Department of Languages, The Open University
The Department of Languages at the Open University UK (OU) is one of the largest providers of language education to adults in the UK. Learners are from a wide variety of backgrounds, and vary in age from 18 to 88, although most are in their thirties and forties. Most study part-time, and mostly out of personal interest. The OU is committed to equal opportunities, and many of our learners study with us because of our excellent support for learners with disabilities, those living in remote or isolated areas, prisoners, and those with little prior educational experience. The OU employs part-time local language teachers (tutors), many of whom have little access to professional development opportunities beyond those provided by the OU. Many of our tutors are also language learners.
Through the project, tutors and their trainers will learn about the use of drama as a tool for language and culture learning. For the tutors, the possibility of travelling abroad and working with speakers of the languages they are studying will enable them to practise their foreign language skills in a real-life situation, as well as developing their skills of intercultural understanding. Experiencing the mobilities as language learners themselves will also help increase their awareness of their learners’ needs. Their training will have a multiplier effect when the experience is rolled out to hundreds of language learners in the UK.
The OU is also committed to the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. Open Educational Resources are freely available resources, usually published under Creative Commons licences, and are based on “the simple and powerful idea that the world's knowledge is a public good, and that technology in general and the World Wide Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use and reuse it” (Smith and Casserly, 2006). The OU is already a leader in the field of Open Educational Resources through projects such as OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/) and LORO (Languages Open Resources Online, http://loro.open.ac.uk/), a repository of Open Educational Resources for language teaching and learning. The OER approach will be one of the guiding principles of our project, and we will share our expertise with the other partners to develop a joint understanding.
The OU will coordinate the project and lead in the area of using OER to promote language and intercultural learning in a Lifelong Learning setting.
Academics: Tita Beaven, Anna Comas-Quinn and Inma Álvarez
Website: http://www.open.ac.uk/
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Through the project, tutors and their trainers will learn about the use of drama as a tool for language and culture learning. For the tutors, the possibility of travelling abroad and working with speakers of the languages they are studying will enable them to practise their foreign language skills in a real-life situation, as well as developing their skills of intercultural understanding. Experiencing the mobilities as language learners themselves will also help increase their awareness of their learners’ needs. Their training will have a multiplier effect when the experience is rolled out to hundreds of language learners in the UK.
The OU is also committed to the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. Open Educational Resources are freely available resources, usually published under Creative Commons licences, and are based on “the simple and powerful idea that the world's knowledge is a public good, and that technology in general and the World Wide Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use and reuse it” (Smith and Casserly, 2006). The OU is already a leader in the field of Open Educational Resources through projects such as OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/) and LORO (Languages Open Resources Online, http://loro.open.ac.uk/), a repository of Open Educational Resources for language teaching and learning. The OER approach will be one of the guiding principles of our project, and we will share our expertise with the other partners to develop a joint understanding.
The OU will coordinate the project and lead in the area of using OER to promote language and intercultural learning in a Lifelong Learning setting.
Academics: Tita Beaven, Anna Comas-Quinn and Inma Álvarez
Website: http://www.open.ac.uk/
Back to previous page