As the summer ends, we look forward upcoming collaborations within the ENACT team. We are finalising our assessment and recognition tools (Output 3) and getting ready to launch our web app! Watch this space!
The summer has been very busy and at times turbulent for most of us. As we tried to adjust to new ways of working online, conferences we planned to attend also moved online and we delivered two virtual presentations.
The first one was Evaluation of Emerging Technologies in the Classroom on 21-22 June 2020. The workshop was organised as part of The ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC) conference 2020 (17-24 June 2020). Dr Müge Satar and Prof Paul Seedhouse gave a talk on the evaluation of learning in real-world digital environments and the implications of Covid-19 restrictions on activities and assessment tools.
The second conference we presented at was The International Virtual Exchange Conference (IVEC), which is the largest and most prominent event on virtual exchange, providing a forum for anyone interested in technology, international education, and new pedagogies. This year almost 500 delegates were hosted online by Newcastle University’s School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences from 14-16 September. In our workshop (Doods, C. B., Kharrufa, A,. Satar, M., & Whelan, A.), we presented a model of virtual exchange facilitated by interactive, digital, cultural artefacts created using a progressive web-app developed by the EU-funded ENACT project team. During the workshop, we demonstrated the web-app to the participants, and proposed a virtual exchange model for Higher Education that incorporates ENACT activities as part of an online intercultural exchange. The exchange is due to commence in Autumn 2020 as part of an existing ongoing exchange between Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Sadler, R. & Dooly, M., 2016). We are currently exploring opportunities for the Newcastle University MA Applied Linguistics and TESOL students’ involvement in the exchange as the third partner.
The workshop helped participants to learn how to use the app, and they developed an understanding of how innovative technologies can facilitate deeper, immersive virtual intercultural exchange experiences that go beyond talking about culture and that offer hands-on cultural experiences based on learning by doing.
Doods, C. B., Kharrufa, A,. Satar, M., & Whelan, A. (2020). Virtual exchange facilitate by interactive, digital, cultural artefacts: Communities, Languages, and Activities App (ENACT). Workshop presented at the International Virtual Exchange Conference (2020), Newcastle University, Online.
Sadler, R. & Dooly, M. (2016). Twelve years of telecollaboration: what we have learnt. ELT Journal, 70(4): 401–413. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccw041
17/09/2020