Use and Reuse of OER: professional conversations with language teachers

In the last ten years prestigious Open Education Resources projects have been set up, often with generous support from funders. Funders and institutions that support OER want evidence of their use and reuse; it seems, however, that OER have not yet been widely adopted by teachers as part of their daily practice. This paper investigates the use and reuse of OER from a subject-specific repository for language teachers. In particular, the small scale study investigates how and why language teachers use OER in their teaching and rework existing resources. It also examines whether the teachers understand the resources and how to use and adapt them effectively, as an inability to do so has been considered an impediment to their reuse (Dimitriadis et al. (2009), Conole (2010b)). One of the difficulties in working with open resources and open practices is that “the open is the enemy of the knowable” (Beetham, 2011): investigating the adoption of OER and open practices is indeed not without difficulty, and this study proposes a qualitative enquiry based around professional conversations to investigate use and reuse of OER. The research found that, far from not engaging in reuse, the teachers in the study did adapt OER, although most of those changes were not published again. In addition, they drew on considerable professional knowledge when considering the use and reuse of OER for their lessons. The current study suggests that evidence of use and reuse cannot simply be gathered through metrics; some of the reuse and sharing is not necessarily visible, and sharing might not always be appropriate. It is possible that the adoption of more open educational practices will result in reuse and sharing of both resources and practices becoming more visible in the future but, for now, more research is needed to provide evidence of the “invisible” reuse and sharing

The polyglot community: an interview with Richard Simcott, by Tita Beaven

The closing plenary session at the InnoConf17 conference was an informal interview that Tita Beaven conducted with Richard Simcott, which we reproduce here in an edited version

Open Educational Resources and Language Teachers' Professional Practice: A Case Study of Engagement With OER

Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational materials that are in the public domain or published with an open license. The OER lifecycle involves users locating, adapting, reusing and sharing OER. In the past fifteen years considerable funding has been devoted to creating OER repositories; however, it appears that the promise of OER has not been fully realised, and the anticipated adoption, reworking and sharing has had only limited success. There have been very few studies of 'real world' reuse of OER, and there have been questions about whether reuse is indeed occurring at all. This case study explores engagement with OER from a specific OER collection, LORO (Languages Open Resources Online, www.loro.open.ac.uk), by teachers on two blended beginners' language courses at The Open University, UK. It fills a gap in research by investigating the teachers' practices in order to ascertain whether they follow the steps in the OER lifecycle, as this might have a positive influence in their teaching. The research also seeks to understand the often tacit professional knowledge that teachers draw on when engaging with OER, as it has been argued that, through open educational practices, this tacit knowledge can be made explicit, and therefore useable and shareable, and thus contribute to enhancing teaching quality. The study found that teachers engage with the steps of the OER lifecycle: they find and reuse resources in their teaching, and adapt them to suit their specific requirements. Most of the teachers in the study mix resources they find with others they create themselves. Although they do not share them back through LORO, they do share them through other, less public means, especially with colleagues and students. Some of the teachers' cognitive, affective and systemic tacit professional knowledge was also made explicit, a first step towards making it usable and shareable

‘Dark reuse’: an empirical study of teachers’ OER engagement

There is scant evidence of OER reuse or sharing; OER apologists maintain that reuse is happening in private spaces, but others argue there is no evidence of such ‘dark reuse’. The OER lifecycle provides a model of OER engagement, defining five key practices: finding, composing, adapting, reusing and sharing. However, no empirical research has yet investigated whether teachers’ engagement with OER follows this model; evidence from OER repository analytics suggests not. This paper draws on an empirical study of engagement with an OER repository by language teachers at a distance university (The Open University UK). Through the applied thematic analysis of data generated through observation of lesson preparations, the paper’s contribution is to validate the OER lifecycle model and provide evidence of ‘dark reuse’. Qualitative tools, sensitive to the situated nature of OER engagement, are crucial to understanding invisible practices around ‘dark reuse’, and sophisticated models that embrace the complexity of OER ecosystems are needed

Motivation in a language MOOC: issues for course designers

Whilst several existing studies on foreign language learning have explored motivation in more traditional settings (Dörnyei, 2003), this paper presents one of the first studies on the motivation of participants in a MOOC. The MOOC, Travailler en français (https://sites.google.com/site/mooctravaillerenfrancais/home), was a 5-week open online course for learners of French at level B1 of the CEFR, and aimed to develop language and employability skills for working in a francophone country. It took place in early 2014 and attracted more than 1000 participants. Intrinsic motivation (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000), is directly linked to one’s enjoyment of accomplishing a task. We conducted a study based on the cognitive variables of the Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985), and adapted the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory to the context of a MOOC in order to understand the expectancy beliefs and task values of participants engaging with the MOOC. Participants answered a 40 Likert-type questions on enjoyment/ interest (i.e. I will enjoy doing this MOOC very much), perceived competence (i.e. I think I will be able to perform successfully in the MOOC), effort (i.e. I will put a lot of effort in this MOOC), value/usefulness (i.e. I think that doing this MOOC will be useful for developing my skills), felt pressure and tension (i.e. I think I might feel pressured while doing the MOOC) and relatedness (i.e. I think I will feel like I can really trust the other participants). Results highlight significant factors that could directly influence intrinsic motivation for learning in a MOOC environment. The chapter makes recommendations for LMOOC designers based on the emerging profile of MOOC participants, on their motivation and self-determination, as well as on the pressures they might feel, including time pressures. Finally, the extent to which participants relate to each other, and are able to engage in social learning and interaction, is a real challenge for LMOOC designers

