The course favors independent study, with its own methodology and undated texts
In 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic, students and teachers had to adapt to the online environment. Classes began to be taught virtually, and teaching content invaded the digital medium. However, since the beginning of the 2000s, professors at the Institute of Language Studies (IEL) have already been working on developing digital tools for teaching in a virtual environment.
It was based on these studies that, in the early 2000s, Unicamp's first online subject was created, an English course for undergraduate and postgraduate students. IEL teachers produced a bank of authorial content for the course and developed the subject taught virtually.
Professor Denise Braga, one of those responsible for the project, explains that the content bank favored short, undated texts, ensuring their timelessness.
"We seek to align independent study with textual practice, with a logic of reading on screen and digital language, privileging academic and scientific dissemination texts", explains.
Based on these principles, the teachers created a diverse content bank, which allowed the development of the online English subject with its own methodology.
There are 24 classes, divided into six modules, grouped according to grammatical criteria. Three of them discuss recurring problems for readers at the sentence level: verb, word formation (prefixes and suffixes), and complex adnominal adjuncts. The other three modules explore broader textual organizations: elements of cohesion (pronominal and lexical), logical relationships (conjunctions) and the elements that mark, in the text, the modalization of statements made by the author.
Each activity includes a text for reading and listening, six comprehension questions, support material, reflections on reading and language acquisition strategies and systematization exercises with automatic verification.
"We offer the student support material with a glossary and grammar booklet, as well as answers suggested by the pedagogical team. We also explain the strategy used to resolve the questions. This method allows the student to have quality independent study", highlights Denise Braga.
Non-exclusive licensing of copyright content
The bank of authorial content developed by IEL teachers was licensed, with the support of the Inova Unicamp Innovation Agency, to the company Mupi Tecnologia e Serviços de Informação.
Negotiations began in 2017 and concluded only in 2021. Inova's Partnerships and Contracts Department had to study a model that suited the specific copyright case and allowed Unicamp to negotiate the content.
Before arriving at Inova, Braga tried for several years to find a way to keep the project alive at Unicamp and make it available to more people.
“It was a pleasure to contribute in this case, as the project could have a future inside and outside Unicamp, disseminating the content to students from different locations through marketing by Mupi. The company will provide Unicamp with free access to the next versions and content improvements, as long as the university provides support and maintenance. In other words, if Unicamp is interested in providing the course to the academic community, it can bbenefit from updated content”, explains Ana Daidone, Partnerships analyst at Inova Unicamp.
Raquel Barbosa, director of Intellectual Property at Inova Unicamp, explains that the issue of copyright in teaching has gained prominence in the last two years, with the spread of virtual classes. It not only involves the process of producing your own authorial content.
“When it comes to teaching, copyright is present throughout the entire process: preparation, elaboration, recording and availability of own content and use of third-party content appropriately”, highlights Raquel Barbosa.
With this in mind, the Unicamp Attorney General's Office and the Unicamp Library System produced a guide on copyright available on the Unicamp website. SBU. Through Inova, Unicamp receives communications about the creation of authorial content. It is also responsible for licensing offers for its own copyright content.
Inventors Award 2022
INVENTORS AWARDED IN THIS LICENSING
Denise Bértoli Braga, Lúcia Alves Costa, Joanne Marie Mccaffrey Busnardo Neto, Maria Cecília dos Santos Fraga, Anabel Deuber, Virgilio Nascimento Santos and Fábio Aragão da Silva were awarded in the Licensed Intellectual Property category at the Inventores 2022 Awards.
TRIBUTES PROGRAMMING
This article is part of the series of reports produced by Inova Unicamp on licensed technologies. They can be read on the Inova website and also in format eBook (only in Dutch at the moment) na Inventors Award Magazine, scheduled for release in June. A webinar on intellectual property and technology transfer is also scheduled for June 8, with registration open to the general public.
Check out all the winners on the Unicamp Inventors Award website.
The 2022 Inventors Award sponsors are: Pulse Hub, ClarkeModet, 3M and Neger Telecom.
This text was originally published on the Innovates Unicamp.
