too) and description (how was this implemented and what, if any, changes did you make to the original material)
  7. Select Next
  8. You will list yourself as the author of this QUBES Resource. Your adaptations and teacher notes will be attributed to you. QUBES shares your adaptations and teacher notes with additional attribution back to the original material and author(s) on the QUBES website. Select Next.
    The "Extras" page is an optional place to add additional images or documents to your product. If you have typed up your teaching notes, this would be the place to add them. 
  9. Select Next.
  10. Choose a publication license.
    1. The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International is the default option that QUBES recommends. This license allows for sharing adaptations of the work, as long as all adaptations are shared alike. It also allows for commercial sharing of the work. 
  11. Selecting "Save Selection" will show the full details of the license. You must check the box indicating that you have read the terms and conditions of the license.
  12. The next page is for adding Tags to your product. The overarching category of "Teaching Materials" has already been selected as the default. Please select an Audience Level, Instructional Setting, and Activity Length. Be as specific as possible, as adding additional tags will help your resource be found and used more effectively. We would encourage you to add as many tags as you would like. 
  13. The final page is for optional release notes. If you wish to add any other notes about your implementation, adaptation or materials, include them here. You can think of this as the extra information you would find in a README file. 
  14. Select Next to review the publication record where you can preview the QUBES display, indicate publishing settings (please keep this as immediate release and "publish draft" to make sure you get a DOI and we can post it unless you have a reason not to do so). 
  15. You will also have a chance to leave any final comments to the website administrators before you agree to the QUBES terms. 
  16. If everything looks good to go, select "Submit draft" and you are all set. 

Repeat this process for any final product you are submitting for this FMN. If you have any questions, please let Deb Rook (QUBES FMN Manager) know.