Practical Usage of OER Material

in the EFL ClassroomMaria Haas

Research Question

What would EFL lessons look like if exclusively OER material rather than

traditional school books would be used?

Open Educational Resources(OER)

2001 MIT OpenCourseWare

2002 UNESCO Forum for Higher Education in Developing Countries

UNESCO website:

teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or that can be used under an intellectual property license that allows re-use or adaptation (e.g Creative Commons)."

Creative Commons (CC)

non profit organisation

founded in 2001

allow users to release material under a license that is not all rights reserved

Creative Commons (CC)4 modules

BY

NC

ND

SA Source: Creative Commons website

Reusing CC material

TASL (title, author, source, license)

for this study: source removed from worksheets

cosmetic purposes

offline mode

Situation in Austria

use copyrighted material in class

not allowed to copy teaching material

difference to Germany

up to 10% of a school book can be copied

Prior to Study

project seminar (EFL teaching)

preliminary study (February)

Study

Study

two weeks

30 students

second year of middle school (A1)

6 lessons (+ 30 minute feedback session)

Evaluation Plan

preparation time (time sheet)

feedback (from students and teachers)

target group (material for A1)

Results

Preparation

~39 hours

most time spent finding material (20 hours)

problems with CC search engine

problems with SA module

Feedback

overwhelmingly positive (28/2)

learned a lot

better/as good as school book

too many worksheets

material not hole punched

Target Grouplittle material for target group/topics

material created using pictures as base

lots of material in English but not ESL/EFL

repositories not useful (higher education)

teachers do not share openly

Conclusion

students enjoyed OER material

possible to create OER lessons

drawbacks

offline setting (material distribution)

lack of awareness of OER material

integrate in curriculum for teacher training

Questions?