Engaging Students in the production of OERs for MFL Teaching and Learning

Miguel Arrebola

UCLAN-HEA workshop on OERS June 1 2012

Presentation structure

1. Notion of student as producer 2. Examples of student engagement with reference to

context, process and student attitudes towards the production of OERs.

3. Questions and general discussion.

“Undergraduates are no longer here simply to consume information passively: they are here to learn by generating knowledge through real research or projects which replicate the process of research within their chosen discipline”-

Professor Mike Neary (Dean of Teaching and Learning)

http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/home/studyatlincoln/undergraduatecourses/discoverlincoln/teachingandlearning/studentasproducer/

Research engaged teaching and learning Student as producer: some

notions

Research engaged teaching and learning Student as producer: some notions

• Undergraduate students will work alongside staff in the design and delivery of their teaching and learning programmes, and in the production of work of academic content and value. Students will be supported by student services and professional staff so they can take greater responsibility not only for their own teaching and learning, but for the way in which they manage the experience of being a student at the University of Lincoln.

• Studentasproducer.lincoln.ac.uk

Research engaged teaching and learning Student as producer: some notions

• ....The point of this re-arrangement [student as consumer] would be to reconstruct the student as producer: undergraduate students working in collaboration with academics to create work of social importance that is full of academic value.

Mike Neary and Joss Winn

Student as producer reinventing the student experience in higher education

Research engaged teaching and learning Student as producer: some notions

• Is this a new idea?

• How do we relate Neary’s notions to the field of MFL?

Neary’s notions are at the centre of the Learner Autonomy and self-access movements in the 1980s

known definitions in present literature are:•'Autonomy is the ability to take charge of one's own learning' (Henri Holec)

•'Autonomy is essentially a matter of the learner's psychological relation to the process and content of learning' (David Little)•'Autonomy is a situation in which the learner is totally responsible for all the decisions concerned with his [or her] learning and the implementation of those decisions'. (Leslie Dickinson)•Self-access movement (David Gardner)

•Change in the role of teachers and students with the Self-access movements

Engaging Students in the production of OERs for MFL Teaching and Learning

• What has changed since the 1990’s early resources centres?

• Access to technologies: multimedia language laboratories, internet, VLEs, mobile technology, repositories, social network sites and open content.

Example 1 of student-generated OERs. LanguageBox Faroes Project, JISC-funded

Context

• Pilot scheme.• Sample: 30 ab intio students of Spanish’.• Evaluation of student attitudes towards the

production of OERs and testing of LB usability aspects.

• Non-assessable tasks.

Requirements

• Individual and group-based tasks:• Identify/upload resources online (vocabulary,

grammar, pronunciation, listening and reading).

• Produce Hotpotatoes exercises to reinforce content covered in class.

• Evaluate resources uploaded by their peers (comments).

Teacher involvement

• Training sessions on LB and Hotpotatoes.• Individual face to face tutorials.• Online guidance.• Revision of student produced content (before

uploading onto LB and/or via the LB comment function.

Tasks examples

Student comments

Very good resource. Just a shame that I could only make exercises from my home computer, this meant I generally had to do it at night time. Also would have been nice if a few more people had made the effort to put some exercises up for more practice

…enjoyed making the activities, found that this was a very good learning experience but did not get as much revision done when doing the exercises uploaded by others. I think the language box is best used for learning vocab.

I have enjoyed using Language Box. Making the exercise helped me to remember the topic better, and it was useful looking at other people's work. However, I would prefer it if I knew that each of the exercises I was uploading was correct, and I think that they should be checked before they are put on display for everyone to use. I am afraid of doing an exercise on the Language Box that someone else has uploaded, and there being a mistake, but that I remember that rather than the correct way of doing it.

I found the language box really useful. It was fun making the exercises on hot potatoes and it widened my vocabulary a lot and I think it improved my grammar as I had to try and get it perfect because other students would be using them. I found language box really easy to use and it was good to see what other exercises people had uploaded that they thought were useful.

Conclusions

• Student level of engagement with social learning features which much higher compared with that of MFL teachers.

• Student generally positive attitude towards the production of content.

• Clear perceived benefits to their learning.• Fun.• Preference for individual work.• Concerns for accuracy of student produced content.

