Open Up

Conversations on Open Education for Language Learning

The potential of open pedagogy

Photo credit: “Create” by flickr user Eden, Janine and Jim Creative Commons License

Open pedagogy is an approach to teaching that has emerged from the open education movement. It aims to make learning more accessible, learner driven, and connected. Open pedagogy gives learners the space to create something that will be used by someone else. This approach is the alternative to what David Wiley has referred to as “disposable assignments” that students spend a few hours working on, faculty spend time grading, and then students throw away once the course is over.

Open pedagogy is different from open practices, which include sharing, giving feedback, testing new ideas, applying open licenses, and giving credit to people whose ideas or resources you use. These practices support open pedagogy, but they don’t always put the student in such an active role. However, both open practices and open pedagogy are made possible by the permissions that are granted through open Creative Commons licenses: making copies, adapting, and distributing resources as part of a community.

One source for information about open pedagogy is the Open Pedagogy Notebook, edited by Rajiv Jhangiani and Robin DeRosa, who have shaped and advanced the discussion about this subject. In the notebook, they describe the theory behind open pedagogy and provide open pedagogy case studies authored by faculty from different fields.

In these case studies, students develop a variety of products, either on their own, in teams, or alongside their teacher: course goals, multiple choice question banks, introductions for anthologies, wiki articles, peer assessments, and syllabi. The assignments allow students a large role in determining their learning, but it’s important to note that they are still carefully scaffolded so that students understand what is expected of them and are not pushed beyond their capacity. These projects require some experimentation and may reveal the messy process of learning, but they have the potential to provide students with experience and knowledge that they can apply in many other facets of their lives.

In a blog post on Digital Pedagogy Lab, Jhangiani and DeRosa also point out that open pedagogy can reflect social justice ideals, first because it is an alternative to expensive textbooks. Just as important, it positions knowledge as co-constructed between learners and instructors, rather than a one way transfer from instructor to student.

Here are some open pedagogy projects for language learning that put the students in the role of creators:

  • Kelly Arispe and Amber Hoye lead the Boise State University Department of World Languages’ Pathways OER Language Teaching Repository, an open collection of instructional materials and professional development created by and uniquely for Idaho’s K-16 language teachers and students. Participating teachers and students come from different fields of study to create open digital activities that support the teaching and learning of foreign languages and promote intercultural competence.
  • Anna Comas-Quinn and Mara Fuertes Gutiérrez tasked students with translating the subtitles of a TED or TEDx talk of their choice, reviewing and providing feedback on their peers’ translations, and taking part in the online subtitling community.
  • Lionel Mathieu, Kathryn Murphy-Judy, Robert Godwin-Jones, Laura Middlebrooks, and Natalia Boykova developed a multiphasic project where 202 students curate authentic materials online, upper level students sort and scaffold the curations into online modules, and students discuss curations with native speakers. This will eventually culminate in the creation of open textbooks featuring the authentic materials and modules.
  • Ewan McAndrew and Lorna Campbell led their translation Studies MSc students at the University of Edinburgh to take part in a Wikipedia translation assignment as part of their independent study component.
  • Jon Beasley-Murray and the University of British Columbia‘s class SPAN312 (“Murder, Madness, and Mayhem: Latin American Literature in Translation”) contributed to Wikipedia during Spring 2008. The collective goals were to bring a selection of articles on Latin American literature to featured article status (or as near as possible). By project’s end, they had contributed three featured articles and eight good articles.
  • Jeannette Okur taught her students to use collaborative Google Docs and Aegisub Advanced Subtitling Editor software to create and add original English subtitles to three classic Turkish films
  • Julie Ann Ward developed the antholgy “Antología abierta de literatura hispana” with her students, and piloted it with collaborating instructors and students

Public facing student projects could also include student presentations at public meetings, campus public service campaigns, or the publication and dissemination of student-authored zines, to name a few other ideas from the open pedagogy notebook.

Now, what can you create with your students?

Announcing a new textbook: ClicaBrasil!

Editor’s note: the below post is the introduction by Vivian Flanzer to the ClicaBrasil textbook that she recently published with COERLL. The introduction carries a CC BY-NC-SA license.  

ClicaBrasil, the web-based Portuguese program developed and in use at the University of Texas at Austin since 2010, is a media-rich Open Educational Resource (OER), which requires neither password nor fees. An OER is distinguished from commercial materials by its open copyright license (Creative Commons license). Users may adapt the original materials and share their adaptations with others, but must credit the original content and its author.

