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Conversations on Open Education for Language Learning

Using Game-Based Learning to Teach Cultural Content

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Photo credit: Pixabay user TheAndrasBarta under a Pixabay license

Editor’s note: This post was first published in InterCom, a free, customized weekly newsletter, offered by the Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS). Thank you, CASLS, for giving us permission to re-publish!

In the earliest years of my career, I was often admonished to teach less culture, because “it’s not a history class!” Instinctively, I felt that cultural information was an excellent vehicle for teaching language in a solid, useful context. More recently, I have become interested in the application of game theory to language learning. I was especially interested in virtual reality platforms because of their potential for more authentic cultural experiences, but the available media were too cumbersome for the secondary classroom.

Last summer, I had the opportunity to attend the Games2Teach Collaboratory sponsored by the Center for Applied Second Language Studies and the Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning. When the presenters introduced escape room scenarios, cryptography, and puzzle building as teaching mechanisms, it was like the light went on. Within the workshop, another teacher and I began to develop a rough prototype for an escape room game. I used that framework to develop a game based on the witch trials of Zugarramurdi. This first one was extremely time consuming to develop, as I was still learning to build the codes and puzzles.

However, that first game was a tremendous success. My students loved it. I also invited several colleagues to play. I had them play in teams of four; both the students and the adults were completely engaged, and they retained the material well. The theory behind game-based learning, as presented in the workshop, suggests that when students manipulate the codes and puzzles to acquire the target information, the deductive reasoning (and even intuitive leaps to answers) required of them in the process significantly boosts retention by making the material more tangible and more valuable to the student.

I have since built a more challenging escape room scenario based on the relocation of Franco’s tomb and the associated political upheaval. The process of building the codes and puzzles was much quicker this time, because I had a better understanding of the mechanisms. The greatest challenge is choosing which pieces of information to target and build puzzles around; students need to manipulate codes, clues, and puzzles that will lead them to those specific constructs.

Application of game theory to the traditional classroom requires a fairly radical revision of how we address the material. The game drives students to collaborative and inquiry-based learning; it also encourages critical thinking, persistence, and some very real-world problem-solving skills. The feedback has been incredibly enthusiastic, and I will continue to build and incorporate these activities.

  • Read Shannon Hill’s classroom activity “Escape Room Games in the AP Spanish Classroom” on the CASLS InterCom website, in which students develop critical thinking and problem solving skills, communicate with their teammates in Spanish, and acquire and retain information related to the Basque witch trials of the 17th Century

Shannon L. Hill, M.A., is a teacher of high school Spanish, including AP Spanish Language and Culture, at The John Cooper School in The Woodlands, TX. Her career spans 28 years of teaching experience at both the high school and college levels.

The Impact of OER on Teaching

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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:

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!

 

Congratulations!

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Congratulations to Dr. Gabriela Zapata of the Department of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University for receiving the Texas A&M University Libraries and the A&M Student Government Association (SGA) Open Education Champion award for her “compelling and significant positive impact in areas related to OERs or use of Texas A&M’s OAKTrust Institutional Repository”.

Dr. Zapata is currently working with a team of graduate and undergraduate students on Trayectos, a four-volume, open online textbook for beginning and intermediate second language learners of Spanish, with the support of COERLL.

We’d like to acknowledge Dr. Zapata for her generosity in sharing her work with so many people, and also thank Texas A&M Libraries and SGA for giving these awards to bring more visibility to open educational resources. We hope to see awards like this from more institutions in the future.

COERLL is lucky to work with many spectacular faculty, teachers, and students who put in extra hours to create resources and share them with others. We are very grateful for all of these people and their collaboration. You can find a partial list on our Language OER Network page.

A New Grant and New Projects for COERLL

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COERLL is thankful to have received the Title VI language resource center grant for 2018-2022, which means we have a lot of new projects in the works. You can read a summary below, or learn more on the Projects page of our website, which has more details about the projects and who is leading them. Be sure to also check out the website for the fifteen other Title VI language resource centers.

Teaching Materials

Trayectos: A Multiliteracies Approach to Collegiate Spanish is a collection of performance-based OER for beginning and intermediate second language learners of Spanish, developed by Texas A&M faculty and graduate students using the Learning by Design approach.

