Open Source Course: Living “Mi Vida Loca”

This week I have been tasked with finding an online open course of my choosing to evaluate against criteria I have learned in my Distance Learning class. I have been thinking about learning Spanish, since it is clear that the U.S. is moving in a direction where Spanish will undoubtedly be as important in our everyday lives as French is in Canada. Spanish may not be an official language here, but it will certainly be helpful in a wide variety of situations. Following links from the Open Culture listings of foreign language classes, I found one that describes me perfectly: “Mi Vida Loca,” which translates to “My Crazy Life” is a wonderful, engaging course in elementary Spanish that has all the elements I would look for in a course for myself or others (BBC, 2009). The course is offered by the BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/. I have to say that in all the language classes I have ever taken, I have rarely had as much fun with the first lessons as I am having with this course.

The course is thoroughly planned out for distance learning. In Teaching and Learning at a Distance (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012) there is a listing of what distance learners should have in any course. These elements are:

·         Content that they feel is relevant to their needs

·         Clear directions for what they should do at every stage of the course

·         As much control of the pace of learning as possible

·         A means of drawing attention to individual concerns

·         A way of testing their progress and getting feedback from their instructors

·         Materials that are useful, active, and interesting (p. 176).

This course meets each of these requirements in several ways. It is a learner-centered course which offers a number of different learning methods within each module, so that students having diverse learning styles can all benefit from the course in ways that work best for them. There are individual lessons within course sections, each building on what has been learned in the previous lesson. In addition to the video lessons, the course website provides a full syllabus, along with a user’s guide and a teacher’s guide. Each lesson can be printed out from PDF format, and there are additional printouts with grammar rules, vocabulary lists, and other information that the designers consider important to a complete Spanish learning situation, such as unfamiliar pronunciation of familiar letters.

“Mi Vida Loca’s” opening page has an embedded video that appears to be a trailer for an intrigue film, complete with the kind of rhythmic music one would expect with James Bond or the Bourne thrillers. As a student, I was drawn into the story from the start, and the “cliffhanger” endings on the lessons leave me wanting to hurry on to the subsequent module to find out what happens next. This has the effect of creating a desire to learn beyond my original need to learn Spanish. Each lesson has an animated box below the loading screen in which new vocabulary words and their meanings appear for a few moments and then disappear as other words fade in. This serves as a quick and simple preparation for the lesson about to begin, and stops when the loading is complete.

The "Phrase Book" Man

The structure of the lessons is a blend of various types of media. The video “episodes” take us through a mystery that begins in Madrid. From time to time a “phrase book” opens up, and the man inhabiting the pages explains something that just happened, or provides a second chance to pronounce and learn the words that have been presented. Sometimes words are offered that haven’t been used in the dialogue yet, but are about to be in the next scene. All lessons are set up to allow the student to go back as many times as needed to master a skill, and for those who have taken the course and want a refresher, there are video-only episodes without subtitles, for self-check and practice.

I love the interactive portions of the lessons. The activities are interesting and varied; as a student this gave me a fresh look at each area being taught without feeling as it I’d done it all before. For example, a sentence might be written out, and individual words or phrases are underlined and clickable, so that we learn each section of the sentence and then put it all together. In other areas, there are pauses during which we are asked to answer the person speaking to us in the video, and we can click on one area to listen to the correct answer, or another area to move on to the next scene. This gives the student an excellent opportunity to self-test on the pronunciation and correct usage of the vocabulary learned to this point. There are many opportunities to check one’s learning, and it is always possible to go back to any portion of the lesson that the student wishes to re-visit, as an indexed timeline will take the student back to any part of the previous scene.

"Pay the Driver" game

The lesson also allows some simple game play. For example, when the taxi driver asks for 25 Euros, the student is presented with a number of bills, and it’s the student’s task to pick the correct bills to place in the driver’s hand by clicking and dragging. Picking the right bills triggers the game to tell the student that this is correct, and the “Next” arrow is now clickable to go on further in the story. In another lesson, a word search allows us to make our best guesses at some new vocabulary based on its pronunciation. These opportunities to interact with the lesson make it fun, but at the same time give us reinforcement for the items we’ve just learned, or preparation for what we are about to learn. Lessons continue to develop the story line of the “mystery,” while offering clear and interesting opportunities to learn everyday phrases. All new words have a speaker icon beside them, so we can click and listen as many times as we need to pronounce the vocabulary correctly and use the correct phrases called for in the dialogue.

I love learning languages and have taken college courses for many years, but I can honestly say that none of those courses has been as engaging, or taught as well in as short a time, as the BBC’s “Mi Vida Loca” course in Spanish. I’m looking forward to all the lessons, and even to the test at the end! I would recommend BBC language courses to anyone, based on this one that I’ve found so complete and useful. Open source learning is offering new prospects for personal improvement to people who want to learn something new and either have no access or cannot afford formal educational settings. As the variety and number of courses increases on the Internet, the playing field becomes more and more level in terms of learning opportunities for everyone. Sources such as the BBC serve the worldwide community of learners with well-developed, well-planned and well-executed examples of open source distance learning.

References

BBC. (2009). Mi Vida Loca. Retrieved from BBC Languages: Spanish: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/index.shtml

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Photo Credits

All photos © BBC 2012 and taken from http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/