ClicaBrasil was designed to teach the Portuguese language in the context of Brazilian culture to intermediate and advanced language learners. It can be successfully used either in classroom settings or for autonomous learning. The website and the new textbook comprise an open curriculum that includes seven units based on culturally rich literary texts. In addition, the curriculum contains 157 authentic and unscripted videos of Brazilians from all regions and sectors of society speaking about their lives, their country, and topics that arise from these readings. Each unit contains hundreds of activities that hone language skills while raising awareness about contemporary Brazilian society. The activities are accompanied by a helpful answer-key. ClicaBrasil also provides a grammar bank with concise explanations about verb tenses and conjugations as well as a vocabulary list for each chapter. Designed to accompany the website, the ClicaBrasil textbook is downloadable for free in PDF format and is also available for purchase as a print-on-demand book from Amazon and Lulu.com.

Tips for the Learner

Each unit has four sections with many activities: Pano de fundo (Backdrop), where you will be introduced to the unit’s specific socio-cultural scenario; Leitura (Reading), with glossaries and tools to help you understand the text; Gramática (Grammar), where you will learn and review grammar topics in the context of the readings and the videos; and Aproximando o foco (Zooming in), where you will have the opportunity to explore and reflect more extensively about aspects of Brazilian culture and society that arise in the units.

Tips for the Instructor

There are several ways to use ClicaBrasil. I encourage you to personalize these open materials according to your students’ needs. As this is an OER, you can edit and remix its content, crediting the original source and author. Feel free to skip a unit or a section, or to do them in a different order. And if, for example, you think a composition activity would make more sense in your course as a class discussion, go for it! It is always a good idea to select which activities you will do in class (as a group, in pairs, or individually) and which you will assign for homework. I suggest you ask your students to check the answer-key before submitting their homework, so they can clear up any questions in class. Some activities offer “suggested answers” because they reflect personal views or subjective opinions. My students have reported that the “suggested answers” have inspired them to discuss the lessons in class after doing the homework.

I have had a lot of fun reinventing the way I teach with ClicaBrasil. I hope you will too.

For more information:

—

Vivian Flanzer Vivian Flanzer was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she spent most of her life. She coordinates the Portuguese Language Program at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese of the University of Texas at Austin since 2001. She has a B.A. in Communications; an M.A. in Anthropology from the Museu Nacional of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro; an M.A. in Foreign Language Education from UT-Austin; and is completing her Ph.D. in Iberian and Latin American Languages and Cultures at UT-Austin.

Virtual Reality: Innovation in Open Education

Photo by mentatdgt from Pexels, Public Domain

Editor’s note: This is a guest blog post by Margherita Berti, a doctoral student in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) at the University of Arizona, and the creator of the open educational resource website Italian Open Education.

As the awareness about open educational resources, tools, and practices increases, instructors, researchers, and educational technologists are exploring innovative ways to promote language education. This is especially the case for Italian Open Education, a website that offers a collection of openly-licensed and free-to-use 360-degree virtual reality videos for Italian learners and teachers.

As a researcher and language educator, I chose to develop Italian Open Education to support the Open Education Movement and to supplement current foreign language textbooks with innovative and dynamic pedagogical materials. Today’s technological advances have made virtual reality extremely accessible, allowing language learners to be immersed in three-dimensional and seemingly real environments generated by the use of special electronic equipment (e.g., smartphones, viewers, headsets, etc.).

To create such resources, I first recorded 360-degree videos in Italian locations that represent everyday environments which students might encounter, however not critically reflect on, in the language textbook. Some examples include a plaza, a street, a coffee shop, a restaurant, a mall, etc. (permission to record the videos was granted by owners of inside spaces). After the recordings took place, I uploaded the videos to YouTube and licensed them under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. The Italian Open Education platform was then developed on WordPress, where all the 360-degree virtual reality videos are gathered and can be used freely.

The objective of this project is to offer new cutting-edge pedagogical resources which allow Italian language learners to be virtually placed in various Italian settings that might be inaccessible due to financial or geographical constraints. Since most students are not able to study abroad, the use of openly-licensed 360-degree virtual reality videos in the language classroom gives learners equal access to authentic environments representing the target country.

