Investigating an Open Methodology for Designing Domain-specific Language Collections (original) (raw)
Related papers
FLAX: Flexible and open corpus-based language collections development
This case study has been written as an introductory guide for teachers who are interested in learning what Open Educational Resource (OER) options and practices (OEP) are available to them for developing and distributing online domain-specific language materials for uses in academic and professional settings. We present innovative work in open corpus-based language collections building with the open-source multilingual FLAX language project as a running example of open materials development practices for language teaching and learning. We present language-learning contexts from across formal and informal language learning, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and language translation studies. We are particularly concerned with closing the gap in language teacher training where competencies in materials development are still dominated by print-based proprietary course book publications, which in many cases do not reflect salient findings from the research into domain-specific language. We are also concerned with the growing gap in language teaching practitioner competencies for understanding important issues of copyright and licensing that are changing rapidly in the context of digital and web literacy developments. These key issues are being largely ignored in the informal language teaching practitioner discussions, both by experienced and new language tutors, and in the formal research into teaching and materials development practices.
Open Educational Resources in Language Teaching and Learning
The following case studies summarise the development and findings of two projects that have sought to harness openness for the benefit of teachers and learners in the area of language teaching in higher education. Both projects sought to introduce Open Educational Resources (OER) and Practices (OEP) by focusing on supporting and guiding teachers as they develop the necessary literacies and practices to capitalise on the affordances of new open tools and technologies. The first case study on the LORO project focuses on the development of an open repository to make available language teaching OER and the subsequent engagement activities designed to embed its use at the Department of Languages, at the UK Open University. The impact of this project is measured through usage surveys, web analytics and qualitative data obtained through focus groups and narrative frames. These provide some evidence that LORO has had an impact on the skills and professional development of language teachers by facilitating exposure to different pedagogical approaches and by encouraging innovation and reflection on practice. This project joins other initiatives in the area of language teaching, such as Humbox, Community Café, Onstream and Favor, with their focus on developing teachers’ engagement with OER and OEP while strengthening communities to facilitate knowledge creation and sharing. The second case study from the TOETOE project reports on issues related to using language corpora in light of new developments with open technologies and open practices. Corpus-based resources have been around since Tim Johns coined the term ‘data-driven learning’ (Johns, 1994) to refer to language learners engaging with large corpora to derive understanding of real-world language use in context. However, most language teachers have not yet started to use these kinds of resources in their own teaching and in the development of their own teaching and learning materials. This case study will point to open corpus-based projects such as FLAX, the Lextutor, WordandPhrase and AntConc, and the open practices they employ as a means of remedying the current deficit in training with corpus-based resources in mainstream language teaching, learning, training and materials development practices. An OER cascade for training English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers and students at Durham University English Language Centre in the use of open corpus-based tools and resources was carried out to determine user perceptions of the design of these resources for use in EAP teaching and learning. Reflections from developing learning support OER for these training sessions as well as observations from the workshops on open corpus-based resources for EAP will be presented, along with insights from student surveys and teacher interviews.
