Presentation of master thesis, Graz University of Technology April 2016

1. Practical Usage of
OER Material
in the EFL Classroom
Maria Haas

2. Research Question

3. What would EFL lessons look like if
exclusively OER material rather than
traditional school books would be used?

4. Open Educational
Resources(OER)
2001 MIT OpenCourseWare
2002 UNESCO Forum for Higher Education in
Developing Countries
UNESCO website:
”teaching, learning or research materials that are in
the public domain or that can be used under an
intellectual property license that allows re-use or
adaptation (e.g Creative Commons)."

5. Creative Commons (CC)
non profit organisation
founded in 2001
allow users to release material under a license
that is not “all rights reserved”

6. Creative Commons (CC)
4 modules
BY
NC
ND
SA
Source: Creative Commons website

7. Reusing CC material
TASL (title, author, source, license)
for this study: source removed from worksheets
cosmetic purposes
offline mode

8. Situation in Austria
use copyrighted material in class
not allowed to copy teaching material
difference to Germany
up to 10% of a school book can be copied

9. Prior to Study
project seminar (EFL teaching)
preliminary study (February)

10. Study

11. Study
two weeks
30 students
second year of middle school (A1)
6 lessons (+ 30 minute feedback session)

12. Evaluation Plan
preparation time (time sheet)
feedback (from students and teachers)
target group (material for A1)

13. Results

14. Preparation
~39 hours
most time spent finding material (20 hours)
problems with CC search engine
problems with SA module

15. Feedback
overwhelmingly positive (28/2)
learned a lot
better/as good as school book
too many worksheets
material not hole punched

16. Target Group
little material for target group/topics
material created using pictures as base
lots of material in English but not ESL/EFL
repositories not useful (higher education)
teachers do not share openly

17. Conclusion
students enjoyed OER material
possible to create OER lessons
drawbacks
offline setting (material distribution)
lack of awareness of OER material
integrate in curriculum for teacher training

18. Questions?