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Conversations on Open Education for Language Learning

Investigating the Effects of OER on Foreign Language Learning and Teaching at AAAL

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This weekend, the 2014 American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Conference begins in beautiful Portland, OR. Center Director Carl Blyth will co-host a panel with Joshua Thoms of Utah State University, which will focus on Open Educational Resources in the Foreign Language context. Steven Thorne of Portland State University, Fernando Rubio of the University of Utah, and Amy Rossomondo from the University of Kansas will join in on the panel presentations and offer up perspectives about the affordances of openness, the benefits and challenges of using OER in foreign language programs, and even demonstrate comparisons of student interactions in technology enhanced language learning MOOCs.

The “unofficial motto” of the 2014 AAAL Conference is “change.” And, while much of that motto reflects a shifting of the conference format, it seems to be a particularly relevant theme to frame not only the larger exploration of the role of OER in foreign language education, but also the conversation about investigating the effect of OER in foreign language teaching and learning. OER is often seen as something of a disruptive technology in the context of education; the perception of its value and potential impact varies widely among faculty, administrators, and students. While understanding these impressions certainly plays an important part in assessing the value of OER and learning more about its function in various educational contexts, there is an equally important role for an evidence-based approach to both shore up and dismantle particular claims.  

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Here at COERLL, we just wrapped up the spring issue of our bi-annual newsletter entitled “Research for an Open World.” In it, we focus on the idea that organizations like COERLL have a real opportunity to advance a research agenda by taking advantage of various data capture and analytics tools available to us – like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights. While the software largely provide demographic data and lend insight on general characteristics of the users of particular online resources we make available, we know that unpacking and analyzing these data is a small, but significant first step in developing a more complete picture of how teachers and learners utilize our resources and the impact they may have. 

In the coming weeks, we look forward to talking more about the AAAL discussion – especially taking a closer look at some of the panel participant’s empirical research projects that investigate the effects of OER on foreign language learning and teaching. In the meantime, we invite you to take a look at the Spring 2014 newsletter and also check out a one-page handout we made – Open Educational Resources: The Basics – for last week’s Open Education Week  Celebration.

Building Community at AATSP

By Carl Blyth

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Conferences are a great place to talk to teachers and hear what’s on their minds.  The Spanish and Portuguese teachers at the AATSP conference in San Antonio gave us lots of terrific ideas. Here are a few:

Ann Mar, a high school AP Spanish teacher from San Antonio, told us that she had recently become aware of COERLL’s SpinTX Video Archive.  She was excited to discover that it  closely aligns with the new AP Spanish curriculum scheduled to begin this fall.  The AP Spanish Language and Culture Course is a national curriculum set by the College Board. Ann told us that there are 6 themes within the new curriculum  that match up well with the themes in the SpinTX videos ( e.g. “Personal and Public Identities”, “Families and Communities”,  “Contemporary Life”).

Ann has already posted a link to SpinTX in the AP teacher community forum. She will also be running a summer institute for AP Spanish teachers at UT Austin later in July. Finally, she is  interested in having her high school students in San Antonio collect videos using our protocols, with the idea that we could use them as part of the corpus if they turn out well.  So, it looks like COERLL will definitely be exploring how to  connect our video archive to the AP Spanish curriculum with Ann’s help.  Thanks, Ann!

Another terrific idea came from  Dr. Margo Milleret from the Portuguese program at the University of New Mexico. Margo suggested that COERLL consider developing badges aimed at middle or high school students based on our introductory LCTL resources. Badges are a way to recognize and verify online learning. The goal would be to expose students to languages that aren’t normally offered in high schools (such as Portuguese), so that when the students go to college, they would be more likely to study a LCTL.  She noted that while she doesn’t have the resources to do something like this herself, she would really like to collaborate with a center like COERLL and other  K-12 teachers to make it happen.  Margo’s great idea combines various elements of COERLL’s mission:  K-12, LCTLs, and Open Education.

And finally, another good idea came from ACTFL president Toni Theisen. Toni was chatting with us at the COERLL booth about the tremendous potential of badges for teacher development.  She wondered whether COERLL could help ACTFL award attendees of this year’s convention in Orlando with a participation badge.  Great idea, Toni! That would certainly help bring badges to the attention of the foreign language teaching community.  Let’s work on this … together.

Open Education is fundamentally about sharing.  So a big “Thank You” to all the teachers who shared their  ideas with us at AATSP.

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Carl BlythCarl Blyth is Director of COERLL and Associate Professor of French, UT Austin.  His research includes CMC,  cross-cultural and intercultural pragmatics, interactional sociolinguistics, and pedagogical grammar.  He is project director of eComma, an open-source annotation application to facilitate more “social” forms of reading.