By sharing free-to-use, high-quality and innovative pedagogical materials with teachers and learners, I advocate for the Open Education Movement and aim to encourage administrators and language educators to implement new and dynamic open educational resources in their own language classrooms.

For more information:

—

Margherita Berti is a doctoral student in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) at the University of Arizona and holds a master’s degree in Linguistics/Teaching English as a Second Language from Indiana State University. She teaches undergraduate Italian courses and has over three years of experience in language teaching at the university level in Italian, Spanish and ESL. Her research specialization resides at the intersection of intercultural competence, educational technology, and curriculum and L2 content development..

Open Resources for Indigenous Languages

Photo credit: “Nahuala huipil” by Sergio Romero for “Chqe’tamaj le qach’ab’al K’iche’!”, licensed under Creative Commons License

2019 is the International Year of Indigenous Languages, as established by UNESCO. The goal of this year is to increase support for, promotion of, and access to indigenous languages. UNESCO suggests that one approach to this goal is to “develop new and open educational resources to facilitate teaching and learning in indigenous languages”. (You can read the other suggestions on the program website.)

Since we at COERLL focus on open educational resources (OER) for language learning, we are happy to see when OER are suggested as a way to support a movement. Open Creative Commons licenses, an essential aspect of all OER, make it easier for people to access and share important information in their community and with the world, while ensuring authors are always credited for their work. This will not be a solution that suits everyone, but there are many indigenous language teachers and organizations who have chosen to make their resources available under a Creative Commons license. The list below is just a sample. Thank you to the authors of these resources for sharing their valuable knowledge.

Please share other openly-licensed indigenous language materials in the comments!

Fijian

Na vosa vakaviti – A Fijian language children’s activity book of word searches, colouring pages, and stories published by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Licensed under a CC BY-NC license.

Indigenous languages of Canada

Indigenous Storybooks makes the text, images, and audio of stories available in Indigenous languages as well as English, French, and the most widely spoken immigrant and refugee languages of Canada. It’s for children, families, community members, and educators. Inspired by Little Cree Books. Licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

Iñupiat

Iñupiat Language Community site – Lessons, activities, and additional resources for the Iñupiat language developed by Chelsey Zibell at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Licensed under a CC BY license.

Komnzo, Mauwake, Moloko, Palula, Papuan Malay, Pite Saami, Rapa Nui, Yakkha, Yauyos Quechua

Studies in Diversity Linguistics – A book series published by Language Science Press on individual less-widely studied languages (primarily reference grammars). The chief editor is Martin Haspelmath. Licensed under a CC BY license.

K’iche’

Chqe’tamaj le qach’ab’al K’iche’! – A multimedia K’iche’ curriculum in English and Spanish, comprised of 40 lessons developed by Sergio Romero, Ignacio Carvajal, Juan Manuel Tahay Tzaj, Mareike Sattler, et. al. with the support of LLILAS and COERLL at the University of Texas at Austin. Licensed under a CC BY license.

Māori

Te reo Māori pukapuka mahi – A free downloadable Māori language activity book for kids published by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Licensed under a CC BY-NC license.

Nahuatl

Language faculty and graduate students supported by LLILAS and COERLL at the University of Texas at Austin are in the process of planning materials for beginning language learners of Nahuatl. Stay tuned to the blog for updates!

Sāmoan

Gagana Sāmoa Tusi o gāluega fa‘atino – A Sāmoan language activity book of word searches, coloring pages, and stories for kids, published by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Licensed under a CC BY-NC license.

SENĆOŦEN

SENĆOŦEN Classified Word List – A list of over 3300 SENĆOŦEN words and sound files by Dr. Timothy Montler et. al. Licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

General Indigenous Language Studies

Language Learning Assessment Tool – A guide for adult learners of Indigenous languages to self-assess their learning and progress written by Dr. Onowa McIvor and Dr. Peter Jacobs of NEȾOLṈEW̱, the Indigenous Language Research Network. Licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

 

What other openly licensed indigenous language materials do you recommend?

Sharing responsibly with your colleagues

Photo credit: flickr user Hoffnungsschimmer Creative Commons License

You can help other teachers by sharing your creations, whether you give your materials away or sell them.

However you share, we suggest you do it with a Creative Commons (CC) license. This allows users of your work to make changes to fit their students and their teaching context, and to use the materials in their classroom. And you still get credit! Copyright, which is the default license on any unmarked online content, doesn’t allow these rights.

