This piece is part of a series by participants in the Winter 2026 Open Knowledge Fellowship, coordinated by the Mina Rees Library. Fellows will share insight into the process of converting a syllabus to openly-licensed and/or zero-cost resources, as well as their experiences teaching undergraduate courses at CUNY.
Lisa Di Battista is a language instructor at Hunter College and Lehman College, CUNY, teaching Elementary Italian. Her work focuses on accessible language pedagogy and inclusive classroom practices. She is committed to designing courses that reduce barriers to participation and foster student confidence from the first day of class.
In more than one semester, and in more than one class, I have heard a version of the same sentence from students: “I can’t afford the book yet.” Or sometimes: “I’ll try to get it next week.” Or, more quietly: “I don’t have it.”
In an elementary language course, not having the textbook is not a small inconvenience. It means not having a guide. It means not having structured exercises to review from. It often means not taking notes because the student assumes the book will eventually “explain everything.” When that book never arrives, the student falls behind—not because of ability or motivation, but because of access.
That recurring experience is what led me to apply for the Open Knowledge Fellowship. I wanted to rethink whether a commercial textbook should be the backbone of an introductory Italian language course at a public university like CUNY. If the first weeks of a course already create a divide between those who can immediately purchase materials and those who cannot, then something fundamental needs to shift.
Through the Fellowship, I redesigned my Elementary Italian course so that all required materials are freely accessible from the first day of class. Instead of relying on a single textbook, I curated and organized a range of open resources—grammar explanations, vocabulary lists, short readings, listening activities, and cultural materials—and assembled them into a coherent digital course site.
The process was not simple. Unlike some other disciplines, open educational resources for Italian language instruction are often scattered. It is easier to find individual worksheets or isolated grammar explanations than a complete, structured curriculum. There is no perfect open textbook that fully replaces a commercial one. As a result, redesigning the course required careful selection, sequencing, and adaptation.
In many ways, this constraint became an opportunity. Rather than trying to replicate a textbook chapter by chapter, I asked myself: What do my students truly need in order to begin speaking, reading, and writing in Italian? What forms of practice are most meaningful? How can cultural materials be integrated from the start, rather than treated as secondary?
The result is a course that feels more flexible and more responsive. Because the materials are digital and open, I can revise them throughout the semester, add contemporary cultural content, and adjust explanations as confusion emerges. Students can access everything from their phones, laptops, or library computers without waiting for financial aid or sharing PDFs informally.
Most importantly, from day one, everyone is working from the same page—literally and figuratively.
For CUNY students, this shift matters. Many of my students balance work, family responsibilities, and full course loads. The cost of textbooks is not abstract; it is part of a larger calculation about rent, transportation, and food. Removing that cost does not solve every structural challenge, but it removes an immediate barrier to engagement.
In a language classroom, engagement is everything. Students need to practice regularly, revisit materials, and feel supported as they make mistakes. When access to core materials is uncertain, confidence erodes quickly. By making the course fully open, I hope to create a more stable foundation—one in which participation is not delayed by affordability.
One area that remains a challenge is assessment. Commercial textbooks often come with ready-made quizzes, online platforms, and automated grading systems. When working with open resources, instructors must rethink how to design assessments that align with the curated materials while remaining fair, rigorous, and sustainable. This ongoing question has pushed me to design more communicative assessments—short written reflections, recorded speaking tasks, and in-class activities—that prioritize language use over workbook-style completion.
The move to open resources has therefore reshaped not only what my students read, but how I evaluate their learning.
Below are some of the open resources that informed my course redesign:
- Open-access Italian grammar materials and worksheets available through OER Commons
- Publicly available Italian news clips and cultural media archives
- Openly licensed language-learning videos and pronunciation guides
- Digital flashcard tools and collaborative vocabulary platforms
The full open course site can be accessed here: Italian 112
If learning a new language means learning to inhabit a new voice, then the first responsibility of an instructor is to ensure that nothing prevents students from beginning to speak. Making my Elementary Italian course open is not a final solution, but it is a concrete step toward aligning my teaching practices with the realities my students navigate every day.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
