Helene Pulker | The Open University (original) (raw)

Papers by Helene Pulker

Languages at work, competent multilinguals and the pedagogical challenges of COVID-19

The School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the Open University (OU) radically re-designed... more The School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the Open University (OU) radically re-designed its modern languages curriculum in 2014, launching its first suite of new modules in 2017. The institution as a whole has since also developed a new employability framework. Our paper describes the principles underpinning the design of the new curriculum, demonstrates how it is being implemented, and focuses on an initiative that involved our Associate Lecturers (ALs) in defining a 'well-rounded graduate' and reflecting on plurilingualism and their roles as language teachers in a distance-teaching institution. Presenting our Teaching Excellence project, its processes, and findings in this paper will allow colleagues who teach modern languages to replicate or adapt parts of our approach in their own settings, exemplifying to the wider world how language skills can become an inherent element of the well-rounded graduate in the 21st century.

One significant development that has recently come to disrupt teaching practices is the emergence... more One significant development that has recently come to disrupt teaching practices is the emergence of Open Educational Resources (OER). In the last 15-20 years, researchers have mainly focused on the creation, reuse and sharing of OER. However, little attention has been paid to what users do with the resources in their classroom and to date, there is scant evidence of OER reuse impacting on teaching practices. This study examines the process that a group of online synchronous language teachers undergo while adapting and repurposing digital resources. The research participants are part-time language teachers, with a range of experiences and cultural backgrounds, who teach online across a range of languages and levels at the Open University, a distance learning Higher Education institution in the UK. Data were collected and analysed within a constructivist grounded theory methodology. The experience of teachers' reuse of OER was explored via seventeen semi-structured interviews. Co...

About the story This picture book is for young children and adults a... more About the story This picture book is for young children and adults alike. It can be read and explored together. The story is about three friends who went on an adventure down the river to build a playground. On their way they meet other animals who seem to put obstacles in their way. Read the story to discover what happens next. About the project The story was written and illustrated by a group of individuals from different parts of the world who worked together online over 6 months. They also had the help of many other educators from around the world who generously contributed their ideas and the characters of the story also originate from their contributions. All committed to creating a socially just world where education is available to all. Values such as sharing, collaborating and helping others are central to this mission of what is called open education and will help towards achieving the UN's Global Sustainable Development Goal 4, "Quality Education for All" https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4 Some may recognise other stories and fairytales in this story. The illustrations are a remix of details of exhibits from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, available under CC0 and new illustrations This project was enabled and supported by a Global OER Graduate Network (GOGN) Fellowship in 2020. We are grateful to the wider open education community and the GOGN team for their valuable support and critical feedback during the making of this book. Together by the GOGN picture book team is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License This license enables you to copy, redistribute this book in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon for non-commercial purposes.All you need to do is add the attribution and link back to the original work.

Distances et médiations des savoirs, 2020

Le role des ressources educatives libres (REL) dans l’avenir de la formation en ligne et a distan... more Le role des ressources educatives libres (REL) dans l’avenir de la formation en ligne et a distance est un sujet de recherche depuis deja quelque temps. Dans les 15-20 dernieres annees, la recherche scientifique a porte son attention sur la conception, la reutilisation et le partage des REL sans se preoccuper pour autant des pratiques liees aux REL. A ce jour, il est difficile d’avancer precisement si l’utilisation des REL a un effet quelconque sur les pratiques d’enseignement, notamment dans le contexte de la formation a distance. Cet article presente les resultats d’une etude doctorale qui visait a examiner les activites poursuivies par des enseignants de langues etrangeres en ligne et a distance lors de l’adaptation de REL specifiquement concues pour l’enseignement des langues etrangeres en ligne. Les donnees ont ete recoltees et analysees suivant la methode constructiviste de la theorie ancree par le biais de 17 entretiens en ligne. Selon cette methode, les cinq categories conceptuelles qui ont emerge de l’analyse ne reposent sur aucun cadre theorique prealable. L’article presente le processus de reutilisation en cinq temps qui est ressorti de l’analyse des donnees, avec une attention particuliere a la deuxieme et a la quatrieme etape du processus, a savoir la reappropriation et l’auto-apprentissage. Cet article met l’accent sur l’importance de la reutilisation des REL dans le contexte de l’apprentissage des langues etrangeres en ligne et a distance et souleve la question de savoir si la reappropriation peut mener a des changements dans les pratiques d’enseignement en ligne.