Here’s how to add a CC license:

1. Click here to download the CC BY license image to your computer.

2. Add the license image to your resource (in the footer, at the end of content, or anywhere else you prefer).

3. Copy and paste the following text underneath your license image:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

There are other licenses which give more or fewer rights to the users of your materials. You can learn about them on the Creative Commons website.

Read the license!

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Photo credit: flickr user Eden, Janine and Jim Creative Commons License

From the editor: COERLL advocates for the use of Creative Commons (CC) licenses over copyright wherever possible. But in either case, it is essential that users always look for the CC or the © on the work they use and distribute, and understand what those symbols mean about their rights. Martina Bex gives a teacher’s personal perspective why usage and distribution rights are important. 

A few weeks ago, I used Google to find the link to one of my products. I typed in “bex monstruo armario”, and there it was! Yes! The first link that popped up was a direct link to the product on TeachersPayTeachers.com. That should have been the end of the story, but unfortunately it was only just beginning.

My heart sank as I realized that the next two…four…seven links were all direct-download links to my powerpoint presentation that were stored on slide sharing websites and personal classroom pages. “Are you kidding me!?” I exclaimed out loud. I felt my stomach begin to tie itself in knots. As I clicked through link after link, I my heart start to pound harder and harder in my chest. I clenched my teeth and my ears started getting hot. WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?

Copyright infringement is something that publishers deal with constantly. For many, it has become such a frequent occurrence that they have hired personnel to identify and pursue violations. I am not a publisher; I’m a stay at home mom with a 5 year old, a 3.5 year old, a 2.5 year old, a 1 year old, and another baby on the way that oh-by-the-way-happens-to-write-lesson-plans. I don’t have the money to hire someone to make sure that no one is posting my materials online; nor do I have the time to regularly search for each of the hundreds of products that I sell to make sure that they haven’t been posted anywhere. I don’t have time to track down the contact information of violators; draft emails, letters, and submit takedown requests; and follow up to make sure that the files are removed. I especially don’t have the time or money to hire a lawyer that will pursue financial reparation. And yet, I don’t have a choice. When you’re wounded, you’ve got to stop the bleeding.

I realize that most of the time, teachers violate digital copyright law innocently. In an effort to connect classroom and home or to find easy solutions for the “I-teach-in-six-different-classrooms” problem, teachers upload PDFs of the materials that they use in class to their classroom websites or to slide sharing websites. It never occurs to them that the little link posted on their page would pop up in the first page of a Google search—even with general terms—for anyone in the world to be able to access and download.

I’m here today to tell you that the files on your public, non-password protected website do show up in a simple Google search, and that your careless mistake is hurting me. I’ll never know how much income I have lost due to copyright violations. Perhaps because I can’t possibly know the amount, loss of income doesn’t bother me much. What really infuriates me is watching my to-do list become completely derailed, week after week, as infringements are brought to my attention. Three hours spent dealing with copyright concerns means that I don’t have time to respond to the 10 emails that I received yesterday from teachers asking for advice. It means that even though I promised a group of teachers that a unit would be finished by the time they needed it this Friday, it won’t be. It means that the article that I wanted to write and share—FREE—for teachers to use to talk about the situation in Venezuela will never get written.

Somehow, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize!” doesn’t seem like enough.

Please, dear teachers, take the time to learn about how files can be used and shared, whether copyrighted or carrying a Creative Commons license. Take the time to educate your colleagues. And if you ever stumble upon a file that is being shared illegally online, please send the link to the copyright holder.

—

Martina Bex is a former Spanish teacher in Anchorage, Alaska with a passion for using comprehensible input to explore culture in the target language beginning in Novice classes.

Student authored textbooks… in the language classroom?

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As more language teachers discuss ditching the textbook, the open education community is discussing another way to address outdated, incomplete, and impersonal books: student authored textbooks. When a teacher asks their students to write their own textbook, the teacher is a guide for actively learning and collaborating students, rather than a transmitter of knowledge to passive students. There are some great examples of instructors who have already tried this described briefly below. They are all from higher ed, and not all are language related… but please read on, there may be some ideas here you could use!

Most student authored textbook projects begin with a simple platform, such as Pressbooks (which is WordPress-based), or a wiki of some kind. A class may adapt a book or create a whole new one. For example, Robin DeRosa from Plymouth State University created an Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature with her students, based off of an existing anthology students were paying money for, even though most of the literary readings were in the public domain. David Wiley took the openly licensed textbook Project Management From Simple to Complex, and his students adapted it into a book about project management for their field: Project Management for Instructional Designers. Dr. Lixun Wang’s class created a linguistics textbook from scratch.

