Presented at the Open Educational Resources (OER16) Conference on 19 April, 2016 in Edinburgh, UK https://oer16.oerconf.org/sessions/converging-cultures-of-open-in-language-resources-development-1156/

1. Converging cultures of open in
language resources development
Alannah Fitzgeraldhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfgangfoto/4705194692

2. MINING & LINKING OPEN CONTENT
FOR DATA DRIVEN LEARNING
FLAX Language Digital Library Project, University of Waikato, NZ

3. Data-Driven Learning
The metaphor that Johns evoked was one where
language is treated as empirical data and “every
student is a Sherlock Holmes”, investigating the
uses of linguistic data directly to assist with
language acquisition (Johns, 2002, p. 108).

4. FLAX Academic English Collections
http://flax.nzdl.org/greenstone3/flax?a=fp&sa=library

5. MANAGED OPEN ACCESS FOR
REDISTRIBUTION IN EAP
FLAX Language Digital Library Project, University of Waikato, NZ

6. Repurposed as Open EAP Corpora
• Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS), managed by the
British Library
– Abstract metadata of 400,000 PhD theses via the EThOS toolkit
– “reuse by third parties for not-for-profit purposes” (British Library,
n.d.).
• British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus,
managed by the Oxford Text Archive (OTA)
– 2500 pieces of learner writing (3 UK universities)
– A formal request must be registered with the OTA to develop the
BAWE corpus for non-commercial “research use or educational
purposes” (IT Services, University of Oxford, OTA, 2015)

7. FLAX ETHOS PHD ABSTRACTS
COLLECTIONS FOR ACADEMIC ENGLISH

8. EThOS PhD Abstracts Collections
http://flax.nzdl.org/greenstone3/flax?a=fp&sa=collAbout&c=PASS&if=flax

9. Using Dewey Decimal Classification
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dewey_Decimal_classes#Class_300_.E2.80.93_Social_sciences

10. Browse by Discipline
http://flax.nzdl.org/greenstone3/flax?a=b&rt=r&s=ClassifierBrowse&cl=CL1&c=PASS&if=flax

11. Wikification of Specialised Terminology
http://flax.nzdl.org/greenstone3/flax?a=d&c=PASS&d=HASH29c3a6e8f235b56f62a551&dt=simple&p.a=b&p.s=ClassifierBrowse

13. RESEARCH INTO MOOC LINGUISTIC
SUPPORT

14. MOOC participants
“MOOC participants register for educational
courses; they do not sign up as language
learners.” (Wu, Fitzgerald & Witten, 2014)
• English Common Law MOOC (Coursera and University of
London)
• CopyrightX (Harvard Law School, HarvardX and the Berkman
Centre for Internet & Society)
• ContractsX (Harvard Law School and edX)

15. English Language Resources

16. You’ve got some gall
This behaviour is referred to as GALL, Google-
Assisted Language Learning (Chinnery, 2008),
and this activity mimics the majority of online
search behaviour for information retrieval.

17. Main reasons for using FLAX

18. Searchability rates highly
http://tinyurl.com/h7sddkr

19. MOOC learner feedback
"thanks, Alannah, for this FLAX site for the Contract Law
course. i discovered your work a bit late (one month after
you posted your announcement of the FLAX site). at the
beginning, i was jumping ahead, skipping lectures, and
found myself not knowing certain terms (e.g., dead
weight loss). i had to go back to the beginning, searching
for where Prof. Fried defined this term. if i had known
about your FLAX site, it would be of great help. in general,
your FLAX site would be great for a review, or for
someone searching for certain case. surely, in the future,
in case i need to review some concepts of Contract Law,
i would hit your FLAX site first. again, great work.
thanks."

20. ...as does the linking in of Wikipedia
for glossing and expanding knowledge
http://tinyurl.com/h8f9uex

21. ...and the saveability of useful language
patterns (collocations, lexical bundles)
http://tinyurl.com/zkx4wjx

22. References
• Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Cortes, V. (2004). If you look at . . .: lexical bundles in university teaching and
textbooks. Applied Linguistics, 25, 371–405. Biber, D. (2006). University Language, A corpus-based
study of spoken and written registers. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
• Biber, D., Barbieri F. (2007). Lexical bundles in university spoken and written registers. English for
Specific Purpose, 26, 263–286.
• Chinnery, G. (2008). You’ve got some GALL: Google-assisted language learning. Language Learning
& Technology, 12(1), 3-11.
• Fitzgerald, A. & Wu. S. (In press). Practices and Resources at the Interface of Openness for Academic
English. In Zourou, K. (Ed.) Special Issue on the Social Dynamics of Open Educational Practice,
Journal of Learning, Culture and Social Interaction.
• Fitzgerald, A., Marín, M.J., Wu. S., & Witten, I. H. (In press). Evaluating the efficacy of the digital
commons for scaling data-driven learning. In M. Carrier, R. Damerow, K. Bailey (Eds.), Digital
language learning and teaching: Research, theory and practice. Routledge, Taylor & Francis.
• Milne, D. & Witten, I.H. (2013). An open-source toolkit for mining Wikipedia. Artificial Intelligence,
194, 222-239.
• Johns, T. (2002). Data-driven learning: the perpetual challenge. In B. Kettemann & G. Marko (Eds.),
Teaching and Learning by Doing Corpus Analysis. Proceedings of the Fourth International
Conference on Teaching and Language Corpora, Graz 19-24 July, 2000, (pp. 107-117). Amsterdam:
Rodopi.
• Wu, S., Fitzgerald, A. & Witten, I.H. (2014). Second Language Learning in the Context of MOOCs. In
S. Zvacek, M. T. Restivo, J. Uhomoibhi & M. Helfert (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th International
Conference on Computer Supported Education (pp. 354-359), Barcelona, Spain: SCITEPRESS.
• Wu, S., Franken, M., & Witten, I. H. (2009). Refining the use of the web (and web search) as a
language teaching and learning resource. Computer Assisted Language Learning 22(3), 249-268.

23. Thank You
FLAX Language Project & Software Downloads: http://flax.nzdl.org/
The How-to eBook of FLAX: http://flax-
doc.nzdl.org/BOOK_OF_FLAX/BookofFLAX%20fullsize%20with%20links.pdf
FLAX Game-based Apps for Android via Google Play Store (free):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=FLAX%20TEAM&hl=en
Ian Witten (FLAX Project Lead): ihw@cs.waikato.ac.nz
Shaoqun Wu (FLAX Research and Development): shaoqun@waikato.ac.nz
Alannah Fitzgerald (FLAX Open Language Research): a_fitzg@education.concordia.ca
TOETOE Technology for Open English Blog: www.alannahfitzgerald.org
Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/AlannahOpenEd/
Twitter: @AlannahFitz