Internationalizing Web Literacy E-Book Project Crowdsourcing Translations
Written by Alice Wu, Globe Multilingual Services
As we reported in the late June edition of the DIRT the Office of Digital Learning & Inquiry is partnering with Middlebury Institute’s Globe Multilingual Services to internationalize (translate and localize) Mike Caulfield’s open source e-book, Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers. The target languages include: French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and Ukrainian. The final translations will be uploaded to Pressbooks, the site where the current English version of the book is being hosted.
Since the beginning of the fall semester, the Globe team has been busy recruiting volunteer translators from language schools across the U.S. and abroad. The response from universities has been enthusiastic, and the team is planning to ramp up recruitment even further moving into December. The team recently set up an instance of their open source crowdsourcing platform for translation and they are currently testing a multilingual WordPress site using the WPML multilingual plugin to enable content availability in multiple languages.
The team has also secured a grant from Middlebury to host translation nights at the Institute starting November 26. “Translation Night at MIIS” will be a weekly gathering where graduate student translators will contribute translations to the Web Literacy project while enjoying pizza.
Web Literacy’s Globe team includes a diverse group of graduate students in the Translation and Localization Management Program (TLM) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Their roles are as follows:
Alice: Account Manager, Chinese Project Manager
Nika: Marketing Manager, French Project Manager
Jessica: Technical Lead, Italian and Spanish Project Manager
Alina: Terminology Manager, Ukrainian Project Manager
Members are responsible for managing all aspects of the project including logistics and technical issues while the project managers for specific languages recruit talent for their respective languages, domestically and abroad.
For more detailed project updates, see the team’s Facebook page, or get in touch with Marketing Manager, Nika Allahverdi [nallahverdi at miis.edu]
Second Edition of “Small Moves” Instructional Design Blog Series by Heather Stafford
Heather Stafford continues her blog series to dig deeper into some of the small moves that were discussed during her October 25th online workshop ‘Student-Centered Course Design Using Canvas.’ In the series Heather shares activities and design elements that faculty can implement to amplify connectivity of a class.
In the second edition of the series, Heather features the use of multimedia and interactive discussion tools in Canvas to build social capital among and with students. Keep an eye out for future posts in the series in coming weeks.
Librarian Presence in Canvas
Written by Kristen Cardoso and Bob Cole
As Middlebury Institute’s User Experience Librarian, Kristen Cardoso is passionate about improving learning experience for graduate students in Monterey. With the Institute moving towards developing more hybrid and online short-term programs, Kristen and her colleagues have begun thinking about how the Institute’s library could best serve students who may be away from campus. She notes, “…my colleagues and I have done a lot to improve the library’s physical spaces for students; however, our user experience work with regards to the library’s digital spaces have been mostly limited to our website and the library catalog.” Library staff help students through email and over the phone (and very rarely, even through their Facebook page). To transform Library services, she adds “…we knew we were going to have to find a way to provide online the warm, welcoming, and personal service that we currently offer in person.”
After discussing the idea and the platform requirement for having librarians embedded into Canvas courses with Bob Cole, Kristen agreed to run a mini-pilot with the two sections of EDUC 8510: Educational Research Methods, currently being taught by Netta Avineri and Deniz Ortactepe. The pilot started about mid-way through the semester, but so far, the results are encouraging. Kristen began by posting an announcement in one section’s Canvas site and posting to the discussion board in the other, and then sending out an email through Canvas to everyone in both sections. Kristen also posted a brief instructional video and created a Library Resources & Tips folder.
Acknowledging the positive response to her virtual presence in the courses, Kristen reports that “several students responded to my presence in Canvas, although most of them chose to come and see me in person for help! I’ve helped several students with APA formatting, using our databases, and writing a literature review.” After checking in with the professors, they decided there would be value to also visit the class in-person. This connection led to good discussions about open access publishing and citing sources using tools like Zotero. In the future, Kristen thinks that embedding librarians into Canvas courses from the beginning of the term could be really beneficial and create opportunities for librarians to connect with students taking classes in Monterey or remotely. Inspired by DLINQ’s recent Teaching Online & Hybrid conversation series event on humanizing online learning, one idea Kristen would recommend to further establish librarian presence would be the addition of a personal, introductory video so students can get to know her.
Dig Deeper:
“If you see a whole thing – it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.”
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