In Dr. Wang’s class, students worked in groups to research and write each chapter. For classes adapting an existing book, most of the work lies in modifying content and creating supplementary materials. For example, David Wiley’s students replaced the general project management examples with instructional design examples, added comprehension questions to the end of each chapter, linked to expert interview videos they created, aligned the text to project management certification exams, created glossaries, and replaced copyright images with Creative Commons images. Both Wiley’s and Wang’s students presented their work as they created it. Robin DeRosa’s class added introductions to each anthology reading, as well as short films, discussion questions, and assignments. As Dr. DeRosa points out, students are the ideal textbook authors…

“Unlike many other scholarly materials, textbooks are primarily designed to be accessible to students– to new scholars in a particular academic area or sub-specialty.  Students are the perfect people to help create textbooks, since they are the most keenly tuned in to what other students will need in order to engage with the material in meaningful ways.”

Creating a textbook is not only collaborative and creative; it can also be a lesson in digital citizenship. As Jennifer Kidd, Patrick O’Shea, and Peter Baker wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education, such vast amounts of knowledge are available on the internet that students now have a greater capacity to find up-to-date information, and writing textbooks helps them assess the usefulness and reliability of this information.

Drs. Wiley, Wang, and DeRosa all report that their students were more engaged when they had the responsibility of creating their own text and taking charge of their own learning. Dr. Wang points out that students leave class after creating a textbook as more autonomous lifelong learners, because they are more aware of the teaching and learning process.

Based on these examples, which address different students and different disciplines, how would a language teacher go about creating a textbook with their students? What would the result look like? Is this an opportunity to provide communicative language teaching in a way that mainstream textbooks don’t always do? Is this only possible in higher ed, or could K-12 students do it too, if not to teach the language itself, perhaps to teach culture or literature? Please respond in the comments below!

By the way, all of COERLL’s materials have open licenses, and most of the licenses allow users to make modifications to the content, so if you ever use Français interactif, Brazilpod, SpinTX, or any of our other materials in your class, they could be the basis for a new student authored textbook!

Case studies of student authored textbooks:

  • Robin DeRosa on the Open Anthology of Early American Literature
  • Lixun Wang on the Introduction to Linguistics Wikibook (includes ideas about peer assessment)
  • David Wiley on Project Management for Instructional Designers
  • David Wesch on his students’ collaborative research paper.

 

Availability of Foreign Language materials in OER repositories

Photo credit: flickr user gotcredit.com Creative Commons License

Here at COERLL, we encourage teachers to use Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) in their classes. One way to begin using OER and OEP is to search for and use pedagogical materials (lessons, activities, and courses) that other teachers have posted online in OER repositories. To help navigate through the many options, we’ve gone through all of the OER repositories we know of to see what the benefits are of each one, and how much language content is available. This is a summary of what we found, we hope after you read this you will want to either search on some of these sites, or upload your own materials for sharing! And please let us know in the comments if you know of other repositories not included here!

Criteria for evaluating repositories

This criteria was loosely based on Atenas and Havemann’s key OER repository themes of searching, sharing, reusing, and collaborating, set out in their 2013 article ‘Quality Assurance in the Open: An Evaluation of OER Repositories’, which can be found online here.1

  • availability of language content – does the repository have at least some content for language learning, and is it easy to find?
  • tools for vetting – does the platform provide for peer reviews or some other vetting/editorial process to assure teachers access to quality content?
  • ease of remixing – does the platform encourage teachers to edit materials and personalize them for their students?
  • licensing information – are licenses clearly marked? do licenses allow for fair attribution, sharing, and remixing of content? are Creative Commons licenses encouraged?
  • metadata quality – does metadata facilitate searches using different criteria (e.g. languages, proficiency level, etc.)?
  • any other qualities that create an engaging and creative space for sharing materials and ideas,such as tools to help teachers communicate and interact with each other

Repositories with language materials

MERLOT

A well respected and mature (started in 1997) repository for lessons and activities. There are lots of options for collaboration and communication, so that it’s not just a repository but a community around sharing resources.

