National Repository of Online Courses – NROC

One of the greatest resources that I am taking away from this conference is the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC).  This online library of courses is absolutely free to use by anyone, student, teacher, higher education faculty, home schooler… anyone.

Currently, the repository has fourteen Advanced Placement courses, fourteen College Course Foundations courses and four High School Course Foundations courses.  These are complete courses with a syllabus, outline, list of supplemental materials and a complete set of multimedia lessons.  The lessons are highly developed with periodic interaction.  Take a look at the first AP Physics lesson.

Much of the funding for this program comes from the Hewlett Foundation.  I talked with Gary Lopez, one of the presenters, and he explained that any school or student can link directly to any of the courses or content for free and use it in any way.  If your school becomes a member, you can get copies of all the materials to use (even modify) in any way you want.  I asked how my school could become a member and Gary explained that we really can’t.  Am I losing you?

Only large agencies can become members.  A single school in Ohio would not become a member.  Instead the Ohio Department of Education would become a member.  At that point, all the schools in Ohio would get all the membership benefits.  I asked Gary if I should approach someone from ODE to initiate our membership, and he explained that we should just use the NROC content.  NROC monitors all access to the content and when a state has a certain number of schools using the content, they contact the state department of education and encourage them to become members.

You will have a hard time finding better online course content with fewer strings attached.  Please use this free content!