OER: insights into a multilingual landscape Presentation by: Tita Beaven, Kate Borthwick, Linda Bradley, Sylvi Vigmo, Katerina Zourou at the EUROCALL 2014 conference on 22 August, Groningen

1. OER: insights into a multilingual landscape
Tita Beaven, Kate Borthwick, Linda Bradley,
Sylvi Vigmo, Katerina Zourou
EUROCALL 2014 Conference Symposium
August 22, Groningen, 2014
This project was financed with the support of the European Commission. This publication is the sole responsibility of the author and
the Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

2. About the LangOER network
European Comission funded network (2014-2016), 9 partners:
• Fryske Academy, The Netherlands
• Web2learn, Greece
• European Schoolnet, Belgium
• University of Gothenburg, Sweden
• Jan Dlugosz University, Poland
• Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania
• International Council for Open and Distance Education, Norway
• European Foundation for Quality in E-learning, Belgium
• Rezekne Higher Education Institution, Latvia

3. Strands of activities
• State-of-the art of OER in less used languages
• International policy makers capacity building
• Teacher training
• Regional and minority languages & OER
• Challenges for language learning
• Mainstream good practice at European policy making level

4. Scope of the LangOER project
• Enhance the linguistic and cultural components of OER
• Foster sustainability through OER reuse
• Address needs of policy makers and educators
• Raise awareness of risk of exclusion of less used languages
from the OER landscape
• Offer training to educators of less used languages, face-to-face
and online
• Embrace stakeholders of regional and minority languages in
remotely located areas of Europe to gain knowledge,
develop skills

5. Set-up of today’s workshop
• Which languages are represented in repositories of OER
(ROER) and what kind of subjects do they cover?
• How do multilingual repositories cope with the management
of OER in various languages? How is the management
(upload, sharing, updates, monitoring) of these resources
possible? How do language teachers and learners engage
with OER in these repositories?
• Is OER uptake a far-fetched idea or current practice? What
kind of evidence does exist of OER uptake in a language
learning/teaching context?
• How plurilingualism can fit to Open Educational Practice?
How OER can enact plurilingual varieties?

6. Keywords from UNESCO’s definition
Definition of OER
-teaching, learning and research materials
in the public domain
-released under an open license
-no-cost access
-possible to adapt and redistribute
with no or limited restrictions
UNESCO, 2012, Paris OER Declaration

7. State-of-the-art investigation results
Diversified picture
Less used languages with considerable OER resources
Active and vibrant; state-supported or grass-root initiatives

8. State-of-the-art investigation results
Less used languages with considerable OER resources

9. Active online communities

10. State-of-the-art investigation results
Languages with few or any OER resources
–Dependent on international initiatives
–Not really OER: rather ABOUT OER

11. Multilingual OER repositories
• Lemill as an example “Web community for finding, authoring and
sharing learning resources for school teachers” http://lemill.net/
Multilingual OER repositories

17. OER: insights into a multilingual landscape
– the case of LORO
Tita Beaven
The Open University
Eurocall Symposium
EUROCALL 2014
GRONINGEN, 20-23 AUGUST 2014

18. Outline
• A brief introduction to LORO and the OU context
• LORO as a multilingual repository
• Some “translated” resources
• Open Educational Practices in a multilingual context

19. Languages at The Open University -UK
• English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Welsh &
Chinese (beginners to advanced) to 7000+ language
students
• Blended approach: independent study using mixed
media and support inc. face-to-face, synchronous and
asynchronous online teaching
• Course materials produced centrally, teaching support
provided locally
• Course developers and course directors: 50+ academics
plus support staff
• Teaching staff: 320+ part-time teachers

20. What was the problem?
• Storing and managing resources for teaching
(servers, the VLE…)
• Finding out what others are doing
• Avoid reinventing the wheel…(30-40 teachers might
be delivering the same course in parallel)
• Sharing resources produced by all colleagues

21. Languages Open Resources Online
(HEA/Jisc 2009) http://loro.open.ac.uk
LORO is about:
• ...making all teaching materials for all levels and
languages available to all users
• …making OU tutorial materials available to the wider
languages community
• …allowing users to share their own materials with the
whole languages community
• …starting a change in the way we work (OER, access,
transparency, quality)

22. LORO is about:
• ...making all teaching materials for all levels and
languages available to all users
• …making OU tutorial materials available to the wider
languages community
• …allowing users to share their own materials with the
whole languages community
• …starting a change in the way we work (OER, access,
transparency, quality)