Teacher development

COERLL provides teacher development through workshops and online communities, where participants’ own work is published for other teachers to use.

Texas Coalition for Heritage Spanish (TeCHS) is a platform for members to share data and pedagogical resources, collaborate on best practices, connect with community organizations, and advocate for Spanish heritage language teaching.

Games2Teach Collaboratories are interactive workshops where teachers play technology-mediated games, learn how game design principles promote language acquisition, and learn to implement games in their classrooms. Based on work by CASLS and CERCLL.

Foreign Languages & the Literary in The Everyday (FLLITE), a project with CERCLL, aids instructors in designing their own literacy-based lessons that focus on the poetics of everyday language (letters, YouTube videos, etc.).

K-12 initiatives

Juntos: The Heritage Spanish Lesson Project is a series of proficiency-based lessons related to personal life, college tasks, career readiness, and civic participation for Heritage Spanish learners in grades 6-12.

Recorridos: AP Spanish Literature Anthology is a multi-volume anthology series of Hispanic literature for AP and other advanced students. Each textbook includes reading activities and glosses, historical and cultural information, and assessments.

Less Commonly Taught Languages 

Her Şey bir Merhaba ile Başlar (Everything Begins with a Hello) is an open-source, online curriculum for Intermediate-Mid Turkish students.  Learners use language to investigate, explain and reflect on contemporary Turks’ socio-cultural practices and products.

OER for Teaching and Learning Nahuatl aims to develop 30 units of online Huasteca Nahuatl multimedia learning materials for speakers of Spanish and English.

Reality Czech: A Course in Contemporary Czech Language and Culture is an online curriculum for beginning and intermediate language students. Modules follow a sequence of pre-class, in-class, and post-class activities ideal for a flipped classroom.

Two projects will add to COERLL’s existing Portuguese materials. Brazilpod Teacher’s Guide and Lesson Index helps users integrate media from the Brazilpod website into their teaching and learning. For the intermediate course ClicaBrasil, COERLL will provide a printed textbook to accompany the online videos and readings.

COERLL also provides consultation about open pedagogical design to project teams supervised by other grant-funded entities.

Outreach and dissemination

COERLL connects to teachers through newsletters, blogs, and social media. We support teachers’ work by offering stipends for materials creation as part of the Collaborators Program, and by awarding digital badges in the Language OER Network (LOERN). At the University of Texas, COERLL and other Title VI entities will reach out to students and instructors through More Than A Skill events about language learning as an ethical act.

Research

COERLL’s main publications will be the fully-refereed online journal Language Learning & Technology, co-sponsored by the National Foreign Language Resource Center and Center for Language & Technology (both at University of Hawai’i), and “Open Education and Foreign Language Learning and Teaching”, an openly-licensed book of case studies.

 

Working with Students to Create a Textbook

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Editor’s Note: Guest blogger Julie Ward edited an anthology of Hispanic literature with her students, elevating the role that the students played in the class, and proving that the pedagogical affordances of openness are just as important as the low costs most often associated with openness.

I initially had the idea to work on OER because of the wonderful OER librarians at my campus. Their initiative to promote the adoption and creation of OER on campus inspired me to propose a project for my Introduction to Hispanic Literature and Culture course, a third-year Spanish course required for Spanish majors.

The course generally relies on fairly expensive and large anthologies. I thought that if I assigned texts that were in the public domain, and asked students to choose one particular text to study and prepare for inclusion in an online, open-access anthology, the Antología abierta de literatura hispana, they would have a richer research experience and really get to understand what literary studies are about.

This project would also give them the chance to practice their writing in Spanish, and to write for a much larger audience than a traditional classroom paper provides. Students knew that they had the option of submitting their work for inclusion in an open-access anthology, and that anyone with internet access around the world could potentially read their work. This fact motivated them to do their best and to consider their audience.

Finally, I was happy that students had the chance to create something that could help other students. Their results of their hard work over the course of the semester are visible and useful. The learning experience doesn´t stop at the end of the semester, but is shared with others. It is also a lasting example of their skills that they could highlight in the future.

My goal in leading students to create their own textbook was to help them learn the tools of literary research and give them an audience beyond the classroom or the campus. In small groups, students chose one of the texts studied in our Introduction to Hispanic Literature and Culture course and created a critical edition, complete with introductory information about the author, time period, and literary context; footnotes annotating various aspects of the text itself; and a bibliography for further study.

