Anna Comas-Quinn

Mobile blogs in language learning: Making the most of informal and situated learning opportunities

The application of mobile technologies to learning has the potential to facilitate the active participation of learners in the creation and delivery of content. Mobile technologies can also provide a powerful connection between a variety of formal and informal learning contexts and can help to build a community of learners. However these versatile tools present challenges to educators and learners alike. The paper discusses the pedagogical challenges that result from the introduction of mobile technologies in language learning in the context of an intensive week of study abroad. We describe and evaluate a pilot project that uses mobile blogging to promote a constructivist, situated and informal learning experience of the foreign language and culture based on theories of active learning. We aim to encourage interaction and a sense of community among learners outside formal educational environments and in different locations as we ask them to engage with the foreign culture by capturing, sharing and reflecting on their experiences for their peers.

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) for Distance Language Learning: Shifting Tutor Roles in a Contested Space for Interaction

This article describes the rationale for pedagogical, technological and organisational choices in the design of a virtual learning environment (VLE) for an upper-intermediate Spanish course with regard to the roles of participants (tutors, moderators and learners). We report on findings from a preliminary evaluation of the interaction between the different actors and this space, using quantitative and qualitative data obtained from interviews, questionnaires and analysis of usage logs. We look at the tensions that emerge as tutors and learners adopt new roles and engage in new pedagogical relationships around the opportunities afforded by this kind of teaching and learning space. We argue that our attempt to promote interaction through our VLE model has resulted in a contested space where traditional hierarchies and relationships between tutors and learners are in a state of flux and where new hierarchies and relationships are constantly being forged. Finally we explore new ways in which tutors’ roles might be organised to more effectively fulfil their supportive and facilitative functions in this new online environment.

The challenge of Open Education

Digital culture and the remix culture it has generated have changed the way in which knowledge and learning are constructed.‬ The last decade since the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched the Open Courseware initiative (OCW) in 2002 has seen a significant increase in the number of initiatives related to Open Educational Resources (OER) and open education in general. New institutions, with different objectives and business models, are emerging rapidly outside traditional universities: start-ups that offer free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), consortia of universities from four continents that share teaching materials and infrastructure, and universities where classes are taught by the students themselves.‬ This paper seeks to provide a historical overview of developments in the world of open education and a look at the key challenges that it faces. It considers how technology has altered the way in which information is obtained and shared and the consequences this has for the organization of education, from online learning to the flipped classroom. It also shows how roles and the balance of power between producers and consumers of content have become blurred leading to new possibilities for learning in different ways such as MOOCs, from peers and networks, etc. The new learning opportunities on offer can reach new groups of learners, a challenge that universities cannot ignore.‬‬‬‬

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.

Teachers’ Use and Acceptance of Gamification and Social Networking Features of an Open Repository

Abstract The affordance of social interaction has been a part of open online repositories of teaching and learning resources for nearly two decades. Repositories are built not only to collect and disseminate materials, but enable users to collaborate and review, comment on and rate the content they access. However, research indicates that (a) most users do not participate in this type of generative use, and (b) the possibility of social interaction does not necessarily signal active participation in social interaction. In recent years the positive effects of gamification and social networking elements on user engagement have come to the fore in educational settings. From this stance, a quantitative study was conducted to assess users’ acceptance of the existing game mechanics of a large national repository of educational resources, their attitudes towards the inclusion of extra features, and teachers’ motivation to share openly. Our results indicate that teachers do not see open repositories as social networks, but as libraries of resources, and are likely to share if rewarded by intrinsic rather than extrinsic factors.

Sharing: Open Educational Resources for Language Teachers

The last decade has seen an increase in the number of open online spaces through which users can share their educational content. These may be institutional websites, national initiatives (such as Jorum in the UK or COERLL in the US), online communities of practice (see Chapter 8), or commercial websites. At the same time, the notion that using and creating Open Educational Resources (OER) is a positive, beneficial activity has gathered momentum across the world at political and strategic levels with the establishment of a range of initiatives aimed at promoting engagement with OER. In 2012, UNESCO adopted the ‘Paris OER Declaration’, which affirmed support and encouragement for the development of governmental policies integrating OER into education, and in 2013, the European Commission launched the ‘Open Education Initiative’ which aims to enhance the digital skills of European Union residents through ‘the development and availability of OER’ (European Commission, 2013). Since then many European projects have been funded to expand the integration of OER into teachers’ practices (such as LangOER, which aims to harness open practice to support minority, regional and less used languages).

Editorial - JIME OER13 special issue: The potential of openness for engaging communities

This special issue is the fourth devoted to Open Educational Resources (OER) and the third to be drawn from papers presented at the main annual UK-based OER conference. For this special issue, the editors selected papers from the OER13 conference, held in Nottingham in March 2013. The main conference themes were Evidence, Experiences and Expectations, and the chosen papers exemplified some of the ways in which OER can link communities both inside and beyond Higher Education.

Chapter Three Language Learning on the Move: A Review of Mobile Blogging Tasks and their Potential

In this chapter, we examine how mobile blogging can be used for language learning and propose a definition of mobile blogging activities as those “which use the mobility of the learner and the availability of a mobile device as the basis for the design of the task.” We acknowledge that technological advances have made most blogging activities accessible from mobile devices, and for this reason, include a review of the literature on blogging for language learning as well as some theoretical considerations that are common to blog and mobile blog task design. We highlight a number of issues that have emerged in the implementation of this kind of task, among others, the renegotiation of the roles of teachers and learners, the need for extensive training and support, and the personal and cultural factors that may influence the success of these tasks. We conclude with a reminder that tasks need to be well integrated with programs of learning and that the quality of the learners learning experience needs to be further investigated.

Editorial - Cambridge OER 2012

This second JIME special edition on Open Educational Resources draws on the success of the recent Cambridge 2012 Conference, which was jointly hosted by the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCWC) and the Support Centre for Open Resources in Education (SCORE), at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Key themes from the conference on innovation, impact and collaboration for advancing OpenCourseWare and Open Educational Resources globally are presented in the papers in this special issue.