  • Lots of language content
  • Peer reviews are available for many of the entries and Merlot’s editorial board selects their favorites
  • Teachers can discuss the materials with each other in a comments section.
  • Easy to create a learning exercise around the materials.
  • Licensing information is clearly marked (not all content is Creative Commons licensed)
  • The longevity of the platform has allowed the best materials to emerge over time – here’s a list of some award winning ones

Open Textbook Library

The best part about this textbook repository is the elaborate rating system and emphasis on peer reviews and the vetting process.

  • There is a detailed list of criteria to guide users in reviewing materials.
  • Licensing information is clearly marked.
  • Some COERLL textbooks have just been added to the language page!

OER Commons

OER Commons is a large repository for any kind of materials (lessons, activities, textbooks, etc.). It has tools in place for thorough evaluation, remixing, creation, and licensing.

  • About 700 language materials and language support for resources and metadata
  • Users can evaluate materials based on Common Core standards and an extensive rubric. There is also a general rating available (out of 5 stars).
  • The system guides users in choosing a Creative Commons license upon upload
  • The lesson builder allows teachers to create new materials or reuse existing.

Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative

Full courses available from Carnegie Mellon, for teachers looking for structured and complete courses.

  • Chinese, Spanish, French, Arabic
  • Plentiful guides and resources for teachers.
  • Licensed with a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
  • Users can add content but can’t remove or revise content from a course.
  • Free for instructors and independent learners, $50 for enrolled students.
  • Compatible with LMS.
  • Statistics about student use help teachers track progress and help Carnegie Mellon research education theories.

Open Course Library

Professionally laid out materials are easy to find and edit in this library of courses from the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.

  • 3 levels each of Spanish, French, and Sign Language
  • All materials are in google docs which makes them easy to modify.
  • All content is clearly marked as Creative Commons licensed.

Language Resource Centers (LRC) portal

The website for the 16 national Language Resource Centers (of which COERLL is one), where you can search a list of over 800 classroom and professional development materials.

  • Language content only (there are materials for LCTLs too)
  • Lots of criteria to help users narrow searches down
  • Materials have been vetted by language specialists

Curriki

Curriki does a good job of emphasizing community, and its wide range of review options helps users to sift through a lot of activities and other content.

  • 2765 entries under “World Language” content, but not all are for language teaching
  • Review options are plentiful: Members can give ratings and reviews, Curriki reviews some content based on Technical Completeness, Content Accuracy, and Appropriate Pedagogy, and there are collections curated by Curriki (no curated language collections yet though)
  • There is a separate community for teachers to discuss how to use materials.
  • Choosing a license is a prerequisite for uploading materials
  • Users can align materials with standards.

TES

TES is a repository where teachers share activities. Some activities cost a small fee but the World Languages section and the remixing tools make this site worth looking through.

  • American Sign Language, Ancient Greek, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, etc.
  • Teachers can review materials
  • All content is labeled with a license, either Creative Commons or the TES teaching resource license
  • Their related site, Blendspace, encourages remixing and is easily accessible from TES
  • Share My Lesson allows users to build a lesson plan around TES materials

MIT OpenCourseWare

MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) makes course materials from MIT classes available for the public.

  • A good range of languages represented.
  • All instructor created materials share a CC BY NC SA license
  • Course materials includes any combination of syllabus, calendar, list of readings, assignments, online/related resources, study materials, instructor insights, and sometimes even course videos.
  • Though the instructor created materials are free and openly licensed, some of the course materials referenced are not free or open.

Wikibooks and Wikiversity

Wikibooks and Wikiversity are both run by Wikimedia. There are currently a lot of incomplete materials there but with the ease of editing, options to add auxiliary materials, and discussion tools, these platforms could be a rich resource.

  • Many languages (mostly reference grammars) on Wikibooks, some on Wikiversity
  • Discussion tabs encourage community and collaboration
  • There’s an option to add exercises on Wikibooks
  • Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

LORO

LORO is all language content! It contains mostly activities rather than whole textbooks or collections. It’s supported by The Univesity of Southhampton and the Open University.

  • Exclusively for languages
  • Users can comment on or “like” materials
  • All content is CC licensed.

Repositories with fewer language options but with a unique angle on OER

Some other repositories are set up well but have little or no language offerings. I’d like to mention them anyways as examples of all the ways a repository can encourage sharing and collaboration.

