Making questions in English:

Infographics and Video as Open Educational Resources

by: Kristin Eliason

Open Language Learning

Máster Universitario en Las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación en la Enseñanza

y el Tratamiento de Lenguas

UNED 2018-2019
1. Introduction 3

2. Theoretical framework 3
2.1 OERs: What are they? 4
2.2 Why do we need OERs? 4

3. My OERs 6
3.1. Infographics 7
3.2. Videos 10
3.3. Creating my OERs 11

4. Conclusions 16

5. Bibliography 18

6. Appendices 20
6.1 Appendix A 20
6.2 Appendix B 21

2
1. Introduction

Open Educational Resources (OERs), as the name suggests, are educational materials

which are available to be used by anyone, at any time, for any purpose. Many times, these

resources are digital, since that is the easiest means of access for many people in this

technological age. OERs can be an extraordinary resource for languages teachers who may not

have access to authentic materials or native speakers, especially if they do not live in a place

where the target language is normally spoken.

This potential for OERs to have a positive effect on language teaching is growing as

technology becomes more integrated into our language classrooms. For this reason, I have

decided to create an infographic and a video to support students in their quest to learn the

English language. Both the infographic and the video will attempt to help students learn how to

make questions in English by introducing them to the acronym QUASI (section 3) and how to

apply it.

These resources can be used in the English classroom, either to reinforce structures

previously learned, or to introduce them for the first time. They have been designed keeping in

mind the target audience and some basic design principles for infographics and videos.

2. Theoretical framework

3
 2.1 OERs: What are they?

According to UNESCO, which first used the term Open Educational Resources (OERs)

in 2002 during its Forum on Open Courseware, OERs consist of “…teaching, learning and

research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have

been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and

redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions” (UNESCO, 2012). This means that OERs

can consist of anything related to or supporting educational purposes, including but not limited to

software, textbooks, worksheets, courses, videos, images or any material or tool (Kozinska, et.

al., 2010). Simply put, OERs are any type of material used for learning that can be accessed by

anyone at any time.

2.2 Why do we need OERs?

There are many different reasons why we need OERs. Firstly, OERs allow for those with

no other access to education the ability to receive it. Secondly, they provide access to academic

materials for those without the financial means to pay for higher education. Finally, OERs are a

helpful resource for educators, with the potential to improve teachers’ work in a variety of ways.

To begin, as is mentioned in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to an

education is a basic human right (UNESCO, 2012). However, there are many places in the world

and many people who do not have access to education. In this way, the free access to OERs helps

protect this basic right, by providing students with the tools necessary to learn.

4
 Secondly, as mentioned by Kozinska et. al. (2010), learning is no longer dedicated simply

to younger students nor those in formal education. Rather, developing technologies and an

increasingly globalized world has created what they call a ‘lifelong learner’, meaning people

who have the need to learn new skills all throughout their lives. For many, this means learning

English since it has become the lingua franca for communication purposes around the world.

As some of these lifelong learners may not have access to formal, higher-level education

through an official institution (whether this be for economic reasons or physical access) yet they

may still have the need to improve or learn new skills, OERs fill this void, by allowing for

student access to the same kind of academic information being seen in formal educational

institutions, without the high cost or mandatory physical presence. Kozinska et. al. (2010) write,

“[i]t can be argued that lifelong learning needs to be actively supported through easy access to

online educational resources or OER in order to help increased numbers of people study

independently” (p. 4). As access to ICTs is increasingly widespread, OERs can be acquired and

consumed from anywhere at any time, meaning students can study at their leisure. In other

words, as Beetham et. al. (2012) write, “[t]he most obvious benefit of open learning resources is

that students are free to study in a wide range of settings” (p. 4). OERs are flexible in terms of

material, time and the space in which they are consumed.

