The impact of online technologies and English Medium Instruction on university lectures in international learning contexts: A systematic review

This paper addresses how the university lecture is evolving in response to new realities in international higher education driven by two important trends: innovative online instructional technologies and the rise of English Medium Instruction (EMI). Following a brief review of the lecture as the core instructional channel in universities, we offer a detailed overview of the new technology-driven lecture formats that are now available to learners worldwide. We then shift the focus to the role of EMI, with particular attention to understanding how both instructors and students view this relatively new approach to learning. This was accomplished through a systematic review of EMI-related literature available on scholarly databases. Findings showed that most research has focused on the language-related issues of learners, and little attention has been paid to the crucial issue of lecture comprehension, which is mainly caused by the low level of proficiency of students/instructors and domain-specific vocabulary. Moreover, studies have almost exclusively addressed face-to-face settings, indicating a need to expand EMI research to include online lecture settings that are increasingly frequent in international higher education. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge relating to new trends in how lectures are experienced and perceived in international educational settings

#InstagramELE: Learning Spanish Through a Social Network

Social networking (SN) tools have the potential to contribute to language learning because they promote linguistic interactions in person-to-person communication, increasing the opportunities to process input in the L2, engaging learners in negotiation of meaning and requiring learners to produce L2 output, as proposed in the interactionist theory by Long (1985, 1996). These virtual personal connections with other learners and language experts around the world could provide a rich environment for sociocultural language exchanges (following the principles of the sociocultural approach proposed by Lantolf, 2002, based on the work of Vygotsky, 1978) that may increase motivation for learning, develop L2 sociopragmatic competence and learners’ online identities through expression, interaction and community building, as researchers have found (see Lomicka & Lord, 2010, for a summary of SN research). In addition, social networking is also believed to promote autonomous learning because the learners take responsibility of their own learning process in socially interactive environments by exploring the L2 through communication, collaboration and experimentation (Blake, 2013). Due to the popularity of social networking sites such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, language teachers have explored different ways to integrate them into the language education curriculum. This presentation will describe the #InstagramELE global learning community of Spanish learners and teachers. Instagram involves sharing photos and images that lend themselves to the development of descriptive language. The use of visual elements often leads nicely into cultural issues and development of cultural awareness and competence. We will describe an instructional task, the #instragramELE challenge, that could be a vehicle for the acquisition of new vocabulary, cultural topics, and the development of reading and writing expression. This challenge has already accumulated more than 30000 tagged photos, from all over the world. We will also discuss its benefits and challenges as an autonomous learning tool and some ideas for classroom implementation and teacher training

A Video-Mediated EFL Learning: Highlighting Indonesian Students’ Voices

The emergence of videos as instructional media in the EFL learning contexts has provided meaningful values to learners’ learning experiences. There have been many studies investigated the effectiveness of the videos in EFL field. However, this study presents a gap in the literature regarding the acceptance of videos usages of Indonesian senior high school students who learn English as a foreign language. This study employed quantitative survey research by distributing a closed questionnaire to one hundred fifteen students from the tenth grade of a state senior high school. Overall, participants showed positive voices towards using videos to support their learning in terms of ease of use, learning opportunities, learning experience, and preferences. With regard to the actual use of videos in learning, most students spent at least 1-2 hours watching videos in and outside the classrooms. The availability of smartphones contributes significantly to ease video access. Moreover, social media networking, such as Youtube, Instagram, and WhatsApp, provides more video sources for the student. Amongst the video types enjoyed by the students, videos of interviews, tutorials, explanations, vlogs, profiles, and testimonials were their preferences

Open educational resources and practices in China: a systematic literature review

The concepts of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP), regarded as two pillars of the broader open education movement, have been evolving since the concept of OER was first coined in the 2012 Paris Declaration. Several research studies have been conducted to investigate the impacts of OER and OEP adoption and implementation in universities. However, most of those studies have focused on western and developed countries, and little information is known about developing countries, especially Asian ones. Particularly, China was one of the first Asian countries to adopt open education and its related strategies following the MIT OpenCourseWare conference in Beijing in 2003. This study conducts a systematic literature review to investigate the current state of the art of OER and OEP in China. The findings show that several governmental, organizational, and institutional initiatives have been launched to facilitate OER adoption in China. They also show that while several OEPs have been implemented, there is still a continuous need to work on these practices and further investigate their impacts on learning outcomes and behaviors, as no current reviewed study has done so. Finally, a generic framework of OER and OEP challenges is presented along with recommendations to further enhance the adoption of OER and OEP in Chin

A call for critical and open pedagogies in Spanish heritage language instruction: Students as knowledge producers of Open Educational Resources (OERs)

This paper stresses the urgent need to implement critical and open pedagogies in language teaching, especially in the Spanish heritage language classroom. Language courses are often compulsory in secondary and higher education and typically employ traditional pedagogical models that are structured by grammar and/or communication tasks. This study introduces how heritage language teaching emerged as a field of study in the United States and offers a brief overview of critical and open pedagogies and their connection to open educational resources. This paper then introduces critical and open pedagogies to teaching Spanish as a heritage language, followed by a critical look at the existing Spanish teaching material. As an alternative to this material, this article shares a project titled “Discovering El Barrio” which addresses an innovative and productive pedagogical practice carried out by a Spanish heritage language class at Lehman College, CUNY. In this project, Spanish heritage language learners (HLL) became producers of authentic teaching and learning materials for second language (L2) Spanish learners

The Opportunity of Now: Adopting Open Educational Resources in the Sociology Classroom and Beyond

There is no better time than now fort sociologists to adopt open educational resources (OER), and sociology as a discipline is well positioned to lead. Adopting OER takes seriously the well-documented financial challenges faced by many students, supports classroom and campus goals of equity and inclusion, and allows for increased instructor flexibility. However, OER are not without their difficulties and limitations. This conversation article suggests four ways for instructors to begin or advance their utilization of OER. Ask your librarian, start with an open textbook, join the existing OER conversation, and incorporate OER within one\u27s broader commitment to inclusive and empathetic pedagogy

CercleS 2022

CHAIRPERSON Manuel Moreira da Silva, Instituto Politécnico do Porto, Portugal EDITORS Ana Gonçalves, Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies, Portugal Célia Tavares, Instituto Politécnico do Porto, Portugal Joaquim Guerra, Universidade do Algarve, Portugal Luciana Oliveira, Instituto Politécnico do Porto, Portugal Manuel Moreira da Silva, Instituto Politécnico do Porto, Portugal Ricardo Soares, Instituto Politécnico do Porto, PortugalCercleS 2022 The Future of Language Education in an Increasingly Digital World: Embracing ChangeN/

Pragmatics in Game Activities, Humor, and Technology in Second Language Learning

This portfolio compiles work the author explored and developed during the Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program at Utah State University (USU). It encompasses a range of experiences from teaching abroad and at USU, insights from the observation of other classrooms, and reflections from studies in the MSLT program. Three distinct sections comprise the portfolio: teaching perspectives, research perspectives, and an annotated bibliography. The teaching perspectives detail beliefs regarding games, computer technology, humor, and pragmatics and how they influence second language learning based on the author’s personal experiences. The research perspectives and annotated bibliography elaborate further on those topics by investigating related research findings