OER Ambassador - Badge application (Responses)


21	My research focuses on second language acquisition and use. I am currently involved in an Open Educational Resource (OER) project initiated at Virginia Commonwealth University to design scaffolded, interactive, online (French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese) language learning modules centered around student-curated materials. Using the media students frequent, connecting it to course thematics, and then engaging learners through social media in sharing findings and opinions, this project aims to renew interest in foreign languages through discovery learning. The project affords students a greater sense of learner autonomy, enabling them to better engage with authentic materials (such as videos, songs, texts, cartoons, posters, infographics, etc.), and build connections between the curriculum and the real world, thereby making the language-learning experience truly their own. To date, this project has garnered substantial national attention, by way of conference presentations and publications. My colleagues and I have presented at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) annual conventions in November 2016 (“Student Curated Authentic Online Language Learning Resources”), in November 2017 (“Student-Curated E-Learning”), and in November 2019 (“Intermediate, student-created Open Educational Resources (OER) e-books”), at the Modern Language Association (MLA) annual convention in January 2017 (“Revamping Language Learning through Student Curations”), and at the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO) in May 2019 (“Make it so … free: student-driven OER”). A peer-reviewed article, for which I’m the first author, entitled “Learning in the open: integrating language and culture through student curation, virtual exchanges, and OER” was also published in 2019 in an edited volume of case studies (In A. Beaven, A. Comas-Quinn & B. Sawhill (Eds), New case studies of openness in and beyond the language classroom (pp. 65-82). Research-publishing.net.). In 2017, already, an article about this project was featured on insidehighered.com. We are currently working on culling and organizing our existing French OER modules into an open-access e-textbook for intermediate-level learners. This work is again conducted with the support of students' input and perspectives. Given the iterative, dynamic, and open nature of this work, as well as students' continued involvement in this endeavor, its growth and expansion are only to be expected.

My research focuses on second language acquisition and use. I am currently involved in an Open Educational Resource (OER) project initiated at Virginia Commonwealth University to design scaffolded, interactive, online (French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese) language learning modules centered around student-curated materials. Using the media students frequent, connecting it to course thematics, and then engaging learners through social media in sharing findings and opinions, this project aims to renew interest in foreign languages through discovery learning. The project affords students a greater sense of learner autonomy, enabling them to better engage with authentic materials (such as videos, songs, texts, cartoons, posters, infographics, etc.), and build connections between the curriculum and the real world, thereby making the language-learning experience truly their own. To date, this project has garnered substantial national attention, by way of conference presentations and publications. My colleagues and I have presented at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) annual conventions in November 2016 (“Student Curated Authentic Online Language Learning Resources”), in November 2017 (“Student-Curated E-Learning”), and in November 2019 (“Intermediate, student-created Open Educational Resources (OER) e-books”), at the Modern Language Association (MLA) annual convention in January 2017 (“Revamping Language Learning through Student Curations”), and at the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO) in May 2019 (“Make it so … free: student-driven OER”). A peer-reviewed article, for which I’m the first author, entitled “Learning in the open: integrating language and culture through student curation, virtual exchanges, and OER” was also published in 2019 in an edited volume of case studies (In A. Beaven, A. Comas-Quinn & B. Sawhill (Eds), New case studies of openness in and beyond the language classroom (pp. 65-82). Research-publishing.net.). In 2017, already, an article about this project was featured on insidehighered.com. We are currently working on culling and organizing our existing French OER modules into an open-access e-textbook for intermediate-level learners. This work is again conducted with the support of students' input and perspectives. Given the iterative, dynamic, and open nature of this work, as well as students' continued involvement in this endeavor, its growth and expansion are only to be expected.