Maria Galvan-Santibanez, Romance Languages and Literatures | 2022-2023
This grant request aims to create OER materials and ultimately a digital textbook for the course Spanish 231 Topics: Ecology and Activism. The class has been piloted during the Fall of 2022 and was launched with 10 sections in the Winter of 2023. There are no specific materials on the market that combine the language objectives for a Spanish elementary-level course with the topic of Ecology and Activism. Acquiring an expensive textbook that will only serve the students for one semester is not sustainable and does not align with the philosophy and mission of the course, let alone the expense that the students will incur for such a short period of time. The time dedicated to preparing and adapting material is worth creating our own digital textbook, one that will represent no cost to the students, which will be shared freely with other people with similar interests, and a deliverable that will grow over time through collaborations and contributions from students as well as instructors. In addition, our goal is to design a versatile digital textbook that will serve as a template or model and allow us to develop other content topics for the Spanish 231 Topics course in the future. This book will be tailored to the Spanish students at U-M in order to achieve the academic goals set by the Romance Languages and Literatures and the Spanish Program.