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Conversations on Open Education for Language Learning

Announcing a new textbook: ClicaBrasil!

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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:

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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.

Inspiring case studies of open practices to engage teachers and students

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Editor’s note: the below post is the forward by Carl S. Blyth, COERLL director, to the recently published book New case studies of openness in and beyond the language classroom, edited by Anna Comas-Quinn, Ana Beaven, Barbara Sawhill. The forward carries a CC BY license.  

Today, in the field of foreign language teaching, there is much talk of shifting paradigms. The term paradigm was popularized by the American physicist Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 book entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. According to Kuhn, scientific progress is neither linear nor continuous, but rather subject to abrupt shifts in the consensus of a scientific community. To illustrate this phenomenon, Kuhn cites the well-known shift in astronomy from geocentrism (the belief that the sun and the planets revolve around the Earth) to heliocentrism (the belief that the Earth and the planets revolve around the sun). Kuhn stresses that paradigms are defined by contrasting concepts and discourses and, as a result, are largely incommensurable. Kuhn also notes that paradigm shifts are not only a matter of accepting new facts, but of reorganizing those facts into a new worldview. In other words, paradigm shifts entail objective as well as subjective change.

Despite examples of revolutionary change in the sciences, paradigm shifts in the humanities – such as in foreign language education – appear to be more gradual. Most foreign language educators integrate new ideas into their curricular and pedagogical practices in an incremental process of professional development. Personally, I believe that paradigm change in foreign language teaching is largely a matter of educators learning by example from each other. Simply put, there is nothing more powerful than a case study for catalyzing change in our field. And in this book, New case studies of openness in and beyond the language classroom, foreign language specialists share their stories of personal and professional transformation in the well-known form of a case study. Following the same format, each case study provides the reader with the necessary information to understand and to implement a specific pedagogical or curricular innovation. For example, each case study includes a detailed description of a new project, the intended student outcomes, as well as the tools and resources used in the project.

While many case studies focus on the use of ready-made Open Educational Resources (OERs), others describe how to integrate Open Educational Practices (OEPs) into foreign language classes. Several case studies explain how to implement principles of open pedagogy such as the creation of a Wikipedia page or a translation of a TED Talk by the students themselves. In such cases, students are challenged to follow the editorial guidelines of Wikipedia and TED for the creation of open content. Thus, in the open language classroom, students share their knowledge with the world while, at the same time, improving their proficiency in the target language. In short, each case study described in this book is a beautiful illustration of the creative commons in action. I sincerely hope that foreign language educators who read these case studies will embrace the affordances of openness for themselves and their students and thereby shift the paradigm one classroom at a time.

For an open world.

Looking Back on Four Years of COERLL Projects

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COERLL’s 2014-2018 Title VI national foreign language resource center federal grant, and the projects funded by the grant, will soon be coming to an end.

COERLL and the project teams have learned a lot during this grant about the potential and the challenges of open educational resources. Each project had slightly different goals and a different way of reaching those goals. For every idea you see implemented in these materials, there is another great idea that we just didn’t have time for… but we hope to work on more of these in the future. And perhaps our reflections on these projects can provide some guidance or inspiration for those of you who may be considering creating your own open educational resources.

You can read about each of our projects by clicking the links below. Each of the projects was managed by faculty, created through faculty and graduate student labor, and supported by technical, graphic design, pedagogical, and administrative assistance from COERLL and other centers at the University of Texas at Austin.

Thank you to all of the project teams! It has been wonderful working with you and we are proud to help share your work.

Plunge into a text with social reading

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Photo credit (left): flickr user Jake Macabre Creative Commons License
Photo credit (middle): COERLL Creative Commons License
Photo credit (right): Deutsche Fototek Creative Commons License

COERLL recently made the social reading tool eComma available for users of Learning Management Systems (LMS). In eComma, a group of students can annotate the same text together and share their annotations with each other in the form of comments, tags, and word clouds. Students’ natural capacity for socializing online is put to good use with social reading, as they learn from each other, uncover the multiple layers of meaning in a text, and reflect deeply on their reading. But how does a teacher set this process of learning and reflection in motion?

There are a lot of options for using eComma with your class, and how you choose to use it depends on what your goal is. Here are some possible goals for reading, and ideas for how to meet them:

  • Introduce a new grammar concept: Provide students a grammatically rich text to read in eComma before coming to class. Ask them to comment on words they don’t understand, to make observations about certain parts of speech, and to make guesses about grammar rules, all while responding to each other’s comments and questions. In this way, they learn from each other as they form patterns, solve problems, and build hypotheses. (This inductive technique was developed by Alex Lorenz from The University of Texas at Austin.)
  • Raise awareness of cultural constructs: Lead students through a series of steps to build awareness of their assumptions about the L2 culture and language. They begin by “red flagging” a text based on anything that stands out. Through comments to each other and further research, they discover where they may have been misconstruing a text, and finally formulate a modified interpretation of the reading based on research and peer feedback. (This process was developed by Joanna Luks, as described here in more detail.)
  • Guide students in identifying key information in the text: Kara Parker of Creative Language Class uses highlighters and paper instead of eComma, but the same ideas can apply in eComma… ask students to identify “who”, “where”, “when” and “action taking place” in the text. Then, they can use this information as a basis for a summary of the text, in paragraphs or tweets. (Read more here.)
  • Show how tenses convey meaning: Ask students to label verb tenses to bring their attention to the differences in how the tenses are used.

These are only just a few ways of using eComma, and any of them could be done asynchronously as homework, or synchronously in the classroom, where students can see each other’s comments popping up in real time.

You can also make use of certain strategies to ensure your students are engaging with each other and with the text. For example, require each student to respond to at least one comment from a fellow classmate, ask them to find patterns in what their peers are commenting on, ask them to make comparisons, or assign them each a role in reading and annotating the text. (For example, each student highlights a different grammatical structure.)

We hope you will find a way of using eComma that works best for you and your language class! If you do, we’d love to hear about it in the comments below… your ideas could be valuable for other teachers.

For further reading: