About these Modules
These modules are a resource for language educators who are interested in using and creating Open Educational Resources (OER). The content was developed over time through working with educators on many different OER projects, including open textbooks, video-based learning materials, podcasts, online language courses, and more. The modules describe the practices COERLL currently recommends to language educators who are developing OER, and will be updated as new techniques and methods emerge.
About COERLL
The Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning (COERLL) is one of 16 National Foreign Language Resource Centers (LRC's) funded by the US Department of Education. The overall mission of these federally-funded centers is to improve the teaching and learning of foreign languages by producing resources (materials and best practices) that can be profitably employed in a variety of settings.
Housed at The University of Texas at Austin, COERLL's specific mission is to produce and disseminate Open Educational Resources (OER) for the Internet public (e.g., online language courses, reference grammars, assessment tools, corpora, etc.). The term OER refers to any educational material offered freely for anyone to use, typically involving some permission to re-mix, improve, and redistribute. Thus, COERLL seeks to promote a culture of collaboration that lies at the heart of the Open Education movement.
More information about COERLL and its projects can be found on COERLL's website Links to an external site..
Acknowledgements 👏
COERLL would like to thank Anita Young (World of Learning at Appalachia Intermediate Unit 8), Jonathan Perkins (Director, Open Language Resource Center, University of Kansas), Kate Paesani (Director, Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, University of Minnesota), and Vianey Cabrera (University of Southern California) for reviewing these modules and offering feedback.
Go to the next page to read our definition of Open Educational Resources (OER).