A New Paradigm for Open Data-Driven Language Learning Systems Design in Higher Education
PhD Thesis, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, 2018
A basic premise underpinning the new research paradigm presented in this thesis and demonstrated by the FLAX project (Flexible Language Acquisition flax.nzdl.org), is that open data-driven language learning systems design as an approach is learner-centric and operates with the interface to the learner. Whether the learner is operating fully online in non-formal or informal learning mode or in a blended modality that is based both within and beyond the formal language classroom, this approach requires that the tools and interfaces, and indeed the corpora, be openly accessible and remixable for development or adaptation to meet this specific learner requirement. This method is different from existing data-driven learning (DDL) approaches which assume specialised knowledge or experience with DDL tools, interfaces and strategies, operating on mostly inaccessible corpora in terms of cost or design, or alternatively assuming training to, hopefully, compensate for this lack of knowledge and experience. From a research and development (R&D) standpoint, the paradigm presented here also operates with the interface to knowledge organisations (universities, libraries, archives) and researchers who are engaging with open educational practices to push at the parameters of open policy for the non-commercial reuse and remix of authentic research and pedagogic content that is increasingly abundant in digital open access format for text and data-mining (TDM) purposes. This open access content is highly relevant to learning features of specialist varieties of English from across the academy but is otherwise off limits for development into proprietary learning materials by the commercial education publishing industry. Indeed, the open corpus development work presented in this thesis would not have been possible had it not been for the campaigners for copyright reform, the Internet activists, the open policy makers, the open-source software developers, and the advocates for open access, open data and open education that have made these resources available for reuse and remix. This paradigm leads down several paths, including research into understanding how users actually perceive, appropriate and use the approach based on the open tools and resources provided. This inquiry informs their design and development, in an R&D process that is presented here through the methodological lens of design-based research and design ethnography. This approach will be fundamentally different than if we assume the user is actually a DDL or linguistics expert or that such an expert will be the learner's interface to the system, by preparing output for the learner to experience and learn from. This approach will also be necessarily different than if we assume the user is always a formally registered student at a university with access to English for Academic Purposes (EAP) support that may or may not offer DDL or linguistics expertise for learning the language features of specific discourse communities from across the academy. The assumption behind this new paradigm that the right tools and resources can allow the end-learner to drive the processes autonomously is fundamentally revolutionary. This premise goes to the original contribution to knowledge of this thesis, but also challenges and directs researchers and practitioners in the field to consider and take up this new direction with open data-driven language learning systems design for applications that can be scaled in higher education to meet the increasing numbers of learners who are coming online. The focus on domain-specific terminology learning support via data-driven approaches is of course also decidedly different from the current EAP paradigm which in mainstream practice has been steadily evolving away from its roots in English for Specific Purposes (ESP), domain specificity and DDL processes towards the generic skills and knowledge programs currently in vogue that are arguably being steered by generic EAP course book publications from the commercial education publishing industry. Thus, this is also a new paradigm based on DDL approaches, driving domain-specific terminology learning support for EAP across formal, non-formal and informal learning modalities in higher education. It will transform, potentially, the focus of DDL systems design developments in language support and learning in general toward the non-specialist end-learner, but also hopefully help re-establish the centrality of language specificity to the field of EAP. The new paradigm is necessarily rooted in greater inter- or multi-disciplinarity. Given the goal of facilitating, in particular, the increasing number of learners who are coming online, and users of large-scale MOOC platforms who are trying to function in domain-specific subject areas that are invariably offered in the English language, the approach requires collaboration and cooperation among platform providers, subject academics and instructors, educational technologists, software developers, educational researchers, EAP practitioners, linguists with expertise in corpus-based and DDL approaches, and policy makers in knowledge organisations (libraries, universities, archives). This doctoral thesis presents three studies in collaboration with the open source FLAX project. This research makes an original contribution to the fields of language education and educational technology by mobilising knowledge from computer science, corpus linguistics and open education, and proposes a new paradigm for open data-driven language learning systems design in higher education. Furthermore, the research presented in this thesis uncovers and engages with an infrastructure of open educational practices (OEP) that push at the parameters of policy for the reuse of open access research and pedagogic content in the design, development, distribution, adoption and evaluation of data-driven language learning systems.
