MOBILE VOTING TOOLS FOR CREATING A NEW DESIGN OF INTERACTIVE LECTURE

The objective of this paper is to investigate the pedagogical impact of mobile voting tools on creating collaborative environment at university lecture courses and getting immediate feedback from large classes. Our research demonstrated that integration of mobile voting app Student Response System (SRS) created in Norwegian University HiST (Trondheim) influenced not only lecture design - time management, the mode of material presentation, activity switch patterns - but also learners8teacher interaction, student collaboration and output, formats of activities and tasks. SRS supported lectures help instructors gradually get the grasp of a new type of digital classroom - flipped classroom, and then, in the long run, MOOC lecturing. The analysis based on qualitative and quantitative data collected from 56 undergraduate students showed that SRS supported lectures enhance their motivation, improve their intercultural competence and language skills

Digital Competences for Language Teachers: Do Employers Seek the Skills Needed from Language Teachers Today?

Language proficiency is essential for 21st Century skills, and for the ability to obtain and utilize new competencies in the future. Digitalization is greatly affecting the language learning settings, and more digital skills are needed amongst teachers. Thus, it is interesting to see what kind of demands the new working life puts on the future language teachers in all areas of the sector. To better understand the role of national policies on digital competence and their impact on language teacher’s recruitment, this study investigates existing strategies for digital competence for language teachers in 11 countries, and their representation in job announcements. The study uses qualitative content analysis as well as quantitative analysis represented by descriptive statistics. The former includes document analysis of strategies on different levels and gives an overview of existing trends and new tendencies considering digital skills for language teachers. The latter comprises a search and classification of 854 job announcements throughout Europe according to three levels of digital competences to see which skills are being asked for when hiring language teachers. The results indicate that there are discrepancies between strategies being implemented at overarching levels and the institutional practices. We also demonstrate discrepancies between the needs described for the 21st Century and the defined skills in the job announcements. Among other results, the study highlights the need for more targeted job announcements to attract teachers with the desired digital skills

Language Teacher Trainer Guide on Digital Competences: Practical instructions and advice on how to organize digital competence training for language teachers

Digital Competences for Language Teachers – DC4LT project has received funding from the European Union’s Erasmus Plus programme, grant agreement 2018-1- NO01-KA203-038837