Projects
Internal Faculty Projects
Acceso
A complete curriculum for intermediate Spanish that promotes the acquisition of Spanish and the development of cultural understanding of the varied groups of people that share Spanish as a common language. Includes a multimedia rich online textbook and an optional commercial workbook.
Dobra forma
A web-based overview of Ukrainian grammar with contextualized activities that enable students to internalize correct grammatical forms as they focus on the communication of meaning. Includes extensive audio examples and computer-graded comprehension checks.
El español en los Estados Unidos
Supplementary materials for students in beginning Spanish that focus on issues of cultural identity of Spanish speakers in the United States. Includes glossed readings, extensive multimedia content and flash-based comprehension questions.
Hujambo!
A complete curriculum for introductory Kiswahili organized into seven units that chronicle the adventures of two American students studying abroad in Tanzania for an academic year. Available in downloadable pdf. Project to be completed by summer 2023.
Incorporating Corpora
An online manual on the use of corpora to teach German to English-speaking learners, including a brief overview of research in Data-Driven Learning, a guide for using Das Digitale Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache, and a selection of corpus-based assignments.
Konuşan Paragraflar
A complete curriculum for advanced Turkish that takes a process-oriented approach geared toward Anglophone learners and makes extensive use of authentic materials that encourage cross-cultural comparisons. Includes video content and computer-graded comprehension checks.
Mezhdu nami
A complete curriculum for introductory Russian that includes an online textbook, and a set of Ра́бота в аудито́рии (Classroom Activities) and Дома́шние зада́ния (Homework Assignments) that can be downloaded for free in pdf format or purchased in a printed version.
Open Educational Resources in the Humanities
A platform for the cultivation and promotion of humanistic content that is freely shared with the public. Projects may be of varying sizes and may eventually gain a level of development that necessitates spinning them off to an independent website.
Le pont
A complete curriculum for advanced French that explores the Francophone world and is designed around a flipped model to free up class time for more open-ended communicative activities. Includes extensive video content and computer-graded comprehension checks.
Russian Aspect in Conversation
An examination of Russian aspectual usage that focuses on the speaker’s communicative intent and beliefs and/or the dynamics between speaker and listener. Includes computer-graded exercises with feedback to guide the learner toward a more nuanced understanding of aspectual meaning.
Ting Yi Ting
An online guide that enables learners to hear and identify phonemic categories in Mandarin, including lexical tones, in a variety of phonetic contexts, and to associate those phonemes with Pinyin orthography. Includes extensive audio examples and computer-graded comprehension checks.
Support for Grants in Other Units
The OLRC provides technical support to facilitate grant projects housed in other Humanities departments. That support ranges from consultation on issues of a technology at the proposal process, creation of websites to promote projects, logistical support for in-person and virtual events, as well as editing of audio and video content, including transcripts and subtitles. The OLRC also assumes responsibility for long-term access to these projects as they move from an active state to an archival record.
Past support includes the following projects:
- Hurston on the Horizon. Project on the History of Black Writing, Department of English (2021)
- Teaching the “Long Hot Summer of 1967” and Beyond: Racial Disturbances in Recent U.S. History. Langston Hughes Center, Department of African and African-American Studies (2017)
- Migration Stories: Africans in Midwestern Communities. Kansas African Studies Center (2016).
- Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement. Project on the History of Black Writing, Department of English (2015)
- Don't Deny My Voice. Project on the History of Black Writing, Department of English (2013)
- Making the Wright Connection. Project on the History of Black Writing, Department of English (2010)
The OLRC is currently in the process of moving the holdings of the History of Black Writing and the Center for the Study of Science Fiction into its online catalog in order to increase visibility and to provide inventory tracking. The OLRC is also working with the History of Black Writing to digitize items currently on physical media.
Language Keyboards
Both Windows and Mac operating systems come with built-in language keyboards that allow you to type in foreign languages.
There are similar keyboards that can be used on mobile devices:
While many foreign language keyboards map quite closely to the default English (U.S.) keyboard, there are several that have no correspondence at all. Instead, these keyboards are based on the typewriter keyboards of their home countries. For those seeking a shortcut to avoid learning the "real" keyboard layouts, the OLRC provides free, homophonic (phonetic) keyboards for Windows that map the letters in the foreign language to the nearest sound equivalent on the U.S. keyboard. The zipped installation packages found below are compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 10.