Loading
Quality teaching has become an issue of importance, but learning to teach in higher education too often a difficult undertaking. A Communication from the Commission on a Renewed Agenda for Higher Education (2017) mentions the disturbing fact that “too many higher education teachers have received little or no pedagogical training”. This is a matter of particular concern for teachers and learners of Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) in VET and higher education institutions that do not lead to degrees in languages, where language skills are expected to enhance mobility and employability. Since LSP is in direct relationship with the world of work, it is assumed to play a key role to create multilingual and mobile citizens. The importance of language skills for the labour market is emphasized in different EU documents such as Multilingualism: An Asset for Europe and a Shared Commitment (European Commission, 2008) or The European Strategy for Multilingualism (2008) which promote mobility of the labour force in the Single Market, employability and growth in Europe.The objective of this project is to provide students and teachers of Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) with a multilingual online course which allows them to acquire the competences needed for a successful implementation of teaching languages in a specific context. The developed online course targets future and early career teachers which may not have received sufficient education in LSP teaching given the prevalent gaps in LSP teacher training in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The aim is to develop an online course which will be made available to the LSP community as an Open Educational Resource (OER). The OER solution will be implemented as self-directed course content on a learning management system (LMS). The LMS will allow interested parties to self-enrol and study the course content in its entirety or those sections which are deemed of special interest. The course content will be available in all languages of the strategic partnership consortium, namely in Croatian, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Slovenian and Turkish. It will be available online but can also be downloaded and integrated into existing institutional LMS systems.The strategic partnership consortium consists of ten member institutions out of which nine are directly involved as teachers of languages for specific purposes (LSP). The project will involve a number of activities which will lead to a multilingual online LSP teacher training course as an Open Educational Resource (OER). Firstly, existing LSP teacher education and development programmes are analysed and synthesised. An online teaching methodology will be defined and multilingual course content for LSP teacher education and development will be created. An open online course for new LSP teacher education development will be created and piloted, and a large-scale trialling will take place involving a high number of LSP students and practitioners. The use of learning analytics (LA), statistical tools and machine learning algorithms will allow the consortium to identify typical learning itineraries which will allow partners to develop different learning pathways as a guideline for interested users.The project activities include a number of different methods, reaching from desktop research and analyses and qualitative discourse analyses of feedback given to highly innovative quantitative methods including supervised and unsupervised machine learning and computerised analytics.Upon completion of the project, LSP students, practitioners and stakeholders can use a multilingual online course to acquire relevant competences for LSP teaching. The course will guide interested parties through the developed contents by means of individual learning pathways. The course will also be available as on Open Educational Resource (OER) for download and integration into institutional learning management systems (LMS).The expected impact is to develop partnerships aimed at providing and promoting knowledge and skills for high quality teaching and learning of LSP in VET and in higher education. LSP institutions and individual practitioners will be able to use both the developed LSP teacher training online course and make use of all material disseminated throughout the project.This will lead to longer-term benefits such as a more unified way of learning and teaching languages for specific purposes (LSP), increased intercultural awareness, innovative digital learning activities allowing for individual progression, better developed skills in LSP language teaching and in using innovative digital learning tools, shared experience and material and, in general, positive changes in the attitude towards LSP learning and teaching.
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
document.write('<div id="oa_widget"></div>');
document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.openaire.eu/index.php?option=com_openaire&view=widget&format=raw&projectId=erasmusplus_::d6266fc0edcee3700661213e69f1468c&type=result"></script>');
-->
</script>