6 | One of my areas of research involves investigating issues related to OER and OEP in second language (L2) learning and teaching environments. As a result, one of the ways in which I promote the open education movement is via conference presentations and publications. To that end, I have presented my research at the Open Education and the American Association of Applied Linguistics annual conferences. I most recently shared findings on the effects of using a specific OER tool (i.e., a digital annotation tool called eComma) to promote L2 reading at the 2017 CALICO conference. I have also published articles about the perceptions/attitudes of language educators in the U.S. regarding the creation and/or adoption of OER in their courses and have investigated how OER have changed their teaching practices. Among other related ongoing projects, one is investigating whether or not language educators working in K-12 contexts in the US are aware of existing OER and/or if they have engaged in OEP. Another study is looking at whether or not OER and OEP efforts by faculty working in higher education factor into promotion and tenure decisions by administrators. Finally, I am co-editing a book that will include contributions from language educators and researchers working in various countries that will explore a variety of issues related to how the open education movement is changing the nature of L2 learning and teaching. In addition to my empirical work related to OER and OEP, I am also an advocate for open education at Utah State University (USU) and have promoted it in a number of different ways. I was invited to participate in a panel discussion in 2015 organized by the Provost’s Series on Instructional Excellence entitled ‘Open Educational Resources’. Since 2016, I have served on a university-wide Open Education committee that investigates and promotes a number of efforts involving open education at USU. In 2017, I was the co-principal coordinator of an initiative in my College of Humanities and Social Sciences that secured funding to incentivize faculty members throughout the College to adopt and/or create OER for their courses. One of the projects that resulted from that initiative was an OER book created by an ESL faculty member in my department to be used to teach a 'Cross-Cultural Perspectives' course in USU’s Intensive English Language Institute. In sum, the open education movement will continue to affect the ways in which language educators create, adopt, and/or remix materials to better suit their teaching needs/environment. Similarly, I will continue to promote OER and OEP via my research and advocacy efforts. |
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