With the help of two undergraduate research assistants, I uploaded the results into Pressbooks, where it is downloadable and accessible in many formats. Now the first edition of the anthology is available for students of Hispanic literature, and I am working on a second edition, with the help of the Rebus Community, that incorporates critical editions made by students at other institutions.

My goal is for the AALH to continue expanding and become a go-to, open-access resource for anyone who wants to know more about Hispanic literature and culture.

For more information:

Julie Ward joined the faculty of the University of Oklahoma in 2014 as Assistant Professor of 20th- and 21st-Century Latin American Literature. She holds a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Berkeley (2013). Her current research focuses on the representation of the real in contemporary Latin America.

The Spanish Language and its Cultures in Perspective

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Photo credit: Sonia Balasch Creative Commons License

From the Editor: This is a guest post about a new set of openly licensed activities “The Spanish Language and its Cultures in Perspective”, by Sonia Balasch (Eastern Mennonite University), Alexia D. Vikis, Lisa M. Rabin, and Colleen A. Sweet (George Mason University).

This virtual space offers free access to nine original lessons that are oriented towards the teaching and enrichment of intermediate-level students of Spanish. Each lesson consists of readings that are written in Spanish and short, communicative activities. In its totality, these materials or open-access educational resources call upon critical thinking through eight themes closely tied to the Spanish-speaking world.

Coordinate with license agreements for open-source educational resources (identified in English as OER, or open educational resources), teachers and students are welcome to make use of these materials. Even more important, we hope that the adoption of these shared lessons can serve as a point of departure for enriched classroom discussions on Spanish-language culture, especially in the United States where Spanish has a long historical presence and exists in myriad, dynamic sociolinguistic contexts.

Spanish co-exists with other native languages in three continents (America, Africa and Europe). Whether officially accounted for or not, the many different voices and sociolinguistic histories of Spanish reverberate and move audaciously across the vast geography of the Americas. In The Spanish Language and its Cultures in Perspective we cover such diverse themes as:

  • The history, varieties and current profile of Spanish in the United States
  • The Spanish-language press in the United States
  • Youth’s courageous resistance to entrenched dictatorial regimes in 20th-century Latin America
  • The encounter of Catholicism and other religious traditions in Latin America
  • The overwhelming force of globalization in the Latin American regions
  • The mass media as vehicles of power and resistance
  • The long history of Latinx in the United States
  • The contrapuntal relationship of country and city in the modern context

All of the lessons of The Spanish Language and its Cultures in Perspective have been successfully tested in two courses of intermediate Spanish (Spanish in Context I and Spanish in Context II) that are taught at George Mason University’s main campus in Fairfax, Virginia. Lessons for these courses were grouped in two sections, as the following diagram shows.

The lessons of group 1 formed the backbone of the course Spanish in Context I, while those of group 2 sustained the course Spanish in Context II. However, because each lesson was created independently, they may be put to use in the ways in which teachers themselves find them beneficial to their classes. In the end, the key goal of these lessons is to engage with themes that are rarely covered in intermediate courses of Spanish that we teach in the United States. In the best of all cases, students and teachers will build fruitfully on the critical perspectives that they are exposed to in The Spanish Language and its Cultures in Perspective.

Explore:

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.

Creating videos For Use in the Classroom

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Photo credit: flickr user chelsea(: Creative Commons License

Editor’s Note: Josie Jesser created videos of elementary school students speaking Spanish as part of our COERLL Collaborators program. Here, she explains her process.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth even more. Even just two minutes of “screen time” can engage or re-engage students by pulling them into a world outside their classroom. As soon as the faces appear on the screen, the students’ curiosity is switched on. Who are these people? Where are they? What are they saying? I’ve found the engagement multiplies when the images are of students the same age as mine. With this classroom experience in mind, I set out to create a few more options for my students in the Spanish classroom. I wanted to film kids the same age as my students, speaking Spanish naturally but answering simple questions so the students could understand.