24. Teachers are using LORO…
• To find resources for their teaching
“I often also check what other teachers have done to
teach the same topic or a similar structure”
• To find inspiration and ideas
“even if I don’t find anything I can use, it starts the
ideas flowing in my head”
• To standardise their practice and ensure comparability of
the student experience
“to make sure the contents covered in my own
tutorial are similar to those used by the rest of the
course team and tutors”

26. Peer observation of teaching
A ‘‘collaborative, developmental activity in which
professionals offer mutual support by observing each
other teach; explaining and discussing what was
observed; sharing ideas about teaching; gathering
student feedback on teaching effectiveness; reflecting on
understandings, feelings, actions and feedback and
trying out new ideas’’.
(Bell, 2005, p. 3)

27. POT in the context of
blended teaching and learning?
POT needs to be extended to
other media where teaching
takes place
It should cover areas such as
curriculum design, the
creation of teaching
materials, online teaching,
and the whole range of
what teachers do to support
learners. (Hatzipanagos and
Lygo-Baker 2006, Bennett
and Barp, 2008
Swinglehurst et al, 2008).
In the context of the OU? In the context of LORO?
- Collaborative writing of resources
- Professional conversations about the use of OER

28. Collaborative writing of OER

29. Translation…

30. And additional steps…

31. And additional steps…

32. Professional conversation: planning an
Italian beginners’ tutorial

33. Looking for inspiration in LORO-French
“This is the kind of thing I
didn’t want to do… I give
them the language and
they just repeat it… I
don’t want to do this…. I
might want to elicit it, but
I want to come up with a
more creative way of
doing it, so I discarded
this…”

34. LORO: Spanish resources…
“Now this is the thing that started me thinking….”

35. Sorting activity – learning strategies

36. Back to the Italian resources: more ideas and
reflection on teaching practice
“It made me think that my colleagues
are much more slow in how they
present things…. Nice, slow, very
simple explanations… I am impressed
by how good my colleague is in doing
this explanation – if I want to explain
something, I want to do it as slowly as
that…”

37. The final ingredient…

38. OER—as resources that lend themselves to collaboration, knowledge sharing about
practices, adaptation and reuse—support conversations and practices that may not
traditionally be available through professional development.
(Petrides et al, 2010)

39. OER: insights into a
multilingual landscape
OEP: enabler and lifeline for
multilingualism
Kate Borthwick
Modern Languages, University of Southampton
EuroCALL 14, Groningen, August 2014

40. Outline
•Context
•OEP/OERs as enabler of multilingualism
•Challenges and issues
•OEP/ OERs as lifelines for multilingualism
•Closing remarks: how do we realise the potential of OEP?

41. Some context…
Community Café 2010-11
FAVOR (Finding a Voice through Open Resources) 2011-12
OpenLIVES (2011-13)
• All funded by JISC (a UK organisation which supports technology in
education)
•All explored aspects of OER and OEP and involved creation of OERs
•Worked with different communities of language teachers

42. OEP and OERs – enablers of multilingualism
Increased sharing – more resources, more collaboration, wider
range of resources, esp. in LWULT languages
Communities of open practice
•Neutral, democratic, levelling space e.g.
www.languagebox.ac.uk
•Sharing cross-language
•Focus on practitioner, not language itself

43. …but there are some challenges
•Management issues around an English-medium repository and other scripts/languages
•Searching, discoverability and shareability
•Copyright and quality
•Concepts of the culture of OEP and reflective practice could be alien and novel to some
groups
•Teachers engaging with OEP need encouragement and support
•For some teachers, resources are not be shared as they are ‘their stock-in-trade’

44. … Lifelines for multilingualism
•LWULT languages: increased resources offers potential to
broaden learner group; collaboration and wider exposure
•Undervalued and under-resourced
•Engaging with OEP offers CPD for all teachers - especially
useful for part-timers/CL teachers who have limited access to
CPD opportunities

45. Closing remarks
•OEP has the POTENTIAL to be an enabler/lifeline…
•Need to be proactive: promoting OERs, sharing work,
collaborating…
•Offer guidance and scaffolding (e.g. translations, guidance
on use, examples of resources in use)
•Consider how we reach new and wider audiences alongside
increasing OERs available

46. Forthcoming activities
• Webinar, September 19: “OER
for less used languages in an
increasingly digital everyday
culture”
• Teacher training activities in
GR, LV, LT, PL, SE, NO in
Spring 2015 and possibly also
remotely through e-Twinning of
European Schoolnet

47. Staying in touch
http://langoer.eun.org/
#langOER
LangOER
OER and languages
OER and languages
LangOER teachers’ group (in preparation)