Case Studies of Openness in the Language Classroom

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Call for contributions

A publication is being planned of selected case studies showcasing how the principles of openness in second / foreign language teaching and learning are applied in practice. The book will be a collection of case studies providing practicalsuggestions for the incorporation of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Practices (OEP), and Open Communication principles to the language classroom and to the initial and continuing development of language teachers. This open-access e-book, aimed at practitioners in secondary and tertiary education, will be freely available for download.

 

This publication will showcase some of the projects and activities presented at "Learning through sharing: Open Resources, Open Practices, Open Communication” workshop of the EUROCALL Computer Mediated Communication and Teacher Education SIGs held at the University of Bologna on 29-30 March 2012.  

The main themes covered in the conference were:

  • theories that underpin openness as a key principle in education
  • using OER in teaching and/or course development, including reusing and re-purposing existing resources for different contexts or resource-based learning
  • integrating learner-generated content into language courses
  • developing a culture of sharing amongst the teaching community (barriers to and advantages of sharing)
  • sharing resources and/or practices in teacher education and professional development (e.g. through peer review of resources)
  • sharing resources and intellectual capital with others to raise individual or institutional profiles (e.g. through publishing resources on itunes U, contributing to a resource repository, open access publishing of research papers )
  • promoting learner communication in 'open' environments (e.g. through online gaming, virtual worlds, international discussion boards)
  • facilitating open communication in CMC - where 'sensitive' topics can be broached and diverse opinions are valued.

Colleagues are invited to submit a case study proposal (maximum 500 words) by 30 September 2012 to the co-editors of the publication, Ana Beaven (University of Bologna, Italy), Anna Comas-Quinn (Open University, UK) and Barbara Sawhill (Oberlin College, USA). Please send your papers to:

bolognasigs2012@gmail.com including the word ‘ebook’ in the subject field.

 

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