Volunteering for OpenCurriculum

The community is the heart and sole of OpenCurriculum - without the passion of volunteers and teacher contributors, the website is a barren land. Thus we pride ourselves in involving you in every step of our way to grow, maintain and make locally-relevant our teaching material libraries. Community is one of the three core pillars of the nonprofit organization (others being 'Openness' and 'Freedom') - and it is your contribution and hardwork that gives thousands of educators access to better teaching materials on a daily basis. There are very few volunteer positions in the world that have such a deep impact on so many people's lives. And that's why we continue to invite you to join our mission of bringing more innovation and openness to K-12 education by enrolling yourself as a volunteer.

We are excited to share our virtual volunteering opportunities with you today. Virtual volunteering basically means that you can volunteer from anywhere in the world as long as you have a computer and an Internet connection. We invite and accept new volunteers on a rolling basis, so if you feel like you need to make a bigger impact on education in the world, you could not have found a better starting point.

Getting started

To get started, try and build some basic understanding on how OpenCurriculum has been structured and what kinds of content is listed on the website. Additionally, spend a few moments understanding and trying to internalize the mission of the nonprofit organization.

Once you have a clearer idea,

1. Create an account of the website, if you haven't already done so.
2. Send us an email at volunteer [at] opencurriculum [dot] org, and share with us a link to your profile on OpenCurriculum, a paragraph about yourself and a paragraph about why you want to volunteer for OpenCurriculum.
3. Within a day or two, you will receive an email confirming your participation as a volunteer and you may get started on your first task, which we will share in the email.

Please note we reserve the right to not offer the volunteer roles, usually the case when we do not have enough people to monitor and verify quality of work done.

Volunteer positions available

We currently offer two volunteer positions on OpenCurriculum, an OpenCurriculum Volunteer and an OpenCurriculum Fellow.

All first time volunteers on the website can request to become OpenCurriculum Volunteers (OCVs). This is a 3-month long program which requires a minimum of 4-hours per week of work in content importing, organizing, cleaning up, localizing and other maintainance. Tasks are broken down on a bi-weekly basis, and there is no micro-managing; thus requiring high sense of responsibility in the volunteer to complete and deliver on time. On completion, the volunteers' work is closely verified and the follow-up tasks are shared. These tasks are often related to ensuring consistency amongst lessons in OpenCurriculum's libraries - which is often the most vital role in ensuring quality of the website.

Since this position doesn't require going through an application or screening process, anyone may request to become an OCV. This role is most suitable for students in college, working professionals looking for a lightweight volunteering experience from home, stay-at-home mothers, and others. The minimal requirement for this role is reasonable reading / writing / communication skills in English, basic analytical skills, and familiarity with using the web and office software.

Graduates from the OpenCurriculum Volunteer program (and, as an exception, former or current K-12 teachers) are eligible to apply for the role of an OpenCurriculum Fellow (OCF). An OCF is a senior volunteer at the organization who is responsible for important curation, quality control and new initiatives of all content and community in OpenCurriculum. A fellow engages in understanding and evaluating all the current opportunities in needs amongst the teaching communities, and is responsible for working very closely with the OpenCurriculum team on addressing these. Often these involve determining which educational standards have inadequate lessons materials, which international standards and education systems need more attention and how to best engage teachers by sharing new and innovative curricular content with them. The time commitment of an OCF varies (and is often do-able alongside a regular day job), as every OCF may be working on a different problem with a different timeline associated with it. All applicants go through one screening round and at least one interview to be considered for this role, and the applicant's chances to become a fellow are greatly affected by his / her performance as an OCV. At the end of the OCV program, application materials for the fellowship are sent to the volunteers.

The fellowship is loosely time-bound at 1 year (or lesser in the case of a custom arrangement), but may be renewed if both the team and the fellow consider the involvement mutually beneficial. Exceptional fellows have been hired into the team in the past.
 

Why volunteer for OC

Past volunteers at OpenCurriculum have considered the experience as an incredibly humbling and gratifying one. Here are only some of the benefits of volunteering at OpenCurriculum (apart from doing much social good, of course!):

• Get to learn tremendous amounts about international curriculum, education and teaching
• Managing expectations and a series of tasks and deliverables
• Collaborating with virtual teams (of amazing people!) in complex problem solving
• Improving presentation and communication skills
• Building a strong virtual presence and portfolio of open source work
• Get professional work experience without the unnecessary professionalism acting
• Work directly with users and understand their needs

Additionally, we believe that nobody should be denied an opportunity to contribute because they do not have great universities and work experience on their resumes, as long as they care enough and want to work hard. We welcome all people to join us.

Questions?  Concerns?

Have other specific questions we did not cover in this article? Send them over at volunteer [at] opencurriculum [dot] org and we will get back to you as soon as we can!