The Centre for Study of Foreign Languages (CSFL), School of Humanities, University of Hyderabad (UoH) for the first in India has conducted 2 Day National Seminar cum Workshop on “Development and Implementation of OERs in foreign languages in Indian Context” during 30-31 March, 2017.
The aim of the workshop was to evaluate and design Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Online Courses (OCs) for the Indian learners. This is very much required as the Govt. of India under Digital India program is actively promoting e-education through SWAYAM program. The challenge for developing OERs and OCs lies in the fact that the Learners in India are multilingual and multicultural.
The workshop was attended by the scholars in foreign languages from different parts of the country. Welcoming the participants, Prof. J Prabhakar Rao, Head, CSFL, highlighted the paradigm shift from traditional mode of pedagogy to e-pedagogy. Prof. Rajiv Saxena, Chairperson, The Centre of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian & Latin American Studies (CSPILAS) Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi in his Keynote address on “A paradigm shift in pedagogy: education through ICT” mentioned about developing OERs in foreign languages especially in Spanish under e-pathsala program. During the 2 Day workshop, scholars in different foreign languages such as German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Russian presented papers on evaluating existing OERs in different foreign languages, OERs and MOOCs etc. Two special lectures were also organized on licensing and copyright and OERs in 21st century.
The workshop has come up with a common format for developing OERs and OCs for beginners in foreign languages. A 20 hr module in the above mentioned foreign languages were also developed. The workshop has finally made the following recommendations:
1. To develop a common format of modules for developing OERs and OCs in foreign languages at different levels.
2. To have a collaborative approach for designing OERs in Indian context.
3. To formulate guidelines for developing MOOCs in foreign languages.