Distances et médiations des savoirs, 2020

Dr. Catherine Cronin is Strategic Education Developer at Ireland’s National Forum for the Enhance... more Dr. Catherine Cronin is Strategic Education Developer at Ireland’s National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education where her collaborative work across the sector supports digital and open education including development of digital capabilities, use of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP), and development of enabling policies for digital and open teaching and learning. Catherine’s 2018 PhD explored the benefits, risks and tension...

Distance Education, 2020

Open educational practices (OEP) as a research field is relatively new. One aspect that has recei... more Open educational practices (OEP) as a research field is relatively new. One aspect that has received limited attention is the impact of using open educational resources (OER) on the development of OEP. This article, based on a doctoral study (Pulker, 2019), considers teachers' activities when reusing and adapting OER, with a view to providing evidence of reuse and understanding whether these activities influence teaching practices. A qualitative study following a constructivist grounded theory methodology was undertaken with 17 part-time online language teachers via semi-structured interviews. The article presents the five-step model of reuse that emerged from the data analysis. We suggest that OER reuse has a positive impact, even though teachers' practices might not be open as defined up until now. A graphic representation depicts the process that teachers engage with when using and adapting OER. The research brings new understanding of teachers' experiences of reuse, showing that the principal motivation is enhancing students' learning.

Critical CALL – Proceedings of the 2015 EUROCALL Conference, Padova, Italy, Dec 2, 2015

Much research has been done on blended learning and the design of tasks most appropriate for onli... more Much research has been done on blended learning and the design of tasks most appropriate for online environments and computer-mediated communication. Increasingly, language teachers and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) practitioners recognise the different nature of communications in online settings and in face-to-face settings; teachers do not simply attempt to replicate face-toface interactions in online synchronous tutorials, but combine their pedagogical expertise with the affordances of the computer-mediated system they use to produce the conditions for effective language learning. However, there is less evidence that the role and importance of the interplay between pedagogy and technology in online language teaching has been taken into consideration in the learning design of blended courses, where the emphasis is increasingly on the online elements. There is also scant evidence on students' perceptions of the online components in blended language courses. This paper reflects upon the experience of the delivery of a beginners' language course using blended learning in an open and distance learning context.

The use of digital resources to support language teaching and learning in higher education has be... more The use of digital resources to support language teaching and learning in higher education has become standard practice in recent years. A particular type of digital resources are Open Educational Resources (OERs), defined as: '…teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property licence that permits their free use or re-purposing by others.' (Atkins, et al., 2007). While the creation and uploading of OERs has been widely researched, there is little evidence about OERs' evaluation and re-use. This study investigates the criteria, applied by the language teachers, while evaluating OERs. It considers the type of changes most commonly made to the original resources and identifies the reasons for the changes made. The research is a case study based on four interviews with teachers of beginners French in a distance learning course. The initial findings indicate that teachers look for easily accessible and downloadable materials that are from a reliable source. They value good quality, interactive and student-centred materials. The findings also show that, even when resources meet all the criteria teachers are looking for, they will adapt the resources not only to fit their own teaching styles, but their approach and beliefs about online teaching. This study will be of relevance to course developers and language teachers who are interested in developing OERs that can cater for a range of objectives as well as a variety of teaching and learning styles.

20 Years of EUROCALL: Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future, 2013

The use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) to support language teaching and learning in higher ... more The use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) to support language teaching and learning in higher education has become standard practice in recent years. While OER initiatives have given considerable attention to teacher's engagement as well as the sharing of culture and the creation and uploading of OERs, there is little evidence about specific reuse by teachers in the classroom. This paper builds on a previous study conducted in December 2012 and presents further reflection on the reuse of OERs for teaching French beginners online. The initial enquiry was a case study based on interviews with four teachers of an online beginners' French course at a distance education institution, the Open University, UK. The results of the initial study show that even when resources meet all the criteria teachers are looking for, material adaptation is still occurring. Teachers adapt the resources to fit their own teaching styles and gain ownership of the materials, but above all, materials are adapted according to teachers' own beliefs about online teaching. This paper revisits the types of changes made to original resources and provides further observation about the changes, suggesting that whatever the modification made to the original resource is, the pedagogical intent will always be changed. This paper is of relevance to language teaching practitioners as well as course developers who are interested in reuse of language teaching materials for online language teaching.