Performing languages: an example of integrating open practices in staff development for language teachers

In 2009 the Department of Languages at The Open University, UK, developed LORO (http://loro.open.ac.uk), a repository of Open Educational Resources for language teaching and learning aimed at language teaching professionals. Initially populated with over 300 hours of teaching resources for French, Spanish, German, Italian, Welsh, Chinese and English for Academic Purposes, LORO’s initial function was to provide an efficient and open way of accessing and sharing resources. Additionally, the integration of LORO into language teachers’ workflows is part of the department’s strategy for teachers’ professional development and a key enabler for increased transparency, collaboration, skills development, and pedagogical reflection and discussion, leading ultimately to the enhancement of the quality of teaching and learning. This case study describes how the vision of openness facilitated by LORO is being implemented at a practical level through the incorporation of open practices into teachers’ professional development activities. We look at the project Performing Languages (www.performinglanguages.eu), a Grundtvig Partnership project (part of the Lifelong Learning Programme) in which language teachers in the UK work with theatre associations in Spain, France and Italy. Besides the primary objective of exploring the role of drama in the language classroom as a tool for language and culture learning and intercultural communication, this project also intends to develop and publish most project resources (workshop activities, lesson plans, texts and video recordings, for example) as Open Educational Resources. The aim is to share the project experiences as widely as possible to maximise impact and ensure others can benefit from them. This case study looks at how the project has been designed so that collaborative writing, open sharing and peer review of the resources produced by participating language teachers are fully embedded in the project activities. We look at the strategies and tools that enable us to achieve these objectives in a distance context, and the resources that have been created and published by participants as a direct result of the project. Drawing on data from feedback questionnaires and a debriefing session with participants, we examine how teachers’ increased awareness of the benefits of sharing and collaboration has resulted in changes in practice, both in relation to openness and pedagogical approach

What’s in it for me? The stick and the carrot as tools for developing academic communities

Motivating students to contribute to learning communities is not a new problem, nor is it restricted to online learning. However it becomes especially obvious in large online courses where student collaboration is one of the intended learning outcomes. This paper describes two models for driving student engagement in producing user-generated and user-reviewed content. It discusses the motivation for participation and gives results from two subject areas. The behaviour of students of second and third level language courses is compared to that of first level technology students when their participation is simply encouraged and when it is required for assessment. A model for driving user-engagement is proposed and related to previous experience in online learning

Needs and challenges for online language teachers - the ECML project DOTS

The growing use of digital technologies in educational settings, paralleled by a paradigm change in educational theory from an instructivist transmission approach to constructivist and sociocultural theories of learning, demands more adapted teacher training programs, both technical and pedagogical. Looking at factors influencing teachers’ implementation of ICT in the foreign language classroom and guided by the results of a needs analysis survey conducted among twenty six language teachers from twenty five different European countries, the DOTS project aims to develop an online workspace with bite-sized learning objects for autonomous use by language professionals, particularly freelance teachers who frequently miss out on the training opportunities provided for their full-time colleagues

Teaching and learning online – Developing your skills to develop others.

The wide-spread use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in language learning has not only provided more varied forms of learning for adults but has also posed a number of challenges for language teachers who now need to be multiskilled: They have to be knowledgeable about the ICT tools available for language teaching, able to decide whether a particular tool is consistent with their underlying pedagogic approach, and confident in the use of suitable tools so as to ensure that these tools meet the needs of their learners. It is therefore crucial for language teachers to receive support and encouragement to use ICT tools (more) confidently and to develop their skills further. The DOTS (Developing Online Teaching Skills, http://dots.ecml.at) and MoreDOTS (Using open resources to develop online teaching skills) projects, which have been supported by the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML, www.ecml.at) since 2008, address teachers’ needs for support by providing a Moodle-based workspace (http://moodle.dots.ecml.at), containing bite-sized training modules and the opportunity to share experience and language teaching materials with other language teachers in Europe (Beaven et al., 2010; Stickler et al., 2010)

Needs and challenges for online language teachers: The ECML Project DOTS

The growing use of digital technologies in educational settings, paralleled by a paradigm change in educational theory from an instructivist transmission approach to constructivist and sociocultural theories of learning, demands more adapted teacher training programs, both technical and pedagogical. Looking at factors influencing teachers' implementation of ICT in the foreign language classroom and guided by the results of a needs analysis survey conducted among twenty six language teachers from twenty five different European countries, the DOTS project aims to develop an online workspace with bite-sized learning objects for autonomous use by language professionals, particularly freelance teachers who frequently miss out on the training opportunities provided for their full-time colleagues