Frequently Asked Questions « The Saylor Foundation

Frequently Asked Questions

Getting Started with Saylor.org

Do I need to apply to take Saylor.org courses?
No! All of our courses are freely available to all. There is no application process.

How do I enroll or register to take a course?
We do not require you to enroll or register to begin your coursework. In February 2012, we will be introducing an optional student ePortfolio system, which will allow you to register for courses and track your progress in a course and/or discipline. However, you do not need to wait until the ePortfolio launches to begin your studies: you can work through and complete a course at any time – even now, if you so choose!

How do I begin taking a Saylor.org course?
Beginning your studies with Saylor.org is simple! Head over to our homepage at www.saylor.org, select an area of study from our homepage, and read through the intro paragraphs which will instruct you how to work through the program. Select a course where you’d like to begin, click on Unit 1, and begin to read and work your way through the Units in sequential order.

When can I access Saylor.org coures?
Saylor.org courses are accessible at any time of the day at www.saylor.org.

Do the courses start on a particular date?
Nope! Our courses are set up to be self-paced and automated, so you can start on any day – and take as much time as you need.

Where can I find more information on being a Saylor.org student?
Our Student Handbook is designed to give students a clear understanding of Saylor.org and its offerings. It also clarifies various privileges and responsibilities that you can expect as a Saylor.org student. You can find a copy of the Student Handbook here.

Financial

Is there a fee for taking a Saylor course?
There are absolutely no fees associated with any Saylor course or resource. Our courses, resources, and site will always be available for free!

Will I need to purchase any textbooks to study a Saylor course?
No! All resources, texts, and readings that accompany Saylor courses are free.

General Program

Is there a limit to how many courses I can take?
No, there is no limit to the number of courses you can take. You may take as few or as many as you would like. However, to obtain the knowledge equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in one of our areas of study, you should follow the requirements listed on each area of study homepage.

Do I need to wait for a course to be complete before I can start?
No. All courses that indicate that they’re 98% or higher are generally fully complete. Courses with a percentage of 97% or less may indicate one of two things:

It could be that we are still looking for resources to complete the course. If this is the case, the missing resources will be indicated by red text.
It could indicate a broken link to a resource within the course. We continually monitor our site for broken links; however, if you come across a broken link, please let us know!

How long does it take to complete a program?
Our courses and areas of study are set up to mirror what you’d find at a traditional university. A “major” or “area of study” will typically consist of between 12 and 16 required courses. Each course is designed to be the equivalent of a standard, semester-long (15-week) course, though the time needed for each will vary slightly. Each course lists a time advisory in its Course Information section to help students plan and gauge how much time they should be spending on each unit.

Can I take individual courses in an Area of Study or do I need to take them in sequence?
You can take as many or as few courses as you would like. Some courses, however, do have prerequisites. Be sure to check the “Course Requirements” area to ensure you have the recommended knowledge base prior to beginning your course.

Does someone moderate student assignments and assessments?
Students that take our courses will not be able to interact directly with a professor. Our courses and instructional notes are instead specifically designed to engage and accompany you as you independently work your way through the assigned learning materials. We believe that this model will enable us to accommodate any individual interested in taking a course at any time and on any schedule. Therefore, your work will not be graded by professors; we instead provide you with either automated grading or access to the answer keys, rubrics, and other tools you need to assess your own work.

Are there prerequisites to taking any Saylor.org courses?
In some cases, yes. For some Saylor.org courses, our consulting professors have determined that a certain knowledge base is necessary for the successful completion of the course and the course’s final exam. Be sure to check the “Course Requirements” area to ensure you meet the requirements prior to beginning your course. Please note that we do not require you to complete these prerequisites prior to taking any courses.

I am interested in a subject or course that is currently not included on Saylor.org. Why isn’t it available?
At present, we are focused on completing the courses currently listed on our site, which we selected based on two criteria: enrollment data for traditional U.S. colleges, and areas of study that already had large amounts of openly-licensed content available. We do plan to create more courses and areas of study in the future, so please contact us if there is an area that you’d like to see.

Can I view Saylor.org courses on my tablet or mobile phone?
The Saylor.org website is viewable on mobile and tablet devices, although it’s currently not optimized for that type of viewing. We are considering our next steps in appealing to mobile and tablet users.

Time Advisories

What is a time advisory?
A time advisory is a rough estimate of how long it will take you to complete a given course or unit, including all of its linked assignments, readings, videos, and other activities. You can find a course-wide time advisory in the Course Information section of a chosen course. (The Course Information section can be found in the menu at the top left hand side of a course’s home page. When you click on the “Course Information” line, you will see general information about the course and its resources and a section that discusses the time commitment or time advisory for the course.) You can find a unit-specific time advisory by navigating to the top of a unit in a course and clicking the “show” button that appears next to the “Time Advisory” heading.

The time advisory should be taken as a loose estimate rather than a requirement. You may find that it takes you longer to complete a given unit—or that it takes you far shorter! Please work at your own pace. These advisories have been designed by our faculty in order to give you a general sense of the time it generally takes a student to work through course materials.

Generally speaking, our courses are designed to sustain a semester-long period of engagement. At most higher education institutions, a three-credit, semester-long course will require 135 hours of work. This total includes both seat-time and homework time. We try our best to design our courses to meet this 135-hour goal, but not all courses are created equally. Some may take far less time to complete.

