On April 9th, Iowa OER hosted a webinar with multiple faculty members from the University of Iowa. Lucia Gemmani, Irene Lottini, Claudia Sartini-Rideout, and Giovanni Zimotti joined us to discuss the development of OER for foreign language learners, and their experiences with that work.

You can watch the full recording on YouTube:

This webinar featured two sets of faculty who have developed OER for language learners. The first team, Lucia Gemmani, Irene Lottini, and Claudia Sartini-Rideout developed OER for three introductory Italian courses at the University of Iowa. Giovanni Zimotti, the other presenter for the call, created OER for an Intermediate Spanish course.

Elementary Italian at the University of Iowa

The objectives of the first team’s project was to develop an OER that could support the entire Elementary sequence for Italian language learners at the University of Iowa. Each team member working on the project spoke about an aspect of their work, from the content development to assessment and learning activities created for their courses.

First, the course the team developed was integrated into Canvas, the University of Iowa’s Learning Management System (called ICON in the video), for ease of updating and integration into teaching. From there, the content was moved into Pressbooks, an online book publishing platform available to instructors through their university, to publish and share openly in a more accessible textbook format. This work is ongoing, but the book, Piacere! Elementary Italian at the University of Iowa, will be available through the Pressbooks Directory once it is finished and publicly available.

In addition to the online textbook, the team developed interactive activities, through H5P activities within the textbook, mini-quizzes on Quizlet, and reading and listening activities in the classroom, to help students learn more effectively. Breaking up the open textbook’s content with assignments and activities helps students better understand the content they were learning each week, and provided more opportunity for feedback and reflection.

Finally, the team tried to improve their students’ confidence in speaking in Italian and transition them into the Intermediate level courses by providing opportunities for students to practice their Italian in and outside of the classroom. While this work was disrupted somewhat due to the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the team was able to engage students in a few ways. They did this through video interactions, where students would record themselves speaking in Italian and submit these videos for a grade. In addition, the team provided opportunities within their textbook to review concepts like grammar and vocabulary, and helped students challenge themselves (and one another) by offering options for group activities. Finally, notes were provided throughout their online textbook to help students understand the assignments and activities provided therein, and to provide notes for instructors interested in adopting the open textbook into their own courses.

Intermediate Spanish OER

The second faculty member to speak at our early April webinar was Giovanni Zimotti, from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa, who spoke about his experience developing OER for Intermediate Spanish. Dr. Zimotti began his talk discussing the importance of OER and how the use of open content in the classroom can support our students, supported by research into the impact of OER on students’ learning. From there, Dr. Zimotti addressed some of the concerns and barriers to OER adoption, before proceeding to discuss his own work in developing OER.

In partnership with Fernando Castro Ortiz (Binghamton University), Dr. Zimotti developed Salón de clase, Intermediate Spanish for Education Professionals. As the text describes itself, it is:

“a comprehensive intermediate Spanish open access textbook with reading, listening, speaking, and writing practice for students who have an interest and/or intend to pursue a career in the field of Education.”

The textbooks available for this course were either cheap and outdated or expensive and lacking activities. To meet the needs of Dr. Zimotti’s course, they would need to develop something new. So, they turned to OER for their answer.

Like the team of Italian professors before him, Dr. Zimotti’s new OER integrated H5P activities, interactive learning opportunities, and lesson plans to make learning Spanish a more engaging activity for students.

In addition to this, Dr. Zimotti and his co-author, Dr. Ortiz, developed videos to accompany their open textbook. These included interviews with Spanish speakers involved in education in the United States and instructional videos to accompany their textbook. These instructional videos can be accessed via Vimeo, a popular online video sharing platform.

Currently, Drs. Zimotti and Ortiz are in the process of editing their text, with the intention to publish it in summer 2021. You can access their project’s website for more information.

Tips for Working on OER

Dr. Zimotti finished his talk with some tips for instructors getting started with this type of project. Rather than attempt to summarize his words, his points are listed below:

• Know your limits.
  • Think big, start small.
  • Plan in advance: Am I going to need help? What type of help? Do I have enough time to complete this project?
  • Create a spreadsheet.
  • Set a timeline.
• Build a team.
  • The library or other organizations and offices on your campus
  • Colleagues
  • Undergraduate and graduate students
• Pick the right platform.
  • A simple PDF
  • Canvas (or your LMS)
  • A custom website
  • A dedicated platform (Pressbooks, LibreTexts, OpenStax)

To learn about these projects, please review the video linked above and keep an eye on our mailing list for links to the finished projects when they are published later this year.