A team of faculty and staff from the School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics is advancing an idea to improve e-textbooks in linguistics through a new program in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.
The group is one of several to receive funding for a variety of initiatives meant to enhance student experiences.
The college issued a call for LAS Student Success Initiative proposals earlier this year and received a number of applications. Funding was granted for ideas that led to innovative and inclusive curricula and/or pedagogy, took advantage of new technologies and lessons from the pandemic to enhance ways of learning, created and supported diverse student experiences, increased access and opportunities for historically underserved students, and addressed the recruitment and retention of first-generation students and historically underrepresented ethnic and racial minority students.
“We learned a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic about our strengths, shortcomings, and areas of potential, and we want to emerge from this trying time with new ideas and energy,” said Venetria K. Patton, Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of LAS. “These projects put forth innovative and resourceful solutions to some of our deepest and most complicated problems. I’m pleased and eager to see them implemented.”
Each project is receiving $25,000 to $100,000 in funding for one year. The LAS Student Success Initiative fulfills objectives and recommendations outlined by the 2021-2025 LAS Strategic Plan, the LAS Post-Pandemic Task Force, and the LAS Life and Career Design Initiative.
One of those projects is coming from the Department of Linguistics.
Building H5P interactive books: engaging, free, and accessible text for undergraduate English as a second language students
Proposal team: Randall Sadler, Susan Faivre, Jin Pennell, John Kotnarowski, Amber Dunse, and Leyla Cooper, Department of Linguistics
Description: “To deliver a more accessible, inclusive, and engaging learning experience, we propose redesigning and improving our undergraduate e‐textbook, Academic Writing for English Language Learners (AWELL), using an HTML5 Package (H5P), an open‐source authoring tool for creating rich, interactive multimedia contents… Our project will involve redesigning and improving our textbook, AWELL, with the HTML5 Package (H5P) that can be hosted in Moodle, Canvas, or Blackboard. Specifically, we will use the H5P interactive book, which allows our students to learn multimedia contents in a gamified format. This book will have several features that benefit our students and instructors as well as the authors and editors.”
To read the rest of the project descriptions—edited versions from the proposals—click here.
Dave Evensen
Editor's note: This story first appeared on the College of LAS website.