We are proud to provide any organization the ability to download and use OpenSciEd’s professional learning materials, but OpenSciEd-Certified organizations receive the benefits below as part of our formalized partnership. Learn more about our certification process and apply today!
Visit our Certified Professional Learning Organizations page to find organizations that have completed the certification process. We look forward to continuing to grow our community of certified organizations so we can work together to revolutionize science teaching and learning.
Benefits to Certified Organizations
Though we strive to make the professional learning guides user friendly and comprehensive, reading the guide is not the same as learning from the people that wrote it. We will help you to recognize and realize the power of this professional learning; to identify and amplify the key experiences and punchlines for participants; and to figure out how to adapt it (when necessary) to fit into what you do without losing what is most important.
Becoming an OpenSciEd-Certified organization will help your organizations grow. OpenSciEd materials have been accessed for use by over 51,000 educators and many of them have not yet been supported with professional learning. We will be promoting the OpenSciEd-Certification to the teachers, schools, and districts who have shown affection for OpenSciEd materials making the revenue opportunities available for certified organizations:
- Use Our Branding: OpenSciEd-Certified organizations have permission to use our logo/brand in advertising your OpenSciEd professional learning services.
- Promote Your Certification through Marketing & Communications:
- OpenSciEd-Certified organizations receive a digital badge that can be embedded on their website and in digital and print marketing materials recognizing their certification status.
- All certified organizations will be listed on the OpenSciEd website as certified providers. Listing will include logos, contact information, organization descriptions, descriptions of science professional learning services.
- OpenSciEd will announce certified organizations through social media and the email newsletter and product announcements that go to our registered users.
- OpenSciEd will promote and amplify stories of successful OpenSciEd professional learning led by certified organizations through our media channels.
- Receive Referrals:
- Though OpenSciEd is a direct provider of professional learning, we view our role as “filling in the gaps” that certified organizations aren’t reaching and we plan to regularly direct professional learning requests to certified organizations.
All certified organizations have access to a collaborative support community. Since the professional learning materials are OER, this community will work together to adapt the materials to a wide variety of situations and delivery methods. As new variations are developed by OpenSciEd and OpenSciEd-Certified organizations, they will be shared within this community so that we can continually improve what we are offering to districts. Additionally, many of the organizations in this space have a small number of science specialists that are tasked with solving all of the science issues for the organization. We hope this group becomes a collaborative community and sounding board of collaborative professionals working toward systemic change in science education.
OpenSciEd-Certified organizations can work with districts to help develop our new high school and elementary programs (starting in 2021). If a certified organization secures teachers to provide field test feedback, they will get early access to the high school and elementary materials. This means the districts they support can be on the cutting edge of development and the facilitators for these certified organizations will be a part of the field test professional learning, helping to build their internal capacity.
Challenging a system that is not set up to meet teachers’ fundamental needs as professionals—great materials and professional learning—is not something that one small organization can accomplish on its own. If the science education community is going to rise to the challenge of equitable science learning, we’ll need to work together. We need the help of organizations across the nation to capitalize on the opportunities provided by our high-quality OER materials to shift the entire system of support for science education.
Expectations of OpenSciEd-Certified Professional Learning Organizations
Internal Capacity: The people leading the OpenSciEd work need to attend the OpenSciEd professional learning launch for facilitators.
Commitment to Quality: Certified organizations agree to deliver OpenSciEd professional learning with integrity to its goals.
Commitment to Collaboration: Certified organizations agree to the expectations for using the OpenSciEd brand in advertisement, sharing of adaptations, and evaluation data.
Licensing fee: Certified organizations agree to pay a licensing fee.