This project began in my class CHIN 3343 Chinese Popular Culture. At the beginning of this class, I often asked students to post three popular culture terms they are familiar with, their definitions, and examples online on the Padlet wall. Students exchange ideas there, giving me an idea what trendy terms and popular cultural genres students are currently most interested in. Over a few semesters after they did this assignment, I have realized how far behind I am about the trendy terms in Chinese popular culture. Nowadays, young students are becoming more aware of trends in language and fashion.

After my wonderful experience of working with the UH OER team in the library, Ariana and Kate, I decide to incorporate more OER projects into my classes. I believe more research-oriented and self-directed teaching styles are the right direction to go. This project is another attempt to incorporate OER project into our classrooms, and through the intelligent minds and research efforts of the students, their works and my courses would get exposure. We ultimately hope that by getting students more involved in open access publishing, they would get to know the value and process of publication better and contribute to the knowledge in the field.

– Dr. Melody Yunzi Li

When Melody initially contacted myself and Ariana, Head of Open Education Services, about this assignment, I was eager to work with her again after a successful experience co-editing a student-authored open textbook from the previous semester. Melody brings passion, dedication, and curiosity to her courses and her pedagogical approach, and I have enjoyed working with her to support her work in creating more meaningful, engaging educational experiences for her students.

This course presented a unique opportunity to empower students to co-create a valuable and timely learning resource, a dictionary of Chinese pop culture terminology and subjects. Giving students the opportunity to publish their work in an open format according to their preferences, by self-selecting the licensing and attribution for each of their chapters, gave them a chance to engage in the field in a way that enforced their agency as student authors. Additionally, each student selected the topics of interest to them to research and write about, which gave them another form of autonomy in their learning, allowing them to shape the course content according to their unique needs, interests, and in some cases, to add on to their existing knowledge of those topics.

This is also a particularly valuable resource because of its adaptability and potential for growth, as each semester Dr. Li teaches her course, students can create new definitions and update existing definitions to ensure its currency and relevance in the field. I am excited to see how this resource can be adapted and expanded in future semesters.

– Kate McNally Carter

Front Cover Image Credits

Chinese Pop Culture Terms, Vol. 1 cover image created by Dr. Melody Li is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license, and is adapted from the following images:

• Jackie Chan by Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
• 日本, Nagawa-machi, Japan by Jindong H, licensed under Unsplash’s License
• Chinese Culture Traditional Costume by ButtonwoodDecor, licensed under Pixabay’s License