One final thing to note is that OERs have been shown to increase the way in which

teachers share and improve their classroom resources. OERs “are all about sharing [as] a culture

of sharing resources and practices will help facilitate change and innovation in education” (OER

5
Commons, 2007, as quoted by Kozinska, et. al., 2010, p. 5). One of the goals in the creation of

OERs is to inspire (and be inspired by) other teachers’ work with the end goal of improving upon

what already exists, and creating what does not.

3. My OERs

I have chosen to create two types of OERs to complement each other. The resources are

based upon the acronym QUASI, a well-known mnemonic device used as a tool to help students

remember how to make questions in English using regular verbs. Having been an English teacher

for several years, I have used this device many times and have found it to be a helpful tool to aid

students in memorizing a difficult grammatical concept.

Furthermore, QUASI (Question word, Auxiliary verb, Subject, Infinite verb), can be

used for many different levels as, depending on the grammatical concept to be taught. It is useful

to remind students exactly where the auxiliary verb (for example, ‘do/does’, ‘did’, ‘can’, ‘could’,

‘will’, etc.) needs to be placed in the interrogative form. It can be used to study the interrogative

form of the third conditional for higher levels, for example, or simple present tense questions for

lower levels.

I have chosen to use the infographic as my main OER because, as mentioned by Martín-

Monje and Barcena (2014), “the language learner is likely to benefit from the well-known

explicit type of learning model, something partly based on face-to-face/textual/visual

explanations with illustrative examples followed by some interesting and creative form of

6
practice” (p. 3). As such, the infographic can help language learners, and the video will reinforce

the ideas presented in the infographic, while also allowing students to practice their listening

skills.

3.1. Infographics

According to the Oxford Dictionary, infographics are “visual representations of

information or data” (Oxford University Press, 2019). Toth (2013) takes that definition further

by describing them as “a combination of visuals and texts that are prepared in order to provide

easy and understandable information about a subject to their readers” (as quoted by Serkan,

2017, p. 249). Essentially, the purpose of infographics is in its name: they are graphics that aim

to present information in a way that is clear, concise and appealing to readers.

According to Serkan (2017), it is important to follow some steps when creating effective

infographics. They are: 1. Preparation, 2. Presentation, and 3. Design. Taking the most important

elements from these three steps into consideration, I first prepared for the creation of my

infographic by doing the following:

a. Determining the purpose: The purpose of this infographic is to illustrate the order in

which the different elements in an interrogative sentence are placed in order to make

questions using regular verbs in English.

7
 b. Determining the target audience: This was a little trickier, as I have used this

acronym for many different levels depending on the concept to be taught. As such,

the infographic and videos that I have made attempt to be fairly neutral (not too

infantile or advanced) so that they can be used in primary, secondary or even adult

education classes. Furthermore, the complementary infographic that I have made (see

section 3.3.3) has been made to be modifiable so that the elements can be changed

depending on what is being taught.

c. Determining the information/ideas I want to transmit: The information to be

transmitted was the basic concept of QUASI (Question word, Auxiliary verb,

Subject, Infinite verb), followed by the way to implement it by giving several

different examples. The video (section 3.3.2) takes this one step further by

elaborating and giving many different examples, before showing how to answer these

questions. As such, since I included how to answer the questions in the video, I

decided to also create an additional infographic showing this process (section 3.3.3).

The next step in is Presentation. Again, I chose the elements I considered most important in

the creation of my infographics by:

a. Choosing the appropriate information: Although QUASI is a useful mnemonic device on

its own, it needs to be explained in order for students to remember and be able to use it

properly. This is why I decided to complement the infographic with a video. In this way,

the infographic, while not able to include all of the information that the video can,

8
 includes a link at the bottom where students and teachers can access the video. However,

after watching the video, the infographic stands as a useful element on its own, including

all the pertinent information: the acronym, the words that the acronym exemplifies, some

examples of each element of the acronym, and some additional examples of how the

acronym in a chart at the bottom.

b. Considering my target audience: See point (b) in Preparation (above).

