CLOSED: NSF REU Opportunity

This position has been filled.

Creating Online Training Modules for the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America

AILLA is pleased to offer a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) position for the academic year 2019-2020 as part of our NSF grant-funded project Transforming Access and Archiving for Endangered Language Data through Exploratory Methodologies of Curation (BCS-1653380). During previous phases of this project, we developed an archives-neutral data curation methodology (in both English and Spanish) designed to teach researchers to organize their language documentation materials into curated collections suitable for deposit into any digital repository. The goal of the current phase of this project is to make this open access methodology more user-friendly by presenting it in an interactive, modular training format that can be completed online. The undergraduate researcher will work in collaboration with Dr. Susan Kung (Co-Principal Investigator) at AILLA (located in SRH 1.315) to create this product.

Duties:
• Research the available presentation formats (e.g., OER, MOOC, etc.) and write a summary or literature review to facilitate choosing the best format to use.
• Research available software to use for this format and write a summary.
• Work with Kung and other AILLA staff to adapt the current methods curriculum to the chosen format and software.
• Review the curriculum to create a checklist or flowchart for people who will deposit language documentation into a digital repository.
• Give a (poster) presentation about their work on this project at a local conference of their choosing (e.g., UT-Austin's Research Week, usually held in April).

Work hours and stipend:
• 10 hours per week for 30 weeks total; total stipend = $4500
• Fall semester (14 weeks, approximately September 9 - December 13, 2019) stipend = $2100
• Spring semester (16 weeks, January 21 – May 8, 2020) stipend = $2400

Optional Summer Opportunity:
The grant will cover complete registration, room and board, as well as travel expenses up to $600, for the student to attend CoLang 2020 (the Institute on Collaborative Language Research), which will be held June 15-26, 2020 at the University of Montana (http://hs.umt.edu/colang/). No summer stipend will be offered. CoLang is a biennial summer training program for language documentation, conservation, revitalization and activism that is hosted by a different institution every time. For more information on past CoLangs, see https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/colang-institute-collaborative....

Qualifications:
The ideal student to fill this position would be bilingual in written and spoken English and Spanish, have an interest in language documentation and/or language archiving, as well as experience with online teaching and/or learning tools (though this experience will likely be in the form of using, rather than creating, such tools).

Requirements:
The student must be a currently enrolled student at The University of Texas at Austin; and a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or permanent resident of the United States.

Application Process:
To apply for this position, please send a resume and cover letter to Dr. Susan Kung, ailla@ailla.utexas.org. Applications will be accepted until Thursday, September 5, 2019. An interview will be scheduled as soon as the application is received.

English