How do you calculate your time advisories?
Our faculty uses the Carnegie Unit of Credit model (more information can be found here) as a general guideline for estimating the amount of time it will take a student to work through a learning activity. Our faculty members also share their own expertise and experience in the classroom to shape these estimates. For example, they may build in extra time for review and self-study or in order to accommodate dense and complex subject matter. We encourage you to remember that our advisories are loose estimates. All students learn differently and at different paces. Work at your own comfort level.

Why doesn’t my course have a time advisory listed?
Some of our courses include time advisories, while others do not. This inconsistency relates to a revision in our course design process. In mid-2011, we decided that time advisories should be included in all courses as a standard design feature and convenience to the student. Therefore, courses completed prior to mid-2011 do not feature time advisories.

We are in the process of revisiting courses all of our courses in order to develop time advisories. We hope to offer them for every single course in our register in the near future.

Certificates and Recognition

Will I be awarded a degree, diploma, or certificate?
The Saylor Foundation is not an accredited institution and therefore cannot confer degrees. However, you will be able to download a certificate of completion after you pass each course’s final exam.

Are the courses accredited or recognized by various professional bodies?
At present, the Saylor Foundation is not an accredited institution and cannot confer degrees. Students that complete and successfully pass the final exam for a chosen course will instead receive a Saylor Foundation certificate, and will soon have access to a digital transcript that they can share and distribute. Similarly, our courses are not recognized by any professional bodies at this time; however, we plan to explore partnerships with academic institutions and organizations in the hopes of offering sponsored certificates in the future.

Will my Saylor.org course count as college credit at another college/university?
Awarding college credit for studies completed at Saylor.org is a decision that must be made by individual colleges. Some institutions, like Excelsior College, are allowing students to use OERs (like those found at Saylor.org) as part of their studies. If you would like your college to award credit for Saylor.org coursework, we suggest that you speak with your institution’s administrative offices.

Copyright and Re-use

How can I use the resources linked on Saylor.org?
While the goal of the Saylor Foundation is to provide as much educational material as freely as possible (we default to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license), we also try to present our students with the best and most accurate information. Sometimes, this means using resources that are protected by a variety of licenses and copyright agreements. Below is an explanation of the various licensing you may encounter throughout our courses.

Creative Commons License Suite
Founded in 2001, Creative Commons issued its first set of licenses the following year. These are intended to make it easier for copyright holders to extend specific usage rights to their audience. Six basic licenses are offered:

BY (Attribution)
BY-SA (Attribution – Share Alike)
BY-NC (Attribution – Non-Commercial)
BY-ND (Attribution – No Derivatives)
BY- NC-SA (Attribution – Non-Commercial – Share Alike)
BY-NC-ND (Attribution – Non-Commercial – No Derivatives)

GNU License Suite
GNU is an organization sponsored by the Free Software Foundation; GNU has produced a number of licenses relating to software. Some of our materials make use of the following:

GPL
GNU’s General Public License is used for many software packages, as well as other items.

GFDL
The GNU Free Documentation License is a form of copyleft intended for use on a manual, textbook or other document to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifications, either commercially or non-commercially.

DSL
The Design Science License is a form of copyleft intended for use on source data to grant permission to distribute, publish or otherwise present verbatim copies of the entire work, in any medium, provided that full copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty, where applicable, is conspicuously published on all copies, and a copy of the license is distributed along with the work. The DSL license was written by Michael Stutz.

Academic Permission
These are materials that can only be reproduced or distributed for academic or teaching purposes. The licensors often intend audience and distribution to be limited to a classroom or a private website.

Non-Commercial Permission
These are materials that can only be reproduced or distributed for non-commercial purposes, as specified by the copyright holder.

Standard Permission
These are materials that the Saylor Foundation has received the right to host through the outreach of our Permissions Initiative. However, please note that these materials are protected by copyright and may not be reproduced or distributed in any capacity without explicit permission from the copyright holder.

How can I reuse your course material on another site?

For entire courses:
Although we hold the copyright to our course outlines, we have made them available under a Creative Commons Attribution license (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0). As such, you are free to download, modify, and reproduce our course outlines for any purpose, as long as you provide credit (attribution) to the Saylor Foundation for the source material. Please note, however, that the Saylor Foundation hosts some resources on its servers by special arrangement with the copyright holder. This status is clearly indicated in each resource’s terms of use. Although you may link to Saylor.org’s copy of these resources, you may not repost or distribute them.

For individual materials:

You must abide by the terms of use provided for each resource. About a third of our materials are openly-licensed, including all materials authored by the Saylor Foundation. These are free to share under the conditions set by each license. The remainder of our materials cannot be reproduced or shared except under any conditions specifically set by the copyright holder. In particular, several hundred items are hosted on Saylor Foundation servers by special arrangement with the copyright holder (clearly indicated). While you are free to use these items for personal learning, you may not distribute them further.

Contacts at Saylor.org

I’m a professor and want to help Saylor.org build courses. Who do I contact?
If you’re interested in building courses for Saylor.org, please send an email to professor@saylor.org.

Who do I contact if I have additional questions, suggestions or feedback for the Saylor.org team?
Please send an email to contact@saylor.org or click here.

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