Associate Professors of Instruction Melissa D Murphy and Sarah Jey Whitehead have announced the completion of their Open Educational Resource (OER) Así me expreso: Discovering Your Spanish Proficiency. Funded in part through a 2024 Open Education Fellowship from the University of Texas Libraries, the project is a cost-free Spanish language learning textbook created for intermediate students.
Murphy and Whitehead designed Así me expreso to help learners build communicative competence through independent grammar and vocabulary activities so that class time can focus on interaction with peers and the instructors. As an OER, it is freely available for any instructor to adopt, adapt and share.
“OERs that let educators adapt materials permit an educator-educator connection without the middleman of a textbook company,” said Whitehead. “There is no strategizing about what single product will be most appealing to the largest number of people in order to sell the most copies.”
“Because OERs like Así me expreso can be adopted or adapted,” added Murphy, “other educators can similarly customize materials for their own courses without needing to ‘reinvent the wheel.’”
UT Libraries annually awards Open Education Fellowships to assist faculty members in adopting or creating OER for use in their coursework. Participants in the fellowship commit to fully flipping their course from requiring paid materials to exclusively utilizing OER, thus rendering their course cost-free for students. In addition, fellows share their experiences by participating in Libraries and campus events, presenting at conferences, and serving as advisors to future Fellows cohorts.
“The fellowship from UT Libraries helped us move forward with a large curriculum development project that we had been considering for some time,” said Murphy. “Having structured deadlines, along with support and guidance on copyright issues, proved especially valuable throughout the process.”
Since its inaugural year in 2021, Open Education Fellowship projects have directly saved students an estimated $216,785. Applications for the next cohort of fellows will open in October.