Finally, step three is Design. Here, Serkan (2017) writes that the infographic should be

easy to read and to follow. For this reason, I have chosen to add only the basic information

necessary: the acronym, a brief explanation of the same, a few examples, and the link to the

video where students and teachers can find a more thorough explanation.

All of this is presented in a vertical, rather than a horizontal, infographic because,

according to Krum (2013), readers prefer a vertical layout (as quoted by Serkan, 2017).

Colours and fonts are also extremely important in the design process according to the

conclusions Serkan (2017) reached based on this research. The designers in this study had some

strong preferences towards what fonts and colours should be used in infographic design.

“Designers use warm colours (yellow, orange, red) in order to draw attention of readers

to the content about figures, drawings and similar visual objects and highlight these

objects…to highlight the important content and grab attention of readers on a certain

9
 point they want. Colours used in the process of visualization and shapes familiar to

readers increase memorability (). Cool colours (green, blue, purple) are preferred by

designers in the representation of the relationships, colouring texts and backgrounds

[b]ecause designers want to create elements supporting the content and don’t want

readers to focus on certain objects. The contrast created by warm and cool colours may

positively affect the effectiveness of the information to be transmitted (Michelle et. al,

2013, Dursun & Odabasi, 2011, as quoted by Serkan, 2017, p. 275).

For this reason, in the creation of my main infographic, I have used cool colours

(green/blue) for the background graphics, and a warm colour (red) for the information that I wanted

to highlight.

3.2. Videos

In effect, the video that I have created is an extended version of the infographic I have

described in the previous section. As such, many of the elements are the same. However, the video,

unlike the static infographic, is semi-interactive in that it has an audio component. The video asks

the students to consider the different elements of QUASI while it guides them through the process

of understanding each component and how to use them.

In the creation of the video, I have followed the three basic steps as laid out by Paolo et.

al. (2017) in ‘Lights, Camera, Action: Facilitating the Design and Production of Effective

Instructional Videos’. These are: 1. Planning, 2. Development, and 3. Delivery. The fourth step

10
proposed by this paper, Reflection, would be useful if this video were to be implemented in the

classroom, however for the purposes of this paper it has been left out.

Following these steps and the recommendations in the planning portion of the paper, I

decided to make sure the video was shorter than ten minutes long and divided into segments (Paolo

et. al., 2017). I also devised a script that I followed during the recording of the slideshow. Looking

back, if I were to do this activity again, I would have subtitled the video and/or had a transcript

available for the students, as “[a] transcript is beneficial for students to download for review or to

highlight sections while watching the video or for memorization of important parts” and also

avoids the problem of the video inadvertently discriminating against students with possible

problems of access (Paolo et. al., 2017, p. 455). The steps in the development and delivery will be

further below.

3.3. Creating my OERs

The elements that I have considered during the creation of my OER have been outlined in

the sections above. Here, I will explain exactly how I created each element.

3.3.1 The main infographic

Although I had some basic graphics already created for past work with QUASI, I wanted

to create something more visually appealing than the black and white poster I had previously

created (see appendix A). A lot of the elements I had created previously had been done with the

11
basic tools available in the Pages software. Even though this is a great way to create quick

resources for the classroom, I decided to use Canva (http://canva.com), an online software with

many free infographic templates to choose from. I found a variety of good options by searching

for ‘Educational Infographic’ in the search bar. As mentioned previously, I decided to choose

one of the vertical templates that had a layout out more or less similar to how I wanted my

infographic to look.

Once I had chosen the layout I wanted, I deleted the background image from the template

because I found it to be distracting and that it did not follow the basic design principle mentioned

above about simplicity. Then, I also changed the background colour, as grey was not one of the

colours mentioned as supporting a visually appealing infographic background by Serkan (2017).

To highlight the important information (QUASI and its subsets) I chose a warm colour (red) to

call the readers’ attention before finishing the infographic with a neutral colour (grey) to add in

additional information and examples. I used the same colours in the title and subtitles, before

adding a large graphic of a question mark to illustrate that the infographic was created in order to

explain questions. After finishing the infographic, I moved on to creating the video as a

supporting material.