Openness in English for Academic Purposes
2013
Commissioned by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) in the United Kingdom, this case study has been written as an introductory guide for teachers and researchers working with international and home students for whom it would be beneficial to develop competencies with academic English as it is used across the different disciplines. In particular, as per the HEA directives handed down in commissioning this case study, Open Educational Resources (OER) and teaching quality are the theme to be addressed in this report with respects to the open web-based tools, resources and practices in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) that will be introduced here. A range of open corpus-based tools, resources and techniques will be demonstrated and discussed in section four, looking at different language projects from around the world that provide free access to valuable English language resources which are relevant for use both within and beyond traditional higher education. Because these tools and resources are openly available they can be used and shared by learners and teachers across a variety of contexts. For example, in language schools and in university language support centres, in open and distance education, and in independent or informal learning. They range from tools and resources that can provide diagnostic help for improving vocabulary, reading and writing to resources that can assist with identifying, retrieving, storing and managing useful words and phrases as they occur across a variety of authentic academic and general English language contexts. Findings and resources will also be shared in section three, based on an OER cascade study that was carried out with EAP teachers and students at Durham University English Language Centre (DUELC). As part of the TOETOE project (ˈtɔɪtɔɪ: Technology for Open English – Toying with Open E-resources), three corpus-based projects - FLAX, the Lextutor, and AntConc - were trialed for their efficacy in mainstream EAP teaching and learning practice. A fourth corpus-based project, WordandPhrase, was introduced at one of the project dissemination events and will also be introduced here in this case study. None of the participants in the study had received any prior training with corpus-based resources for Data-Driven Learning (DDL) in language education. Initial findings from this study at Durham University on the design and usability of corpus-based resources have informed on-going research and development work with the TOETOE project in collaboration with the open-source FLAX project at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.
2013
This case study has been assembled into an ethnographic account (LeCompte & Schensul 1999:17; Clifford 1990:51-52) to stop the clock as it were and to reorder the recent past that has been observed and jotted down; to systematize, contextualize and assemble the activity of the TOETOE International project (tɔɪtɔɪ: Technology for Open English – Toying with Open E-resources) with the University of Oxford across seven different countries over a period of four months. It is part narrative and part design dialectic, drawing on stories and evaluations made by international stakeholders concerning the re-use of Oxford content: Oxford-managed corpora (large text and audio-visual resource collections) and Oxford-created open educational resources (OER). Moreover, these evaluation narratives continue to inform the design of open-source digital library software for developing flexible open English language learning and teaching collections with the FLAX project (Flexible Language Acquisition flax.nzdl.org) at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. Thick descriptions (Geertz, 1973) are presented from networked meetings, workshops, conference presentations and interviews with OER and English Language Teaching (ELT) professionals for arriving at better understandings of the social acts and symbols connected with the international open education movement. As part of the reflexive writing process for this case study, and as both researcher and project manager, I have re-storied the stories of participating individuals and institutions, placing them in chronological sequence and providing causal links among ideas. Themes arising from the stories in this project are introduced here as section headers, containing new metaphors for linking unfamiliar phenomena in each country represented with familiar concepts for understanding OER in the international context. Topics introduced by this case study include: emancipatory English, Do-It-Yourself (DIY) open English language collections building, working OER into traditional ELT publications, and long-range planning for embedding OER and open educational practices (OEP) within a sustainable English language education ecology.
Openness in English Language Teaching
Proceedings of Cambridge 2012: Innovation and Impact - Openly Collaborating to Enhance Education., 2012
This paper will introduce different yet complementary empirical studies as part of the TOETOE (Technology for Open English – Toying with Open E-resources) project, managed by Alannah Fitzgerald, with SCORE and Durham University’s English Language Centre (DUELC). Teaching participants involved in an initial OER cascade project carried out at DUELC, Jeff Davidson, Terri Edwards, Clare Carr and Lesley Kendall, all experienced practitioners in English for Academic Purposes (EAP), will present their first-hand experiences of engaging with open practices for the first time with the design, development and delivery of innovative OER for EAP courses. OER in open file format were developed for teacher and learner training across two different EAP student cohorts (intermediate and proficient users of English) for enhancing student writing and vocabulary acquisition in the students’ specific subject domains. Both students and teachers made impactful changes in their language learning and teaching practice by utilizing a range of open content and open tools. A variety of innovative OER were employed in the study, including: open corpora derived from Google n-gram and Wikipedia collections as part of the FLAX (Flexible Language Acquisition Project) based at the University of Waikato in New Zealand http://flax.nzdl.org/greenstone3/flax; open source tools for text analysis found in FLAX and in the Compleat Lexical Tutor http://www.lextutor.ca/ centred at the Université du Québec à Montréal with the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance at Concordia University in Canada, and; open source software for building your own corpora, AntConc, established at Waseda University in Japan http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html.