  • Portland State University Open Text offers a carefully curated set of textbooks with a growing number of language books
  • BC Campus Open Ed has all the right tools for building a community of collaboration around the available CC licensed textbooks, including detailed criteria for peer review and resources for adopting and modifying texts.
  • The Orange Grove is the state of Florida’s repository. One of its best features is its detailed metadata which makes it easy to search for content.
  • Gooru offers CC licensed collections of materials, and many other features such as games and tools for remixing content and measuring student progress.
  • OpenStax CNX offers fully vetted, modularized textbooks, and an option for sharing activities and lessons.
  • The Sofia Project is a smaller repository, but it’s interesting to look through because of the large amount of auxiliary materials, like syllabi, rubrics, schedules, assignments, projects, exams, and even sample student assignments.
  • The Global Text Project is a grassroots approach to textbooks and encourages teachers to adopt books and work with their students to make them better.
  • The Saylor Foundation provides well organized and complete CC licensed courses with a lot of auxiliary material, and peer review and feedback are encouraged.
  • Storyweaver is not quite a repository but it offers a good model for collaborative language work… anyone can upload storybooks in any language (41 languages represented so far), and members of the community can comment on stories, share on social media, translate them or edit them for different levels of readers.

Other repositories

Areas for improvement

  • Tagging: Some repositories appear to have more language content than they do because content in a foreign language is tagged under the same category as content for teaching foreign languages. So for example, a Portuguese lesson about biology for Portuguese speakers could be in the same category as a Portuguese learning lesson for English speakers.
  • Use cases: Most repositories don’t specifically encourage a teacher who uploads a resource to explain how they used the the resource in their classroom. This information could help other teachers save time and give them new ideas about teaching methods.
  • Remixing: Editing materials is a key aspect of OER, but some sites do not encourage it. Some repositories do encourage edits in their platforms, but the resulting new material is not usable outside of the platform.
  • Popular tools: Some of the most widely used platforms (for example, YouTube) offer free resources for education, but don’t always provide important tools: peer review options, search terms compatible with educational criteria, and open licenses.

1Atenas, Javiera and Havemann, Leo (2013) ‘Quality Assurance in the Open: An Evaluation of OER Repositories.’ INNOQUAL – International Journal for Innovation and Quality in Learning , 1 (2). pp. 22-34.

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Why Foreign Language Grad Programs Should Care About OER

By Jonathan Perkins

Photo: English106

Discussions about the future of OER often seem to center on issues of promotion and tenure and on finding viable business models for  for large-scale projects. While these are certainly issues for which solutions need to be found, our desire to institutionalize and commodify OER must not crowd out consideration of the pedagogical opportunities that OER can provide to graduate programs.

Digital Humanities and CALL

We are in an age in which graduate programs are thinking about alternatives to the dissertation and Digital Humanists are calling for project-based scholarship for graduate students. Work on OER can facilitate this new kind of graduate training, creating a focus for discussions of content as well as curricular design, and providing hands-on experience in issues of CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) for a generation of teachers who will be expected to work increasingly in online and hybrid formats.

Creating a Knowledge Ecosystem

Rather than focusing exclusively on single-author articles and monographs, couldn’t graduate students also collaborate on materials for classroom use? Think of the vast array of materials that such an army of graduate students could produce, and the praise it might garner from legislators seeking to lower the cost of higher education. Think about the “knowledge ecosystem” that this small change could help create, and the ripple effects that a cohort so young could have over time. (See Making Collaboration Easier to watch Rich Baraniuk talk more about the knowledge ecosystem.)

What do you think? Could embracing Open Access and technological literacy as integral parts of graduate studies better prepare both the future professoriate and the growing number of alternative academics being produced by our graduate programs?

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Jon perkinsJonathan Perkins is the Director of the Ermal Garinger Academic Resource Center at the University of Kansas. His research interests include Computer Assisted Language Learning, instructional technology and faculty development.

“We’re Committed to Openness in Content Creation”

By Scott Rapp

From the editor: We had the opportunity to interview Scott Rapp, co-founder of the Instreamia language learning platform and the designer and instructor of a new first-year Spanish MOOC (4,762 students enrolled). Check back with Open Up to find out about Scott’s new Language Teaching MOOC for creating blended learning environments.

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OU: How did you learn Spanish and what motivated you to create Instreamia?

SR:  My brother, Ryan, and I each spent two years abroad volunteering, Ryan went to Japan, and I went to Honduras. Learning Japanese and Spanish was a necessity.

