A Framework for Academic Volunteers International: Dec 5-16, 2011

Thanks, Val, this is relevant to the post I made earlier about non-English speaking students which I've also posted there. Will repost here - a bit on the long side but I'm trying to propose something a bit more progressive for Englilsh for Academic Purposes (EAP) for the OERu so we can lead in this area.

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Yes, it would be good to offer EAP support in the form of a paper assessment as there is a big writing focus in academic work but support will also be needed with the other skills e.g. listening to lectures, participating in academic seminars/presentations and effective reading strategies to build up academic vocabulary and awareness of genre and writing techniques in the particular content area the student is studying.

The other area of proficiency is related to understanding the expectations of the awarding academy, so to follow on from Valerie Peachy's comment in 'clarify the roles of AVIs', clear criteria about communicating effectively in academic English will also be needed. I think this can be inclusive of both native English speakers and non-native English speakers as English speakers don't necessarily learn this stuff either.

My experience tells me that writing for an academic context albeit a foreign academic context is a complex task due to the different academic conventions of specific subject domains. Yes, there is a lot of guidance content on the web for e.g. APA but this will only mislead those students for whom it is not relevant e.g. those studying for the hard sciences. This is a common problem with EAP f2f teaching whereby a lot of the teachers who come from a social sciences or humanities background trasfer their subject knowledge to students due to ignorance of and not working closely enough with subject matter experts in the fields that their students will actually be studying in. For the OERu I would recommend that subject specialist AVIs work with language support volunteers and OERu learners using open tools for analysing/mining text for e.g. specific academic vocabulary, writing and referencing output styles and looking at specific discourse types in different subject lectures etc. Because of my background in corpus linguistics and OER I can build OER for EAP using open corpora from Google and Wikipedia collections which OSS developers have been busily building to get around the problem of proprietary tools and copyrighted language corpora. It would be great if we could build EAP pedagogy around open access publications and creative commons lectures in the different subject areas. Being able to hack into an OA text still needs rights clearance as there is a difference between gratis (able to access and read) and libre (able to rework into an OER) OA so more work is needed in this area. This is a unique opportunity for OERu to do EAP better than the conventional f2f models with the use of OSS technologies for language learning and this is what motivates me and my colleagues in particular.

Most non-English speaking international students are led to believe that a certain score in IELTS (International English Language Testing System) or TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) is sufficient to succeed on a degree programme at an English-medium university, however the assessment types are vastly different from the stock 250 word essays you are required to write in one of these exams. People pay a lot of money to take these exams also so once again I'm not convinced that this benchmark in English proficiency would be the best way forward for an OERu learner/student. This is something worth thinking about for the 2012 prototype and the types of students that will be recruited if we want to ensure that these first 100 students are representative of the types of learners who will want to benefit from OERu in future. In most cases, EAP courses are bridging courses leading to a degree or supporting those non-English speaking students who are already on a degree and in the later case they are voluntary. At the Open University in the UK, all EAP components are optional and there is diagnostic work involved in determining what the learners' needs are for doing well on their destination programmes.

Anyway, I hope this gives you a clearer idea of what I'm proposing for OER for EAP with the OERu.

All the best,

Alannah

Valerie Peachey wrote,

Just another thought re: types of support learners may need: explaining the expectations in writing academic papers, using APA or other styles;

That would be a great resource and could feed into the EPA course! Anyone interested in starting to assemble an OER online tutorial on referecning styles?

Thanks Val,

I can see what you have suggested fitting well under the – learner support aspect of the Generalist category.

Vasi

Very good suggestion Kathleen,

I’ll start a separate discussion thread – how do you think I should name it?

e.g. Do you know of..?

so people can post useful projects, organizations, frameworks, research that they have come across that may be useful to our AVI discussion.

Vasi

Betty Hurley-Dasgupta wrote,

I think introduces a slightly different category. It's under "specialists," I guess, but it would be volunteers working with learners in teams on a common project, where the volunteers benefit from the exchange and the learners get an opportunity to demonstrate their knoweldge as part of the credentialling process. Maybe the category is "team mentoring?"

I think to some extent we are alreadly modelling this approach for the design and implementation of the OERu, for example:

• There is a group of volunteers and interested persons assisting with the design of AVI (This SCoPE seminar is a good example of this sub-activity.)  
• There is a group working on the overall master project plan for the OERu 
• There is an OERu evaluation project. 
• Research projects like the TOUCANs research project (see
  ) and our research project exploring existing assessment and credentialling practices. 
• A project to select the initial courses for the OERU 2012 prototypes. 

Prospective volunteers can self-select according to interests and experience. In time the number of projects / activities required for each of the intiatives for the logic model will increase, They are coordinated on the planning portal for the OERu.  We have established a number of communication channels and protocols for volunteers.

As the OERu project matures we will be able to implement a team mentoring category to assist with the various planning components leading to the implementation of the OERu. 

Onwards and forwards!

Have added to the Generalist category rather than specialist as it could apply to any area of study (in my opinion correct me if interpreting it incorrectly) – facilitating online groups and group work.

 Thanks Val and Nick