Here is what I learned:

  1. Our best resources are in our own backyard – see if your school district has any Dual Language Schools and reach out to the administration to set up visits to these schools.
  2. Be clear about the purpose of the videos (that they will be Open Educational Resources) and ask for names of specific teachers that would be willing to work with you and suggest students that would be comfortable in front of the camera.
  3. When making appointments to film, request a quiet location in the school, such as an empty classroom or corner of the library at a time it’s not being used.
  4. Explain to these teachers that you’ll need parents to sign permission slips (Media Release Forms), which you can collect on the day you show up.
  5. Use a tripod. Whether an iPhone, iPad, or digital camera is used to film, a tripod ensures consistency and steadiness for the viewer.
  6. Keep the camera at the students’ eye level.
  7. Have the students look over the questions before you start filming, so they can think about answers.
  8. Film 2 students at a time, so 1 student can ask questions and the other can answer.
  9. Good questions are never yes or no questions, but the type that encourage students to talk for a little while. For older kids, asking their opinions, their feelings, and what-if scenarios are always great. For younger kids, asking them to describe their daily world works well.
  10. Remember to keep it light and fun!

Good luck!

For more information:

—

Josie Jesser joined the Girls’ School of Austin faculty in 2013. Ms. Jesser completed her Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies from Dickinson College and her Master of Arts in Latin American Studies from The University of Texas at Austin. Ms. Jesser has worked as an interpreter and translator (Spanish, Portuguese) and she has lived in Argentina and Brazil. She has also worked in the technology sector, providing client support for Latin American clients. She loves teaching and working with students!

Finding a Language Partner on the Other Side of the World

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Photo credit: “Skype Friend” by flickr user Greg Balzer Creative Commons License

From the editor: Though teachers are our main audience, we realize many people use our materials to learn languages independently. For our readers who are dedicated independent language learners, guest blogger Chi Fang shares his experience learning with a native speaker language partner, and gives advice on how to find a language partner of your own.

When I decided to learn Spanish, I got started in seconds by downloading Duolingo on my phone, and found plenty of free grammar exercises and audio courses online. I learned the basic grammar rules and memorized several hundred words of vocabulary. But I still didn’t know how to SPEAK Spanish.

Most people want to learn a language so that they can speak it, but the majority of language courses and apps can’t prepare us for the real thing. This is something that I struggled with. All the concepts I studied seemed to go out the window when I was faced with a real-life situation where I had to listen to what someone was saying, think of a response and form sentences, all in a matter of seconds.

I realized that the only way to get better at this was by having more conversations, which meant finding someone to practice with for one or two hours per week. I found someone online, and since then I’ve learned a lot about choosing the right language partner.

Your language partner should be a native speaker of the language that you are trying to learn. He/she will help you practice their language and in exchange, you will help them improve their English. For example, my Guatemalan partner and I used to have one hour Skype conversations, where we would speak in Spanish for 30 minutes, and then switch to English for 30 minutes.

Please note that your partner is not a professional teacher. They can correct your mistakes, but they may not be able to explain the theory behind what you did wrong. Most native speakers don’t know the exact grammar rules of their own language, they just know what sounds “right.”

There are several free online language exchanges that will connect you to language partners from around the world. You can browse through their profiles and send them a message to set up a video call. Here are some things to think about when selecting a language partner:

  • Priorities: How serious is the person about improving their language skills?
  • Commitment: Are they willing to set aside time every week? Does their schedule line up with yours?
  • Proficiency: Is their English level close to your proficiency in their language? Otherwise, it can be intimidating to speak with someone who is more advanced.
  • Patience: Is your partner willing to help you as much as you are willing to help them?

You and your partner should set the rules from the very beginning:

  • How long should the session be?
  • Will you strictly speak in your target language or is it okay to revert to English once in a while?
  • How often do you want to be corrected?
  • Which topics would you like to talk about? Which topics are off-limits?

    • For example, I told my partner that I wanted them to mercilessly correct me for every mistake I make. However, this approach isn’t for everyone.

    It is also important to maintain a 50/50 balance between languages to ensure that you are both benefiting equally from the exchange. Don’t be afraid to use a timer to enforce this balance.

    Lastly, you need to manage your own expectations. Not all conversations will go smoothly, and finding the right language partner for you will involve some degree of trial and error. But when you do find that perfect person, it can make a world of difference in your language learning journey.

    —

    Chi Fang is an entrepreneur and blogger. He speaks English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Polish, and he frequently travels the world to study languages and culture. Chi is the founder of the online language learning company Verbalicity, and is currently based in Canada.