Years later we were both working for Deloitte–Ryan in Japan and I in DC. We began discussing our strategies for learning languages, which was especially on Ryan’s mind as he had to do everything in Japanese, and he was also constantly being asked how he learned Japanese and recommendations for how they could learn English.

We decided that a well-indexed set of reference tools combined with natural language processing really took a lot of the tediousness out of learning a language. We gradually worked on building a product around RSS feeds and text-based sources when the “big idea” hit me like a ton of bricks: What if we could go beyond text-only sources, and focus our strategy on subtitled videos? Then we could integrate our powerful toolset into a video player! This led to other breakthrough innovations, like the dynamic exercises and adaptive learning with time-series depreciation that Instreamia includes today.

Originally called StudyStream, the Rapp brothers renamed their resource to Instreamia before rolling out their Spanish MOOC in January 2013.

OU: Why did you decide to make your courses open?

SR: Developing the Instreamia software, we wanted it to have a positive impact on the most people possible. We also recognized that many of the ideas for improvements and future developments would come from language learners and teachers, and that has proven true time and again. We still feel strongly that content development efforts by educators (including ourselves) are best made in Open Educational Resources. Our platform can’t work without excellent content, and obtaining and maintaining licensing for hundreds of videos, learning modules, dictionaries, and explanations would greatly undermine the scalability and versatility of our platform.

OU: But you are going to start charging a $99 registration fee? (Learn more.)

SR:  All the investment in Instreamia has been founders’ capital. Before quitting Deloitte, Ryan put away a substantial seed investment that he was able to live on for over a year while he began the development of Instreamia. I still work full-time, and work on Instreamia and the SpanishMOOC in my free time, and invest a portion of my salary to Instreamia.

We knew the time would come for us to change from an entirely free platform to having paid services or premium features. We want to stay true to our decision of making all the content free and open, and we will continue to publish all the materials we or any users create through Creative Commons.

OU: What were the factors behind the decision to charge the fee?

SR: During our initial offering of our Spanish MOOC, we realized the level of effort and commitment to our students (especially hand-grading assignments) could not be handled solely by volunteers. We were faced with a difficult decision: we could shut down the Spanish MOOC offering altogether, degrade the experience by excluding any teacher interaction, or … offer an improved course with paid TAs and graders, and charge a registration fee. We decided to add the fee, so we could offer a much improved learning experience.

OU: What are aspects of your courses that remain open?

SR: Our technology and code-base is not open-source. It’s proprietary and has a patent pending. But we’re committed to openness in content creation. Here’s how teachers, graders, and even advanced learners can contribute to each of our content categories:

  • Native-Content Subtitled Audio/Videos – These are either user-created (under CC), Instreamia-created (under CC), or they are used with permission from YouTube. Teachers can write text, record audio, and translate the transcript through Instreamia’s Video Editor.
  • Instructional Videos – These are videos we make available on our YouTube Channel (under CC). Any teacher can contribute by creating their own YouTube channel and embedding their videos on the Instreamia Lesson Creator.
  • Lessons – These are either user-created (under CC), or Instreamia-created (under CC). Teachers can write text, embed Instructional Videos, and create exercises based on the Native-Content library.
  • Grammar Explanations –  These are lessons with special indexing, so that teachers and graders can direct their students to them. For example, typing @gustar anywhere in a lesson or comment would create a link to the Gustar grammar explanation.
  • Dictionary Entries – Every word has audio pronunciation (Forvo, not CC), definitions (Princeton’s WordNet, free license), and multilingual relations, or translations (Instreamia, CC). When a user notices a word with an inaccurate or missing translation, he/she can edit it, so our users are making our translations better all the time.

As a community we can make and maintain content that frees us from using archaic textbooks. (See “Got Textbooks? From This Century?”) Together as a group of educators, we can provide a better learning experience without having to license content. This will make teaching languages more scalable and affordable, and it will allow for rapidly-evolving curricula.

OU: Do you have any questions for our readers?

SR: We have so much to say and to discuss, and we’d love to hear comments from you!

  • How would your classroom change if a computer were able to assign and grade homework based on each individual student’s needs?
  • What methods have you found to make students fall in love with the subject matter

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Scott RappScott Rapp is professor of SpanishMOOC, an open initiative to teach Spanish to large groups of people online. He is also the co-founder of the adaptive language learning platform Instreamia, which enables blended teaching by dynamically creating interactive lessons based on native content.