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The Impact of OER on Teaching

July 18, 2019 Leave a Comment

Photo credit: “Impact” by flickr user Walter-Wilhelm, resized and edited for this blog Creative Commons License

COERLL hosted an online “OER hangout” on June 3rd on the subject of the impact of open educational resources (OER) on teaching practices. With 32 people attending, four instructors shared their experiences creating openly licensed resources for teaching and learning languages:

  • Julianne Hammink, Instructional Design & Development Coordinator at the Center for ESL at the University of Arizona who is developing OER for ESL
  • David Thompson, Professor of Spanish at Luther College and author of a set of four problem-based units for Advanced Spanish
  • Sonia Balasch, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Linguistics in the Department of Language and Literature at Eastern Mennonite University and co-author of Español y cultura en perspectiva
  • Margherita Berti, Doctoral student in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona, and creator of Italian Open Education, which features 360° Virtual Reality videos.

Although the topic of the hangout was teaching practices, OER can have an impact before teaching has even begun. The panelists pointed out that developing OER made them think more about their course design, giving them more insight into their own instructional practices and goals.

One common factor of success that each panelist mentioned was community. OER can do the often difficult job of bringing different members of the campus community together, for example, librarians, digital humanitarians, and centers for teaching and learning. Each panelist mentioned having talked to their colleagues for advice at some point during the OER development process. After publishing her OER, Sonia heard from faculty at other institutions who were using her materials and she went on to mentor colleagues as they developed their own curricula, thus growing the community.

OER can broach topics that are more challenging, current, and relevant than in a traditional textbook. The panelists exposed their students to a variety of topics. For Sonia, it was social justice. For Margherita, it was virtual reality access to non-touristic locations that would show Italian culture from a more everyday perspective. For David, it was controversies in Spain, such as bullfighting.

This kind of subject matter has the potential to motivate students to think critically. David pointed out that “part of the goal… is to present students with messy or incomplete information that they must then combine and recombine in order to develop a reasonable solution… OER lends itself well to being… less curated or edited for a classroom context.” And this format gave his students the space to develop their collaborative skills.

David, Sonia, and Margherita have all published their materials, and Julianne is beginning to pilot her materials this semester. But their work is still evolving. At the end of each semester, Sonia asks her students in their evaluation if they have any changes to suggest, and then updates the materials accordingly. She said “the readings will be better, thanks to my students. We don’t have the final word on anything… that’s the idea.”

For more information:

  • Watch the June 3rd OER Hangout recording
  • View other resources from the hangout

Thank you to our four panelists and to everyone who attended! COERLL is planning more OER hangouts for the fall, where we will emphasize various topics in OER (including student-authored OER) and allow plenty of time for questions and discussion. Keep an eye on our social media and our mailing list for more information!

 

Filed Under: Open education philosophy, Spanish Tagged With: 360, bullfighting, culture, David Thompson, Eastern Mennonite University, ESL, Español y cultura en perspectiva, hangout, Italian, Italian Open Education, Julianne Hammink, Luther College, Margherita Berti, OER, PBL, problem based, project based, social justice, Sonia Balasch, Spanish, University of Arizona, virtual reality

Virtual Reality: Innovation in Open Education

April 14, 2019 Leave a Comment

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:

  • Read Margherita Berti’s article “Italian Open Education: virtual reality immersions for the language classroom” in the book New case studies of openness in and beyond the language classroom
  • Read an interview with Margherita Berti in FLTMag

—

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..

Filed Under: Technology-based language learning Tagged With: 360, affordable, Arizona, Creative Commons, googles, Italian, licensed, Margherita Berti, OER, Open education, open educational resources, study abroad, virtual reality, VR, WordPress, YouTube

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