3.3.2 The video

To create the video, I used a few different elements as software. First, I began by opening

a PowerPoint I had previously created for a different class, and then I opened the Keynote in

12
order to transfer over the pertinent information from that PowerPoint into Keynote so that I could

include it in the video.

In order to create the video on Keynote, I followed a similar procedure to that of the

creation of the infographic above - by preparing, presenting and designing – only this time I

prepared, designed and then presented.

In order to prepare, I needed to decide what kind of information I wanted to include in the

presentation. As this video was being created in order to be a supporting resource for the

infographic above, I needed to include all of the information on the infographic and then some. I

decided I would create the video as if it were for a virtual class, so that other teachers could use

the video as a resource in their classrooms, pausing and having students be involved. So, I

decided that throughout the presentation I would include animations that would allow for

questions to be asked before revealing their answers. For example, on slide three, the teacher has

the opportunity to pause the video and have students give more examples of acronyms in order to

make sure that students understand what an acronym is. On slide four, many different animations

have been built in so that the teacher can make sure that the students understand what each

element of QUASI is before asking them to form the final question.

As I was going through the preparation of this Keynote presentation, I realized that it was

important for students to also understand how to answer the questions. As such, I decided to

create another quick infographic using Pages, which I will explain in the section below, which

was included on slide seven.

13
 In order to design the slides, I used many graphics and animations, in order to keep the

video interesting for all age groups. Although I used some of the basic design features mentioned

before, highlighting important information in red or green, in the case of the background of the

presentation, I chose to use mainly black and white as contrasting colours, in order to keep it

fairly neutral for all audiences.

In order to record the slideshow, first I needed to make sure that I had all of my notes

written below the slides in the presentation about what I wanted to say. Then, I practiced a few

times as, once the presentation has been recorded, there is no way to go back and change just one

particular area. Therefore, it was very important to practice and make sure I knew what I was

going to say and how the presentation was going to flow before recording the final draft.

Once all of the preceding steps of the preparation and design stages of the video had been

completed, the video was ready to be created using the ‘Record Slideshow’ function of the

Keynote software and the built-in microphone on my computer. Once I had recorded the

presentation I had previously practiced to my satisfaction, I exported it to ‘Movie’, thereby

turning it into an mp4 file that could easily be uploaded to many different platforms. In this case,

I chose to upload it to YouTube, as this is one of the easiest ways to get videos out to be used as

an OER and has the potential to reach a large audience, since as of 2017 it is reported to have

more than one billion users (Paolo et. al., 2017).

14
 3.3.3 The supporting infographic

In creating the video portion of my OERs, I realized that it was important to teach

students how to answer the very questions they were learning how to ask. So, I thought that the

easiest and most functional way to include this information was also through an infographic. In

the case of this infographic, I decided the easiest way to create it would be through the Pages

software, since I am quite familiar with it.

Using the QUASI layout as the basis for the infographic, I first placed all the different

elements from the interrogative form into text boxes, which I then placed into different types of

boxes. Then, underneath the interrogative form, I laid out the answers in the same format. This

was done so that the students could clearly see that the auxiliary verb from the beginning of the

question is used at the end of the answer. In order to further illustrate this, I used an arrow

pointing from the auxiliary verb (A) box in the QUASI question portion of the infographic, to the

end in the answer portion of the infographic. The same was done to show that the subject (S),

passes down to the same position in the question as it is in the answer. Finally, the colours red

and green were used to illustrate the affirmative and negative responses. I also used a check mark

and an X to further illustrate this point.