Médiations et médiatisations, 2021

Cette introduction à la rubrique « Témoignages et entretiens » propose une lecture transversale d... more Cette introduction à la rubrique « Témoignages et entretiens » propose une lecture transversale des cinq entretiens qui la composent et présentent des institutions renommées dédiées à la formation à distance. Elle met en évidence le fait que ces institutions, malgré leurs différences, possèdent des points communs qui permettent de souligner des éléments essentiels dans l’histoire et l’actualité de la formation à distance. Trois de ces éléments sont ici abordés : la réponse à des besoins éducatifs et socioéconomiques, l’importance des évolutions technopédagogiques et les interrogations sur l’avenir d’institutions spécialisées face à la multiplication des acteurs et au large recours à la distance en période de crise sanitaire.

Médiations et médiatisations, 2021

In her interview, Nancy Parker outlines the origins of Athabasca University and its purpose. She ... more In her interview, Nancy Parker outlines the origins of Athabasca University and its purpose. She describes the internal and external pressures the university has had to face over the years to become a fully online institution. Athabasca University's unique features are portrayed throughout the interview, to include serving rural and adult learners, emphasizing learning rather than teaching, using ongoing pedagogical research in instructional design to develop online content, committing to equality in education for adult learners through an open and rolling admission process, a high level of web-enabled self-service tools and call centres, and empowering students to create learning communities beyond physical and virtual boundaries.

Médiations et médiatisations, 2021

In his interview, Professor Martin Weller explains the origins of the Open University, the UK’s p... more In his interview, Professor Martin Weller explains the origins of the Open University, the UK’s pioneer distance education university, and describes the different contexts in which the Open University has had to navigate through in the last 50 years. The interview focuses on showing how the Open University’s mission (to be ‘open to people, places, methods and ideas’) has been at the heart of the institution’s developments, and how the concept of openness has evolved throughout the changes and the challenges of the recent years.

Distances et médiations des savoirs, 2020

Numero thematique coordonne par Luc Massou (Universite de Lorraine, France), Cathia Papi (Univers... more Numero thematique coordonne par Luc Massou (Universite de Lorraine, France), Cathia Papi (Universite Teluq, Canada), Helene Pulker (Open University, Royaume-Uni) Theme de l’appel a contributions Creee lors du Forum UNESCO de 2002 sur l'impact des didacticiels libres, l’expression « ressources educatives libres » (REL) designe « des materiels d'enseignement, d'apprentissage et de recherche sur tout support, numerique ou autre, existant dans le domaine public ou publies sous une licence ouverte...

The EuroCALL Review, 2011

As the last ten years have seen the advent of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, larg... more As the last ten years have seen the advent of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, large numbers of digital content are now available for learners and teachers to use and reuse. Engaging with OER compels educators to address issues of sharing, quality, ownership, and changing professional practices. In this report, we describe the experience of setting up LORO, a repository of languages OER, especially in relation to teachers' perceptions of barriers and enablers to successful engagement with open content.

European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, 2017

The affordance of social interaction has been a part of open online repositories of teaching and ... more The affordance of social interaction has been a part of open online repositories of teaching and learning resources for nearly two decades. Repositories are built not only to collect and disseminate materials, but enable users to collaborate and review, comment on and rate the content they access. However, research indicates that (a) most users do not participate in this type of generative use, and (b) the possibility of social interaction does not necessarily signal active participation in social interaction. In recent years the positive effects of gamification and social networking elements on user engagement have come to the fore in educational settings. From this stance, a quantitative study was conducted to assess users’ acceptance of the existing game mechanics of a large national repository of educational resources, their attitudes towards the inclusion of extra features, and teachers’ motivation to share openly. Our results indicate that teachers do not see open repositories...

This paper presents the outcome of a learning analytics project undertaken in an open and distanc... more This paper presents the outcome of a learning analytics project undertaken in an open and distance learning institution and based on a French module. It will also evaluate the usability of VLE learning analytics tools for language course designers. The paper is based on the analysis of data related to the engagement of a small group of students with online tools and activities, with a particular focus on online revision activities and interactive computer-marked assignments. It also considers how the quantitative data can be related to qualitative notions such as learner behaviors regarding online formative assessment.

Languages at work, competent multilinguals and the pedagogical challenges of COVID-19

Distances et médiations des savoirs, 2020

Distance Education, 2020

Critical CALL – Proceedings of the 2015 EUROCALL Conference, Padova, Italy, Dec 2, 2015

20 Years of EUROCALL: Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future, 2013

Médiations et médiatisations, 2021

Distances et médiations des savoirs, 2020

The EuroCALL Review, 2011

European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, 2017