OER Master Creator - Badge application (Responses)


60	The Italian faculty of Muhlenberg College – Daniel Leisawitz and Daniela Viale – began work on “Spunti” in 2017. After years of teaching Italian, we had become frustrated by two aspects of available textbooks. First, their exorbitant cost, which presents many students with a significant financial burden. Second, the limitations that published textbooks necessarily impose on our courses’ structure and approach to learning. This is why we created “Spunti”: a free, coherent, agile, functional, and culturally rich course for our students, and for students and instructors everywhere. “Spunti” is an entirely original 2-semester Elementary Italian curriculum, which consists of: 1. Two online Pressbooks: “Spunti: Italiano elementare 1” and “Spunti: Italiano elementare 2.” The two Pressbooks feature grammatical explanations and original video interviews with native speakers; 2. Printable material for in-class use with a variety of activities ranging from teacher-centered exercises aimed at language practice to interactive and group activities designed to develop oral communication; 3. Self-correcting practice exercises and enrichment activities available on our institution’s LMS (Canvas), including comprehension exercises based on the interviews with native speakers. These range from exercises aimed at grammar practice to activities geared toward cultural exploration and developing cultural awareness. “Spunti” is a work in progress: we are working toward making all the exercises that currently reside in Canvas available on the Pressbooks, so that students anywhere can access them and make progress in Italian. This is the beauty of “Spunti”: a program that can replace a traditional textbook and workbook entirely for free (aside from the approximately $6 per semester that students spend in printing), which is a far cry from the $200-$300 they would have to pay if they were to purchase a traditional textbook and access to the expensive online platform that comes with it. Additionally, we intend to make all material for in-class use, as well as complete lesson plans and ideas for instructors – 40 individual lessons per semester of 50 minutes each – available on the Pressbooks. Our Pressbooks are evolving to become fully-fledged OERs. We have been working incessantly on “Spunti” since its inception by improving existing activities and adding new ones predominantly crafted around cultural artifacts including songs, commercials, articles, jokes, videos, visual art, etc. Our approach to language instruction is interactive, conversational, and fundamentally task-based. We see grammar as a means for enabling effective communication, which is why our explanations of grammar are concise, straightforward, and not overly technical. We have crafted eleven units that are meant to build the students’ skills progressively from basic introductions and asking simple questions to drawing comparisons and expressing points of view. We also made the deliberate choice to frequently spiral back to points (grammatical structures or specific vocabulary) that were explored earlier in the curriculum, in order to keep building and reinforcing the students’ communicative skills. The feedback we have received has been overwhelmingly positive: students do not miss the use of a traditional textbook and the progress they make in the course is comparable to the outcomes obtained with the best traditional textbooks.

The Italian faculty of Muhlenberg College – Daniel Leisawitz and Daniela Viale – began work on “Spunti” in 2017. After years of teaching Italian, we had become frustrated by two aspects of available textbooks. First, their exorbitant cost, which presents many students with a significant financial burden. Second, the limitations that published textbooks necessarily impose on our courses’ structure and approach to learning. This is why we created “Spunti”: a free, coherent, agile, functional, and culturally rich course for our students, and for students and instructors everywhere.

“Spunti” is an entirely original 2-semester Elementary Italian curriculum, which consists of:
1. Two online Pressbooks: “Spunti: Italiano elementare 1” and “Spunti: Italiano elementare 2.” The two Pressbooks feature grammatical explanations and original video interviews with native speakers;
2. Printable material for in-class use with a variety of activities ranging from teacher-centered exercises aimed at language practice to interactive and group activities designed to develop oral communication;
3. Self-correcting practice exercises and enrichment activities available on our institution’s LMS (Canvas), including comprehension exercises based on the interviews with native speakers. These range from exercises aimed at grammar practice to activities geared toward cultural exploration and developing cultural awareness.

“Spunti” is a work in progress: we are working toward making all the exercises that currently reside in Canvas available on the Pressbooks, so that students anywhere can access them and make progress in Italian. This is the beauty of “Spunti”: a program that can replace a traditional textbook and workbook entirely for free (aside from the approximately $6 per semester that students spend in printing), which is a far cry from the $200-$300 they would have to pay if they were to purchase a traditional textbook and access to the expensive online platform that comes with it. Additionally, we intend to make all material for in-class use, as well as complete lesson plans and ideas for instructors – 40 individual lessons per semester of 50 minutes each – available on the Pressbooks. Our Pressbooks are evolving to become fully-fledged OERs.

We have been working incessantly on “Spunti” since its inception by improving existing activities and adding new ones predominantly crafted around cultural artifacts including songs, commercials, articles, jokes, videos, visual art, etc. Our approach to language instruction is interactive, conversational, and fundamentally task-based. We see grammar as a means for enabling effective communication, which is why our explanations of grammar are concise, straightforward, and not overly technical. We have crafted eleven units that are meant to build the students’ skills progressively from basic introductions and asking simple questions to drawing comparisons and expressing points of view. We also made the deliberate choice to frequently spiral back to points (grammatical structures or specific vocabulary) that were explored earlier in the curriculum, in order to keep building and reinforcing the students’ communicative skills.

The feedback we have received has been overwhelmingly positive: students do not miss the use of a traditional textbook and the progress they make in the course is comparable to the outcomes obtained with the best traditional textbooks.