New EU-US cooperation on OER and language learning

LangOER team joins forces with the Centre for OER and Language Learning (COERLL) in the US.

COERLL is a renowned organisation for the expansion of Open Educational Resources in the United States.

The Centre is one of 16 National Foreign Language Resource Centers (LRCs) funded by the US Department of Education. COERLL's mission is to produce and disseminate Open Educational Resources (OER) for the Internet public (e.g. online language courses, reference grammars, assessment tools, corpora, etc.).

Joint research

Carl Blyth and Amanda Dalola (COERLL) co-authored the scholar paper, Translingualism as an Open Educational Language Practice: Raising Critical Language Awareness on Facebook published in September 2016 in the peer-reviewed open access journal, ALSIC. The paper was selected among several contributions to be part of the special issue, Social Dynamics in Open Educational Practice, coordinated by Katerina Zourou, Ph.D., as part of LangOER’s work package 6.

The inclusion in this special issue strengthened cooperation between US and European scholars, as the release of the special issue reflects the international character of LangOER in enhancing research in OER for language education. This special issue was based on a fruitful scientific dialogue involving scholars from the US (Carl Blyth, Amanda Dalola, Steven Thorne and Jonathon Reinhardt), Europe (Teresa MacKinnon, Shona Whyte, Gosia Kurek and Katerina Zourou) and Australia (Sarah Pasfield, Howard Manns and Scott Grant). The open access character of the special issue will allow greater discoverability and reach in global OER communities.

Activities

2016 roundtable at AAAL conference, USA

On April 11,2016, a roundtable co-organized by LangOER and COERLL will take place at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) conference, Orlando, USA. The title is “An International OER/OEP Initiative: How Open is Foreign Language Education in the United States and Europe?” The purpose of our talk is to discuss an international initiative co-sponsored by the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (US) and LangOER (Europe) on the scope and impact of OER and OEP on both continents. In particular, we will discuss survey data about OER/OEP adoption.

Speakers are Dr. Carl Blyth, Director of COERLL, Dr. Joshua Thoms, Assistant Professor, Utah State University; and Dr. Katerina Zourou, Web2Learn, Greece.

Webinar

LangOER organized together with the Centre for OER and Language Learning (COERLL)in the US the webinar “Out in the Open, reaching for the stars: EU-US insights into Open Educational Practices for language education”. it took place on September 15, 2015, at 16h CET (09h CDT, 17h GMT).

The recording of the webinar is now available as well as the slides.

Speakers were Dr. Carl Blyth, Director of COERLL, Dr. Joshua Thoms, Assistant Professor, Utah State University; and Dr. Katerina Zourou, Web2Learn, Greece and LangOER project manager. The webinar has been moderated by Teresa MacKinnon, Warwick University, UK.

Expert interview with Carl Blyth

LangOER team contacted COERLL within the framework of the expert survey “Open Educational Practice in a language learning/teaching context: focus on interaction “, which is part of work package 6 of LangOER, in late summer 2014. At this expert survey Carl Blyth, Director of COERLL, shared his views.

As a next step, LangOER has been offered a cooperation within the framework of COERLL’s initiative to run a US-wide OER survey and needs analysis on language learning and teaching. This US initiative found several LangOER partners who volunteered to run the survey in European countries, and to shape together a better understanding of processes and practices developed around OER in various learning contexts.

Picture credits: http://en.trend.az

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