FAVORing the Part-time Language Teacher: The Experience and Impact of Sharing Open Educational Resources through a Community-based Repository

Abstract

The resourcefulness of part-time language teachers is often overlooked,despite the large numbers of such staff teaching in language departments across higher education. Part-time teachers typically juggle life work commitments and experience far fewer opportunities for professional development than their full-time colleagues. They frequently work in relative isolation, yet carry out their teaching duties enthusiastically and conscientiously, striving to provide as rich a learning experience as possible for their students, often spending a considerable amount of time in lesson and resource preparation. The aim of the JISC-funded FAVOR (Find a Voice through Open Resources) Project was to bring more part-time teachers into the open content movement, drawing on their wealth of resourcefulness and offering them something back for all their, often unrecognised, hard work. This case study will describe one participating institution’s experience on the FAVOR Project, including an initial investigation into its impact on the post project practices of part-time teachers. It will draw on a range of qualitative data gathered from individual and group meetings, teacher interviews, and reflective notes made by the institutional coordinator to present a picture of the experience from the part-time teachers’ perspective