Event

Thinking Open: Strategies and Techniques for Utilizing Open Content in our Curricula
with Christian Hilchey, Lecturer, Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, University of Texas at Austin

Much of our experience as language instructors has revolved around the use of closed materials, whether in the form of copyrighted textbooks, workbooks, or media such as popular music and film. The goal of this workshop is to present an alternative to this model and provide participants with immediate experience with finding, adapting and creating open materials for language learning. We will begin by examining existing open resources for the languages we teach – what already exists as an Open Educational Resource for our languages? For many languages, significant materials are already available and can be immediately leveraged and/or adapted to fit the needs of our curricula.

Despite the availability of existing Open Educational Resources for certain languages, there is still a great need for Open Content creation and so the bulk of this workshop, will focus on finding and using freely available and openly licensed content on the internet to build curricula that can then be shared with other instructors teaching our languages. Valuable open materials are easily accessible, often with minimal searching. We will learn effective methods for discovering rich and usable content, beginning with common media repositories and search engines (Google, Wikimedia, Flickr, Forvo, Pixabay, Youtube, etc.). For each of the types of media that we find, we will discuss useful strategies for utilizing them. Finally, we will examine various types of content delivery, focusing on freely available programs and websites for effectively disseminating what we adapt and/or produce, such as Google Docs, Canvas, Quizlet, Youtube, etc.

This workshop will be highly interactive and participants will have the opportunity to create and present their own content, as well as discuss various issues surrounding Open Educational Resources.

Due to limited space, participation is open only to Penn language teaching faculty.