The Department of English and Translation (DET) has been awarded a small “English Language Grant” by the United States Embassy in Lebanon to support new directions in the teaching of the English language at NDU. The grant is awarded to higher education institutions with a proven record of curricular innovation following a rigorous selection process.
This grant supports the redesign of ENL 223, a public speaking course leading to fulfillment of the University Liberal Arts Curriculum in English language. By adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) in the teaching of public speaking, the new course will integrate learning material across different media and grant open access to high-quality resources that are openly licensed. This project continues the Department’s pioneering role in the adoption of OER at NDU, and comes on the heel of other pilots in the field of OER.
The team working on this project are champions of OER at NDU. Dr. Ena Hodzik, Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics, will serve as chief curricular designer. She will work closely with Dr. Fawzi Baroud, Assistant Vice-President for Information Technology, to create an outcomes-based, technology supported course. Dr. Kamal Abouchedid, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities (FH), will lead in the evaluation and assessment of the project, including in measuring student attitudes during piloting. The chief program manager and administrator of the grant is Department Chair Prof. George Abdelnour.