Spanish 490 - Senior Seminar in Spanish

About the Textbook

Acceso

Description: 

Acceso is intended as a complete, interactive curriculum for intermediate-level learners of Spanish. The materials on this site are provided freely to the public and are intended as a replacement for commercial textbooks, which are generally ill-suited to the learning outcomes now considered crucial to successful language study. These materials are supplemented by an online workbook built on the MySpanishLab platform of Pearson Education, Inc., as well as detailed lesson plans, rubrics for the evaluation of student work, and reliable instruments for measuring student progress and learning outcomes. Content include cultural information on Spain and Hispanic America, grammar and vocabulary.

Authors:

• Amy Rossomondo et al. - The University of Kansas.

Formats:  

Available online only.

Supplemental resources: 

Instructors receive a username and password and can download PDFs with materials (assignments, daily lesson plans, student handouts, detailed writing activities and participation rubrics). Online, there are quizzes for the lessons for the students to practice.  

Cost savings:  

Students can experience significant savings depending on previous textbook selections. They usually range from $100 to $150 per student.  Since I teach this once a year to 30 students, this is a potential savings for students annually of $3,000.

Accessibility and Diversity:  

The course reader has not yet been evaluated for accessibility by the University Accessible Education Center.

License:

Except where otherwise noted, Acceso is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license.  You may copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.

About the Course

SPAN 490: Senior Seminar in Spanish

Description: Consideration of the nature of the discipline. Integration of knowledge and experience acquired within the student’s major area. 

Prerequisites: Senior standing and consent of the instructor.

Learning outcomes:  By the end of the course: 

• Students will be able to understand discourses (written and oral) in Spanish. (Students will demonstrate this by answering the questions and writing short essays). 
• Students will be able to respond in writing to questions derived from a text in Spanish. (Students will demonstrate this by answering the questions and writing short essays). 
• Students will be able to search, select and integrate information from different sources to answer questions and to create an expositive paper. (Students will demonstrate this by answering the questions and writing short essays). 

Specific Learning Objectives:

• Demonstrate broad cultural awareness of the Spanish-speaking world and the ability to relate this awareness to their understanding of their own cultural experiences. 
• Demonstrate the ability to analyze social issues from more than one perspective through the development of cultural sensitivity and more nuanced critical thinking skills.
• Use technology to access the virtual Spanish-speaking world independently and effectively in order broaden their range of information sources.

Curricular changes:   This course was open in terms of what to cover. The site includes a summary of knowledge acquired on Spanish grammar as well as sociocultural and literary knowledge about Spain and Hispanic America. Acceso allows us to review that and then six additional chapters about Hispanic America, one about Spain and one about the Hispanic population in the United States. In each chapter, there is demographic, historical, social, political and cultural information. Exercises and videos are also provided.

Teaching and learning impacts:

Collaborate more with others: Not yet

Use wider range of materials: Yes

Student learning improved:Not assessed

Student retention improved:Not assessed

Any unexpected results: No

It is a mandatory course, but these materials make the class interesting, with up- to-date videos. Students can review concepts with the quizzes.

Sample assignment and syllabus:

Assignment This is a copy of an assignment, the final paper.

Syllabus This is the syllabus from Spring 2015

Textbook Adoption

OER Adoption Process

A major motivation for adopting the open textbook has been to save students money, but also to make it easy to access. Also, it is a book that covers all the aspects of the Spanish language and Hispanic culture that we cover during the previous courses: language, linguistics, history, culture, etc. It also has very interesting videos.

I have also used a movie (a theater play) and a documentary as well as some extra sheets concerning theory that I have prepared about academic writing, to go in part I, with the grammar.  Examples of the videos include the following:

• Spain - "La dama boba"
• Latin America - "Caminantes"

I prepared handouts for students, some of which include: 

• How to create an Outline
• Objectivity and implication in academic discourse

Student access:  

They can access it online directly. Additional materials are also available via the class Blackboard site.

Student feedback or participation:

Random student comments include the following: 

• "I like the videos. They are short but give interesting information."
• "The questions at the end of the sections allow us to review for the quiz."
• "We don't need to pay for a book, and the info is easy to access."

Teresa Fernández-Ulloa, Ph.D.

I am a Spanish language professor at the California State University, Bakersfield. I teach courses on language, linguistics and culture.

My research interests are linguistics, first and second language acquisition (especially  using new technologies), and political discourse in Spain and Latin America.

As an instructor, I try to make my classes interesting and fun, using new materials and including new technologies and videos, both in teaching and also in students assignments.