Although this resource was originally created using the auxiliary verbs ‘do’, ‘does’ and

‘did’ and saved in PDF form, I have gone back and exported it to a Word file and saved it as

such so that teachers can use it to suit their needs. For example, if they are teaching with the

auxiliary verb ‘will’, they will be able to change the auxiliary verbs in the second box from ‘do’,

15
‘does, and ‘did’ to ‘will’. The same is true with all of the boxes. Now that they are all editable,

teachers can click on the text box they want to change and make examples that are suitable for

the students they are teaching. In this case, if a teacher is teaching a fourth-grade class, as I was,

there will be no problem with the examples. However, if the teacher is teaching in an adult

language class, perhaps the example ‘Does she study Natural Science?’ may not be the most

appropriate and need to be changed into something more authentic for that audience like ‘Does

she work in an office?’.

Both this infographic and the main infographic were uploaded to the filesharing website

Scribd since it is a platform that I am familiar with and use frequently.

4. Conclusions

My goals in the creation of these OERs have been threefold. First and foremost, I hope

that they will be able to be used by students to improve their understanding of how to make

question in English in a practical, memorable manner that will serve them in their everyday lives.

I hope that by introducing the acronym QUASI in a visual way, both through the infographic and

the video, that they will remember the proper order of the elements and be able to implement

them more easily.

Secondly, I have created these resources so that they can be used by other teachers, to

help them help their students understand and remember how to make questions using auxiliary

verbs. For this reason, I have gone back and made the second QUASI infographic editable and

allowed for the video to be paused by including questions that can easily be used in a classroom

to involve students in the learning process. This was all done using a neutral colour palate and

16
tone so that it was neither too infantile for adults, nor too mature for primary students. My hope

is that this resource can be used by teachers of all levels.

Furthermore, as one final side note, I suggest that the teacher using these resources play

the game ‘Headbandz’ after practicing these concepts with their students, to support and

encourage students’ retaining this knowledge, and in order to engage them in a way that is both

motivating and fun. This game will allow students to practice their reading skills and develop

their speaking skills. A printable version of this game can be found in appendix B, but it is also

possible to have the students create their own cards in order to practice their writing skills,

thereby engaging all four of the major skill groups.

17
5. Bibliography

Adiari, n/d. ‘Hedbanz cards’. BusyTeacher. https://busyteacher.org/22173-hedbanz-cards.html

Beetham, H., Falconer, I., McGill, L. and Littlejohn, A. (2012). Open practices: briefing paper.

JISC. https://oersynth.pbworks.com/w/page/51668352/OpenPracticesBriefing

Kozinska, K.; Kursun, E.; Wilson, T.; McAndrew, P.; Scanlon, E. and Jones, A. (2010). Are

open educational resources the future of e-learning? In: 3rd International Future-Learning

Conference: Innovations in Learning for the Future, 10-14 May 2010, Istanbul, Turkey.

Martín-Monje, E. and Bárcena, E. (2015). Language MOOCs. Providing Learning, Transcending

Boundaries. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. Retrieved 25 May. 2019, from

https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/455678

Oxford University Press. (2019). “Infographic | Definition of Infographic in English by Oxford

Dictionaries.” Oxford Dictionaries | English, Oxford Dictionaries.

en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/infographic.

Paolo, T., Wakefield, J., Mills, S., & Baker, L. (2017). Lights, Camera, Action: Facilitating the

Design and Production of Effective Instructional Videos. TechTrends, 61(5), 452-460.

18
Serkan Yildirim. (2017). APPROACHES OF DESIGNERS IN THE DEVELOPED

EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES OF INFOGRAPHICS' DESIGN PROCESSES.

http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.231283

UNESCO, 2012. 2012 Paris OER Declaration. 2012 World Open Educational Resources (OER)

Congress.

http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/Events/Paris%20OER%20

Declaration_01.pdf

19
6. Appendices

6.1 Appendix A

QUASI
* there is a different formula for the verb to be *

QU = Question word ( Who, what, where, why, how many/much )

A = Auxiliary verb ( Do, does, did, can, could )
S = Subject ( I, you, he/she/it, the hotel, the classes, we, they )
I = Infinitive verb ( play, cost, go, study, etc. )

20
6.2 Appendix B

Adiari, n/d.*

(see bibliography for link to full PowerPoint presentation on BusyTeacher)

21