10th LLAS e-Learning Symposium: looking back and looking forward on technology enhanced learning for languages by Pilar Gray-Carlos

LLAS (Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies) recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of the annual e-Learning Symposium at Southampton. During the past 10 years the e-Learning Symposium has provided an area where academics and educators in the field of linguistics and languages have had a common place to share innovation, creativity and results of the use of new technologies applied to teaching and learning languages.

This 10th anniversary has provided an opportunity to briefly pause to look back and reflect on how we have tackled the challenges and opportunities in the past years. A reflection particularly highlighted by Marion Sadoux, (Director of the Language Centre, University of Nottingham, Ningbo) in her key note: “10 years on, challenging 10 venerable Assumptions about Languages and e-Learning” where she provides her experience on challenges, ideas and beliefs, that technology enhanced learning has brought to the language community. As key notes go, it is also worth mentioning both the opening key note on a very much in vogue area, MOOCs, given by Sara Person and Chris Cavey (British Council); and the closing key note: an account of a personal journey through digital and networked technologies, shared by Benoit Guilbaoud (University of Manchester).

Contributors to this 10th edition presented a wide range of projects. There were projects based on collaboration (Collaborative productions of learning objects on French literary works using LOC software, Christian Penman, Edinburgh Napier University; Identity and participation in telecollaboration, Francesca Helm, University of Padova Italy); projects for student mobility, (ICTell Project: virtual exchanges to prepare for student mobility, Marta Giralt and Catherine Jeanneau, University of Limerick); and projects that explore the use of mobile apps such as WhatsApp to prepare for year abroad (Isabel Cobo-Palacios, Billy Brick and Tiziana Cervi-Wilson, Coventry University) or twitter both for language boosting (Alessia Plutino, University of Southampton) and as a community of practice tool for language learners (Fernando Rosell-Aguilar, Open University). Together with a variety of papers on the use of wikis and blogs, reflection on MOOCS, blended learning, etc.

The symposium also offered the opportunity to participate in workshops such as the use of digital video and online discussions; blended learning techniques to maximise lexical retention; tips for telecollaboration with VLEs and using free  digital tools (SpeakApps) for encouraging speaking and learning.

The world has become a bigger place, access to information is faster and varied, and the demand to respond to new tools for and manners of delivery is here to stay, so will the LLAS e-Learning Symposium be. It will continue to help us to stay connected, to explore, and to share our ideas with our colleagues not only in the UK but across the world.

Watch the recording of plenary sessions at https://www.llas.ac.uk/livestream or for more detailed information on some of the case studies visit http://research-publishing.net/publications/10-years-of-the-llas-elearning-symposium-case-studies-in-good-practice/

Digital teaching in Classics –a recent conference at the University by Dr Matthew Nicholls

The University of Reading recently hosted the Classical Association Conference, the UK’s largest annual meeting for Classicists. As well as research papers, the CA traditionally hosts panels exploring the teaching of the subject at both school and University levels and covering new developments. Classics, despite its ancient subject matter, has always been at the forefront of modern digital techniques of teaching and research, as recent work here at Reading shows.

This year’s CA featured a series of panels dedicated to e-learning, and as ever school and university teaching staff enjoyed the chance to learn what new developments each others’ professions had found to be useful (or not). In The first panel, teachers discussed their use of online learning environments, and pupils’ use of and response to using digital classroom tools for collaborative learning in a session which led into a general and wide-ranging audience discussion on the merits and demerits of VLEs. A second panel considered the application of IT resources to language teaching via heavily interactive digital resources of various sorts. New classroom IT offers the scope for social collaboration via wiki-like pages, and for the development of learning resources that are project- and problem-based. On the other hand, VLE’s can lag behind commercial or social software in the ‘real world’, which shapes student expectations. The incorporation of social media in teaching contexts can blur the boundaries between social and paedagogic interactions in ways that can be both productive and challenging – the appropriate etiquette around appropriate Facebook use, for example, continues to develop for both pupils and teachers. The panels considered the need to make IT resources engaging enough to capture student engagement when the online environment can create an expectation of game-like experiences, while still delivering robust content and structure.

These panels reflected a growing interest in tools and techniques for digital learning, a topic of much current interest in our own University. The overall impression from the panel I chaired was that there is much excitement about what has already been developed, and what is about to come (MOOCs were mentioned more than once). At the same time, there was a sense that the pace of change can make it hard to back the right horse – that time, effort, or money directed at a current device or platform might be worth very little in a couple of years, and that solid, ‘committee-designed’ platforms within institutions can lag behind nimbler commercial offerings. Students are now such practiced digital consumers that any frustrations or shortcomings in (for instance) a VLE are likely to disrupt their use of it quite substantially, and make it hard for us to direct them to the digital resources that we want them to use. The same seems to be true in the school classroom. When done well, however, results seem to show a promising uplift in performance and student engagement; the consensus was that digital methods of teaching definitely deserve their growing place in the teaching toolkit.

The conference panels also helped to address what seemed to be a shared sense of frustration that successful initiatives can develop in isolation, with practitioners in different sectors or institutions working on similar projects but unknown to each other. Conferences like this help to bring such people together, and as ever the chance to talk to and learn from people across one’s own field and beyond was very rewarding for all concerned.