Professor Emily Kuder, Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies, has been a long-time advocate and supporter of using open educational resources in her courses at Connecticut College. In 2019, she adopted and revised material for SPA 202: Spanish for the Professions. Her goals were to avoid expensive textbook costs and innovate instruction. “I hope the implementation of OER in my course will provide a richness of materials and expose the students to bilingualism in legal and medical fields from a variety of perspectives. I also believe that OER will facilitate a more interactive, hands-on environment, particularly with the use of scripted roleplays.”
The work was created using Pressbooks, a platform for writing and publishing open materials and making course content with students. The robust set of tools offered through Pressbooks allows for basic text editing as well as adding multimedia elements, a book cover and interactive objects. Faculty can choose a Creative Commons license for their works, allowing for flexibility in copyright options.
On February 9, 2024, Professor Kuder will present “Building Undergraduate Language Courses Around Open Educational Resources” at the AAC&U 2024 Forum on Digital Innovation.
This presentation showcases course materials created for undergraduate Spanish language, Spanish phonetics and phonology, and Spanish sociolinguistics courses that integrate open content and open pedagogy into activities, assignments, and assessments. Course design and administration considerations as well as the benefits and disadvantages of OER are discussed based on instructor and student feedback.
For more information about Pressbooks or OER grants please email teachtech@conncoll.edu.
