This was a thoughtful exercise. My approach to designing the checklist was to challenge myself to design for someone who isn’t as knowledgeable on the subject as I am. I tried to phrase the questions for someone with only course learning outcomes, the OER resource, and this checklist. I struggled with the amount of specificity I should include in the evaluation criteria. Should I allow the evaluator to determine the objective most supported by the resource? I saw that in one of the exemplars, and I thought it had value. My target learners are adult solopreneurs. They generally learn out of need or skills demand. Two significant evaluative criteria were the language and tone of resource content, and whether the knowledge could be readily integrated into practice. Solopreneurs don’t need pretty language or fluff, they generally need to be told what to do to be effective. Writing and language have to be accessible to alleviate a heavy cognitive load. Solopreneurs won’t wait until the end of the course to begin testing newly gained knowledge—they will make immediate changes, even if they are small. Resources for this course have to be digestible for successful skills transfer.
