The Trayectos Initiative

Our Open Educational Resources (OER) Trayectos initiative was established in Fall 2017 with three specific objectives:

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• To develop theoretically-sound digital, open-source instructional material for second language (L2) Spanish teaching;

• To investigate the pedagogical, linguistic, and institutional dimensions that can play a role in instructional innovations of this kind; and 

• To train undergraduate and graduate students as L2 researchers and materials developers.

​​​The project focused on the investigation of issues such as,

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1. The identification of students’ needs (considering personal and institutional expectations);

2. The development of curricula (the determination of thematic and linguistic content and outcomes);

3. The search for and selection of appropriate resources, including the assessment of existing ones;

4. The training and coordination of development teams; and

5. The design of units, tasks, and assessment tools.

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This initiative also constituted a collaborative effort involving the participation of undergraduate and graduate students. ​The materials produced collaboratively have been compiled in a textbook titled Trayectos.  

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Trayectos

What does Trayectos offer second language Spanish learners? An open, two-volume digital program that features:

• A learner-centered approach based on Learning by Design, a pedagogy inspired by the Multiliteracies movement (Kalantzis et al. 2005; 2016).

• Fresh, multimodal content that connects the life worlds of learners with the life worlds of diverse Spanish speakers.

• Multimodal texts (e.g., readings, videos, posters) based on a variety of textual genres that contextualize topics about the lives of real university students.

• Communicative activities that bind language form to cultural meaning within real-life contexts.

• Critical thinking tasks that help learners explore the Spanish-speaking world, including Hispanic/Latinx communities in Texas.

• Language awareness activities that feature different varieties of Spanish, including those spoken in the US.

• Guided induction activities that help learners discover how to use new Spanish vocabulary and grammar.

• Culminating activities that oblige learners to synthesize the linguistic and cultural content of each module into a personal, multimodal text.

• Supplementary resources that offer learners the opportunity to practice the content learned through self-correcting activities (Práctica individual) and to use Spanish to broaden their knowledge of and critically analyze issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Spanish-speaking world (Voces de nuestro mundo).

• An open copyright license (Creative Commons license) that gives all users the right to adapt the textbook and to share their new content with others.

• How-to sections that guide you in the creation of a personalized version of the textbook to meet the unique needs of your classroom.

• To explore Volume 1: Mi vida en la universidad (textbook and workbook [included in textbook chapters as "Práctica individual"]), click here.

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• To explore Volume 2: Más sobre mí (textbook and workbook [included in textbook chapters as "Práctica individual"]), click here.

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• To explore the units in Voces de nuestro mundo, click here. 

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• To explore the teacher's manual, click here.