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Conversations on Open Education for Language Learning

OER for a Common Goal – Meeting the Needs of Spanish Heritage Learners

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Editors note: This post was written by COERLL partner Jocelly Meiners, and originally published in Tex Libris, the blog from the libraries at the University of Texas at Austin, for a special Open Education Week series.

In recent years, the development of Spanish language courses designed specifically for heritage language learners has gained much attention throughout K-12 and post-secondary education in the US. Heritage language learners are students who were exposed to Spanish at home while growing up. These students usually have a broad knowledge about their cultural heritage, and varying degrees of language dominance. Over the years, it has been found that these learners have different pedagogical needs than second language learners, and that they benefit greatly from language instruction that is catered to their specific needs. Throughout the country, as more institutions realize these needs, Spanish instructors at all levels are forming programs and creating materials to serve this student population. It seems that we all have some common goals: to help heritage Spanish speakers develop their bilingual skills, to empower them to apply those skills in academic and professional settings, and to feel proud of their cultural and linguistic heritage. So if we all have similar goals in mind and are all working on creating programs and materials to serve these students, why not share all the work we are doing?

I have been teaching courses for heritage Spanish learners here at UT for over 4 years, and about a year and a half ago I started working as the community moderator for the Heritage Spanish Community. This web-based community, which is hosted by COERLL (The Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning), serves as a space for Spanish instructors to collaborate, share and communicate with others about the teaching and learning of Spanish as a heritage language. We encourage instructors at all levels to ask questions on our online forum, to help other instructors, and to share the materials they are working on. Open Educational Resources are an excellent way to share these types of materials, since they can easily be adapted to the specific needs of each instructor’s particular student population.

As community moderator, I add useful content to our website, create interesting questions for discussion, and encourage others to explore our website and share their work. I have also been able to share my own materials as OER, and it has been very rewarding to hear from people in other parts of the country who have found my resources useful and are adapting them for their own heritage Spanish programs. I believe that if we all collaborate and share our resources openly, we will be much more successful in attaining both our personal and common goals.

Jocelly Meiners was born and raised in San José, Costa Rica and moved to Austin, TX to attend UT, where she obtained her undergraduate education, as well as an MA in French linguistics and a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics. She is currently a Lecturer in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at UT, where she teaches courses for Spanish heritage learners.

Happy Open Education Week 2018!

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Open Education Week is a celebration of the global Open Education Movement. Its goal is to raise awareness about the movement and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide. Join us March 5-9, 2018!

Language OER Network Launch

Here at COERLL, we’re excited to launch a new network for promoting open projects in language education. The goal of the Language OER Network (LOERN) is to showcase the work of open educators in the field of language learning and teaching. If you are a language educator or student who uses, creates, or promotes open educational resources (OER), COERLL would like to recognize your innovations by listing your name on the LOERN page and by sending you a COERLL badge.

Teachers and students are featured as an OER Teacher, OER Master Teacher, OER Creator, OER Master Creator, OER Ambassador, OER Reviewer, or some combination of those roles.

Please also follow us on Facebook and Twitter to hear from OER Master Creators and Master Teachers about how they have integrated openness into their curricula.

Stories From Open Educators

We’ll also be publishing blog posts here on this blog from language faculty at the University of Texas who have created open educational resources.

OER for a Common Goal – Meeting the Needs of Spanish Heritage Learners by Jocelly Meiners
Creating an OER for Turkish-language learning has made sharing my ideas possible! by Jeannette Okur
Open Access at the Core of Materials Development for LCTLs by Orlando Kelm

Open Education Worldwide

Other organizations around the world are celebrating Open Ed Week too. Learn more about the movement and the events and materials available at openeducationweek.org/.

Availability of Foreign Language materials in OER repositories

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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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What You Need to Know about Creative Commons

By Todd Bryant

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From the editor: As the Open Education Week online event continues around the world (March 11-15), we’re giving you this quick tutorial on open licensing.

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The goal of Creative Commons licensing is to facilitate a wide distribution of work online. The creator retains some rights, but understands that letting go of his/her work and ideas is the best way to let them grow. (See Set Them Free: How to Share Your Materials by Georges Detiveaux.)

About Creative Commons

All Creative Commons (CC) licenses allow non-commercial educators to use the materials for free as long as they credit the licensor. Most also allow for the remixing and modification of these resources. In addition to providing educators a legal way of finding media for their lessons, students can benefit by producing their own digital projects for credit and then sharing their work online under a CC license.

For those new to creative commons, start at www.creativecommons.org.  If you’re looking for ways to share your work online, check out the Licenses drop-down menu at the top to learn about and choose the right license for you. If you’re looking for resources, go to the Explore box and click Find CC-licensed works to access a metasearch utility. You can search some of the largest sites for different types of media, and you can restrict search results to those available under a Creative Commons license.

And Much More …

In addition to the Creative Commons website, you can also search for resources on the internet by specific media. Most of the sites I list below allow you to narrow the results to those with CC licenses. Some of these sites are part of the Creative Commons metasearch mentioned above, although I have found that searching for resources on the individual sites lets you search with greater granularity. 

Audio

  • ccMixter  – Music collection, great for podcast introductions and video backgrounds.
  • freeSound – Sounds, especially background sounds for digital productions. For example, a digital story about Spain can include the sounds of the subway in Madrid.
  • Macaulay Library – Sounds of nature, note they have their own terms of use.

Video

  • Youtube – It isn’t obvious how to narrow your selection to Creative Commons videos. Do a general search first, and then choose Creative Commons by clicking on the Filters tool under the search field.
  • Vimeo – Similar to YouTube, you have to do a general search first, and then click the Show Advanced Filters button to select a Creative Commons license.

Images

  • Flickr – This photo sharing site was one of the original driving engines for the popularity of creative commons resources. Many government agencies and museums host their collections there, which makes it odd that you have to do a general search first then click the Advanced Search link before you can select the Creative Commons checkbox at the bottom.
  • 500px – A rival photo sharing site.  You search by specific Creative Commons licenses, which may be a positive or negative.
  • Realia Project – Their image collection is much smaller, but if you’re not looking for something specific it can be a good place for ideas. They don’t have a specific license, but allow non-commercial use to educators.

In addition, there are many public domain resources that are freely available for use, usually because the works were created by the government or their copyright has expired. Many public domain resources can be found at the Internet Archive.  (Even if you aren’t looking for anything specific, the Wayback Machine is worth a look.)

If you have other resources, please include them in the comments below.

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ProfileToddBryantTodd Bryant (@MixxerSite or @bryantt) is a liaison to the foreign language departments for the Academic Technology group at Dickinson College and an adjunct German instructor. He created The Mixxer to help connect language students with native speakers. His interests include the immersive effect of games in service of foreign language learning, such as the use of World of Warcraft to teach German.

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For more information on  searching Creative Commons, see COERLL’s infographic How to Search for Openly Licensed Educational Resources.

Open Up on Open Education Week

From the editor

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Are you new to the concept of open education? Do you need a crash course on the lingo, the collective mission, and what’s available out there for educators and learners? You’re in luck.

March 11-15 is Open Education Week. A week-long online festival where “more than 100 universities, colleges, schools and organizations from all over the world come together to showcase what they’re doing to make education more open, free, and available to everyone.” The goal of Open Education Week is to raise awareness about free and open educational opportunities.

Check out COERLL‘s contributions to the Resources section: