Building an Open and Interactive Cantonese Textbook for Beginners

Project Title	Building an Open and Interactive Cantonese Textbook for Beginners
Principal Investigator	Zoe Lam
Co-Applicants	-Raymond Pai, Acting Director, Cantonese Language Program, Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, -Lily Chan, Sessional Lecturer, Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts -Dr. Liam Doherty, Sessional Lecturer, Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts -Samily Kwok, Sessional Lecturer, Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts -Celia Sze, Sessional Lecturer, Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts
Faculty	Arts
Funding Year	2026
Project Summary	This project will develop an open online textbook with accompanying interactive activities for CNTO 311 Basic Cantonese for Mandarin Speakers (enrolment = 690 per year) to replace the current physical textbook which will soon be out-of-print. Our goals are to (1) eliminate students’ expenses on textbooks to achieve affordability; (2) tailor-make content for a diasporic context to highlight the diversity of Cantonese communities in the world, hence erasing stigma about dialects and non-typical accents; and (3) build interactive H5P content (such as self-diagnostic ungraded quizzes for formative asynchronous learning) and rich multimedia that enhance learners’ agency and autonomy in hybrid and online classes, allowing instructors to leverage the impact of a flipped classroom. Feedback will be elicited from students, TAs, instructors, and authors of the old textbook throughout the process via formal and informal channels to enable iterative improvement of a sustained educational resource.
Grant type	OER Affordability
Funded Amount	$14,464