“The redesign of these courses was not meant to be temporary or limited in scope. It was meant to be adaptable, sustainable, and inclusive, and to advance the teaching and learning of less commonly taught languages, and to advocate for inclusive pedagogy under the slogan of reach all and teach all."
PressbooksOER is an online platform that hosts open-source content. Supported by MSU libraries, I published two open-source books to use as the main curriculum in teaching elementary Arabic. Special recognition goes to Regina Gong from the library and special thanks to my colleague Dr. Sadam Issa who helped in adding content to the book. The online book material is enriched with interactive learning tools utilizing self-check H5p modules to enhance students' self-study experience. This platform provided immediate feedback to support self-study mode and was freely and highly accessibly from any device and conforming to assistive technologies. This OER was used as my main tool to redesign the learning experience to be more adaptable and sustainable to accommodate the needs of diverse learners and extend beyond campus borders.
OneNote: Through the integration of Microsoft Teams and D2L, a class notebook was created for the course. Each student had access to their portion of the notebook to submit homework, writing assignments, exams, and quizzes. It was very user friendly in that it allowed students to post text, images, or audio, which synch immediately for the teacher's view. It also allowed the teacher to mark and provide feedback and revise submissions immediately on the screen. OneNote eliminated a lot of the complications of D2L drop box where we must download assignments and upload them again after grading. It was also efficient in keeping record of all students' work in one place.
Media Space: Video cloud service that allowed for efficient recording of zoom classes and producing of captioned videos for grammar lessons. It was specially adequate for the flipped nature of our class where students need to learn the new language concepts at home before coming to class to activate them.
Technology Used
- PressbooksOER
- OneNote
- Mediaspace