With the help of student Allison Ulaky, Albright College Spanish faculty members, Lennie Amores, Ph.D., and Janice E. Rodríguez, M.A., have developed Nuestra comunidad Latina — an open educational (textbook-free) resource that explores the Latino experience in the United States.
Nuestra comunidad Latina is an online, open-source, content-based text — partially completed through a joint faculty-student Albright Creative Research Experience (ACRE) project. Through ACRE projects, Albright students conduct research or creative activities in one-on-one partnership with faculty mentors. Over the summer, anthropology, urban affairs and Spanish major, Allison Ulaky ’20, conducted and transcribed video and audio interviews. This fall, Amores and Rodríguez began utilizing the online text in five separate sections of Spanish 101 classes.
“It’s been very successful,” said Rodriguez. “We’re gathering data on students’ impressions that we’ll analyze when the semester’s done.”
Rodriguez explained that the resource is content-centered, focusing on more than just verbs and vocabulary, and is designed to help students engage with the Latino community.