Example 2 – OpenLIVES project: Research engaged teaching and learning.

• Integration into the year 2 Language for Professional Communication unit.

• Level 2/3 unit• Students research an NGO, company or profession • Produce a Magazine (level 2) and Oral presentation +

video (level 3)• 38 level 2 student took the unit: 14 produced work

related to the openLIVES project.

Assessment pattern

• Process: Oral progress report, recording of the meetings in the target language (3); production of agendas and minutes in the target language. 30%

• Product: magazine in the target language (70%)

Los niños de la guerra: Germinal Luis

Resources used by students

• Interviews conducted by Alicia Pozo-Gutiérrez • Transcript of Germinal’s interview by Pedro García

Guirao.• We Came Alone Edited by Manuel Corsino. Article by

Germinal Luis.• Drawings by Germinal Luis.• Student-produced interview (Germinal Luis).• Conducted their own research (books, academic

journals, new paper articles, websites).

Hello Mr Germinal. My name is Francesco Lonardi and firstly I would like to thank you for agreeing to this interview. I would like to tell you that your life testimonial made me reflect a lot. It made me think about historical facts and how the fight for an ideal can affect all aspects of people’s lives. My first question is about your sense of national identity.

Do you feel more Spanish or Venezuelan? Culturally, do you feel closer to Venezuela or Spain?

1 2

3 4

Please note that the following projects are in their original student-produced state and that language mistakes have not

been corrected for the purpose of this workshop.

Quality in student-generated OERs

• Copyright and quality. • Factual historical errors. • Ethics of interviewing (protecting our

interviewees) • Plagiarism

Level 2 OER production

Level 3OER

repurpose

OER Integration

OER shareI learningResearch

F2F

Advantages

•Collaboration across levels, institutions.•Used for different purposes: f2f, IL, research•Language, CLIL, translation, subtitling… •Skills: language, research, professional, negotiation, editing, communication...

OER post-production cycle; maximising reusability

Example 3: Engaging students in the production of OERs to support their study abroad period

• Aims: explore and monitor student engagement with, and attitudes towards, the production of Open Educational Resources during their period of study abroad.

• Background

• Murcia (Spain) Cuzco (Peru)

Figure 2. Student-produced video tour (Plazas de Murcia)

Student-produced short documentary (Fiesta de la Facultad de Letras)

)

Student-produced PPT (La Facultad de Letras - Murcia)

Discussing Copyright

“I understand the copyright issues and think that there are some parts of my work which might have infringed copyright. For example, I wanted to use pamphlets from different organizations (such as the tourism office) without even thinking of getting their approval because they were free. I also did not realize that even if I was interviewing my friends, that they too had to give formal consent to reproduce the material.” Jeannine Levostre 2nd year BA (Hons) in International Relations with Spanish.

Student-produced short documentary (instrumentos musicales peruanos)

Student-produced short documentary (Cuzco el paraíso artesanal)

Discussing Copyright

“I bought a cd with Latin American Folklore Music in a local shopping centre... Peru has got a huge issue about piracy, even books are being photocopied and sold in the bookstores. As the neither the government nor the police prohibit it, I just bought it and used it”.

Anna Rybak 2nd Year BA (Hons) in International Development Studies

Skills

“This activity [filming] required quite a grasp of negotiation skills (to convince people to be filmed), which required a little bit of practice of new phrases, or local terms. For example people, who sell products on the streets (like a chicharron lady who appears in the `comida`video) use a term `mami’, which is an equivalent of English `love’. Having used this term with them made people more relaxed and less suspicious. This also improved my cultural awareness skills.”

Anna Rybak 2nd Year BA (Hons) in International Development Studies

Skills

“I need good interviewing skills for my dissertation research and I think due to having interviewed so many people for this project, now I know better what questions to ask in order to prolong the conversation, which comments discourage an interviewee to continue, or simply all the phrases of politeness that should open and close an interview.”

Anna Rybak 2nd Year BA (Hons) in International Development Studies

Acting as producers of educational podcasts [OERs] targeted towards other students benefits the student-producers by enhancing their understanding of previously learnt subject material, as well as assisting in the development of generic skills.

Mark J.W.Lee, Anthony Chan and Catherine McLoughlin