In this session, we will present how we plan a series of events (webinars and workshops) to inform, educate and encourage language teaching faculty to both use and create OER in their teaching, especially for those who are teaching less commonly taught languages (LCTLs). We will also share our actual experiences in this process--what worked and what did not as planned.
We are a center that provides both instructional support and professional development for language teaching faculty and AIs at a big research university. We found ourselves constantly making decisions on copyright issues in terms of providing audio and video services. Especially after courses are moved online, we feel the pressing need of educating our faculty on both the use and creation of OER. A large range of languages are offered at this university and many of them are so rarely taught that it is only offered in this university (within the U.S.). Few digital learning materials are available for these languages. We hope to encourage our faculty in creating high quality digital learning materials and to share them in proper ways. Creative Commons licenses are a valuable tool for such sharing. However, while search for such resources is easy, proper use (with attribution, for example) requires some serious training. When it comes to assigning a CC license to OER to be shared, it is even more challenging and complicated. We will cover the topics of Creative Commons Licenses, OER and OER-enabled pedagogy. We also plan to identify financial resources to engage LCTL instructors to create and share OER resources.
There is a lot to cover so we have come up with a sequence of teaching these concepts. We will share the sequence of events both during presentation and in the form of a shared document. While teaching key concepts is a must, empowering an attitude change is a bigger challenge. We will present how we identify challenges and opportunities at the university we work and how to address these in the series of events.
Limitation: We have just completed the planning for the first event so we will not be able to complete the full series of events before the conference, which means we will not be able to share a lot of actual experiences. However, since the planning stage is critical, we believe we have a lot of valuable thoughts and experiences to share.
Learning Outcomes: -The attendees will be able to tell the procedures and different aspects of planning a series of events and projects that inform and educate instructors how to use and share OER, as well as motivate instructors in such practices. -The attendees will be able to learn experiences from carrying out the above plan. -The attendees will have a template to start with for themselves to engage in such planning and organization of the planned events and initiatives. -The attendees will get inspired.
