OER Ambassador - Badge application (Responses)


37	I co-presented at the Kansas Foreign Language OER Conference on March 6th, 2021. The title of our presentation was, “Feliz en la comunidad: An OER Community Service Initiative during COVID 19”, and it focused on the creation of OER materials by Spanish language students as part of the Feliz en la Comunidad service-learning program, that my co-presenter and I co-direct. In this program, University of Southern California Spanish language students teach beginning Spanish lessons to elementary, middle, and high school learners in the greater Los Angeles area. The program is integrated in coursework of the Spanish language classes at USC, and, as such, participants receive credit toward their course requirements. As a part of the Feliz en la Comunidad program, the university students create a variety of educational materials, including videos of students reading short stories followed by comprehension questions, worksheets, games, Pear Decks and other extension activities. These activities are later posted to the website of the USC Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures. There the materials are made available not only to our partner institutions, but also to the wider community of language learners and teachers. In particular, we have partnered with the Spanish Consulate to help raise awareness of the availability of the OER and its materials to a greater number of Spanish instructors. Our presentation spoke specifically to why and how the Feliz en la Comunidad program began, the ways in which a service-learning program can help students engage with surrounding communities, how we adapted the program to include the creation of the OER as we transitioned to the online environment during the pandemic, and how, in the future, we hope to expand the scope of the OER through the production of more student-generated materials and the creation of a website that will make these materials more easily accessible to a greater number of educators. Additionally, the presentation elaborated on the benefits that such a service-learning program and the OER it produces provide to both the student teachers and student learners involved directly in the program, the elementary and secondary instructors with whom we partner, and the greater language teaching and learning community that will now have free access to these valuable materials. Examples of the materials can be found here: https://dornsife.usc.edu/latin-american-and-iberian-cultures/our-service-learning-programs/

I co-presented at the Kansas Foreign Language OER Conference on March 6th, 2021. The title of our presentation was, “Feliz en la comunidad: An OER Community Service Initiative during COVID 19”, and it focused on the creation of OER materials by Spanish language students as part of the Feliz en la Comunidad service-learning program, that my co-presenter and I co-direct. In this program, University of Southern California Spanish language students teach beginning Spanish lessons to elementary, middle, and high school learners in the greater Los Angeles area. The program is integrated in coursework of the Spanish language classes at USC, and, as such, participants receive credit toward their course requirements. As a part of the Feliz en la Comunidad program, the university students create a variety of educational materials, including videos of students reading short stories followed by comprehension questions, worksheets, games, Pear Decks and other extension activities. These activities are later posted to the website of the USC Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures. There the materials are made available not only to our partner institutions, but also to the wider community of language learners and teachers. In particular, we have partnered with the Spanish Consulate to help raise awareness of the availability of the OER and its materials to a greater number of Spanish instructors.

Our presentation spoke specifically to why and how the Feliz en la Comunidad program began, the ways in which a service-learning program can help students engage with surrounding communities, how we adapted the program to include the creation of the OER as we transitioned to the online environment during the pandemic, and how, in the future, we hope to expand the scope of the OER through the production of more student-generated materials and the creation of a website that will make these materials more easily accessible to a greater number of educators. Additionally, the presentation elaborated on the benefits that such a service-learning program and the OER it produces provide to both the student teachers and student learners involved directly in the program, the elementary and secondary instructors with whom we partner, and the greater language teaching and learning community that will now have free access to these valuable materials.

Examples of the materials can be found here: https://dornsife.usc.edu/latin-american-and-iberian-cultures/our-service-learning-programs/