Beginning Chinese

I joined the OER project with the goal of reducing textbook and workbook cost for students learning beginning level Chinese at UF. Before working with Micah and Perry, I started my work with an instructional designer, Ms. Ariel Gunn, to create free Chinese character worksheets and backward designed (design from the outcome of the learners) lesson plans for the class. I also started to create character teaching animation videos to assist students with learning the Mandarin writing system. My current project is to create flipped lesson plans with instructional character writing videos for UF’s CHI1130 Beginning Chinese 1 class and share with the language teaching community.

There are a few related Chinese grammar Youtube channels available for public. I hope to tailor build a semester long lesson plan for a five-credit course, so it will benefit our new instructors, TAs, and anyone who wants an example of teaching beginning Chinese language course. The OER community provided me with the opportunity and resources to finish my project.

CHI1130 Beginning Chinese I is our introductory course for students without any learning experience. We offer this course in fall, spring and occasionally in summer semesters. An average of 100-150 UF students would benefit from these materials during an academic year. The instructors would benefit from the detailed lesson plans and students would have more ways to practice working with Chinese characters, which is considered the most challenging component for American learners.

With the help of several people, I have found Microsoft OneNote to be an accessible multimedia platform, with no additional cost to students, that can be used in my project. Starting in spring semester 2021, I have developed the project on OneNote with my classes. Then in summer and fall 2021 and spring 2022, the project was revised and updated each time I teach this course. Using OneNote helped organized the content of the project and it was well received by students too. Additionally, it reduced workbook costs by at least $25 per student per semester.

The development of the project coincided with Covid related restrictions on campus. In person learning became virtual and Hyflex (in person and virtual) learning. In the virtual classroom, OneNote proved to be a powerful and effective platform for language teaching and learning with features that highlight language pronunciation, hand drawing and instant feedback.

I would like to continue working on the next course CHI1131 Beginning Chinese II in similar ways. I hope this platform will continue to be developed into intermediate, advanced, and upper advanced classes as well.

One of the challenges for sharing the character writing videos is that most public K-12 and universities teach simplified characters, while UF adopts traditional characters at the beginning level. I have introduced these videos at conferences during the Florida Chinese Teachers’ Association’s annual conference, unfortunately, due to the different character systems, few other schools can use the videos.

Another challenge would be the use of OneNote is in downloading and sharing the whole packet. I have included sample lesson plans, homework, and the link to character writing videos with worksheet below.

Thanks to the leadership of Perry and Micah that I have benefited so much from the inaugural OER community – from learning different tools like Pressbook and UF library resources, to attending various guest speakers’ talks, and collaborating with fellow colleagues. I am confident in designing course materials and proud to make course materials more affordable for students.

The OER learning community is fairly new to me and most of the faculty members around campus. I would suggest that Center for Teaching Excellence promotes the idea and resources more widely on campus. I have learned so much from each fellow colleagues and I would like to see each of us showcases our projects to inspire other faculty members. Additionally, being able to work with a peer from the same field would be helpful. For example, I could work with a Japanese language instructor or someone who teaches beginning Spanish for a similar project. The Zoom meetings are great and necessary during Covid, it would be nice to be able to meet in person as well.