Abstract : LORO, an OER repository for language teachers: Does it make a difference?

LORO, an OER repository for language teachers: Does it make a difference?

Anna Comas-Quinn,
Lecturer in Spanish and SCORE Fellow, The Open University

The creation of LORO over a year ago has changed the way in which language teachers at the Open University access resources for their tutorials, but has it changed their teaching?

LORO provides open access to tutorial resources for all languages and levels taught at the Department of Languages, so that teachers, both inside and outside the Open University, can browse, download and reuse any of these resources. It also allows users, inside and outside the Open University, to upload their own resources and share them openly through LORO.

The principles of openness and transparency on which LORO is based are almost unquestionable. However, showing that LORO has a positive effect on teaching and learning is much harder to prove. In this short presentation I will review the methods that the LORO team is employing to gauge impact of LORO on teachers’ practice, including metrics, surveys, focus groups, collection and analysis of forum data and the use of narrative frames.