Modern languages and mentoring: Lessons from digital learning in Wales

This article considers the role that mentoring, and in particular online mentoring, can play in tackling the decline in modern language learning at GCSE level in Wales. • It evaluates Digi-Languages, a blended learning experience that pairs university student linguists with secondary school learners of languages to improve MFL uptake at GCSE. • This article examines the conception, design and early outcomes of DigiLanguages. • The article evaluates the experiential learning of the mentees (Year 9 learners) and explores the ethos underpinning resource development and the project’s key messaging around culture and languages. • The article provides recommendations for the expansion of Digi-Languages to support broader language policy objectives in Wales, including the Welsh Government’s policy of one million Welsh speakers by 2050. • The article concludes with suggestions for the extension of Digi-Languages to other regions of the UK and overseas and its potential as a model for stimulating inter-cultural conversations on the lifelong value of languages

e-Learning and the Reconfiguration of Higher Education – Disruptive, Innovative and Inevitable

This first part of this paper gives a concise overview of how e-learning ‘works’. The second part suggests the inevitability of more and moreteaching and learning taking place in the e-learning context. It touches on some of the communication challenges academics face in moving from thelecture format to the online format and describes some of the challenges that lecturers, tutors and managers face in implementing e-learning successfully