The QuILL Project: embracing digital technology in LSP teaching in Higher Education
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Digital education readiness has been much promoted by the European Union through the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (Redecker, 2017) and education stakeholders, whose aim is to foster the improvement of digital competences of both teachers and students within the education area. The European project QuILL – Quality in Language Learning, approved in the scope of the call ‘Strategic Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness’, embraces the challenge of providing higher education lecturers and students with digital technology-based teaching resources supporting them in their teaching and learning. With more than 360 teaching and learning resources available on the QuILL portal, the higher education (HE) lecturers are offered a plethora of open educational online resources (OER) for 18 European languages focusing on Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP). These have been tested and validated in real-case teaching scenarios allowing thus the teachers to use or adapt the resources suggested as well as the methodologies provided as guidelines. The aim of this paper is to showcase some of these resources and demonstrate how digital tools and resources account for more innovative methodologies when teaching LSP, following Arnó (2012). Moreover, we shall also focus on the project’s second Intellectual Output (IO2) which consists in the creation of an e-learning based package addressed to higher education LSP lecturers specifically aimed to guide them in innovating their language teaching methodologies through the effective use of quality digital based OER teaching sources. Three different modules comprise this package addressing the identification, use and creation of quality digital based language teaching source. We shall provide results that attest the impact and effectiveness of this e-learning based package by means of case studies on the three modules and the results of interactive tests assessing lecturers’ knowledge on the main aspects focused on in the e-learning package.
In the Translation master at the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, we give priority to a socioconstructivist approach (e.g. Kiraly, 2000, 2006) to our teaching, making the most of our practical courses, namely Translation Practices, Audiovisual Translation (AVT) and Terminology and Terminography. Whenever possible, we engage in transdisciplinary work among these courses, as well as privileging authentic projects that can have an impact on the IPB or our local community. Within the AVT course, we can pinpoint a number of projects where we had to carry out the subtitling of videos of a technical and scientific nature, such as “E-Learning from Nature” (ref. no. 2015-1-IT02-KA201-015133, supported by the European Commission, under the Erasmus+ Programme), IPBike (funded by U-Bike Portugal) and “Valor Natural” (Valorization of natural resources through the extraction of ingredients of high added value to the application in food industry – project no. 24479 coordinated by CIMO and co-funded by Norte 2020). While the first project aimed at “promoting a proactive students’ approach to scientific subjects learning”, as well as “propos[ing] innovative teaching methodologies to scientific teachers” (cf. official website), the second intended to advertise the use of green means of transport in higher education institutions and the third to disseminate information on natural resources to be used in food industries, especially textiles, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. As an expected output, all of these projects envisaged the production of videos that intended to vulgarise scientific knowledge for diverse audiences in a myriad of areas of knowledge. The videos were to be subtitled into Portuguese (for people with hearing disability) and into English, a task that was undertaken by different groups of students throughout 3 academic years. Not only was the level of English remarkedly miscellaneous among these students, but also their terminology was often disparate, even when translating within the same conceptual area. Despite the concern with the standardisation of the terminology used, in a conscious evolution from previous projects, we still encountered terminological issues. As such, our intention with this paper is to assess the development of these authentic projects, focusing on the following criteria: workflow management; terminology standardisation; meeting the subtitling standards; and the final outcome. With this analytical exercise, we seek to improve practices for future projects and draw a set of recommendations that balance the relation between Translation and Terminology.
“Remembering the Past, Learning for the Future: Research-Based Digital Learning from Testimonies of Survivors and Rescuers of the Holocaust” [ID 740639658] was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. Via the international partnership (USC Shoah Foundation, Zachor Foundation, Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, and the University of Luxembourg), the CEAUL team developed a suite of materials for educators and the general public using testimony from witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust through digital tools, with an innovative pedagogical methodology. As stated by the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre (online), “Survivor testimonies are first-hand accounts from individuals who had lived through the Holocaust or genocide and their stories help students to understand and empathise more deeply with the human (and inhuman) aspects of mass atrocities”.
The project aimed to achieve seven objectives, of which we highlight the following: 1) the research in the Visual History Archive of the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation (an archive that contains 54,975 video testimonies of survivors and rescuers of the Holocaust – 563 in Portuguese); 2) the creation of a Portuguese language microsite on the IWitness platform for the resources developed; and 3) the development of 6 digital, testimony-based educational materials on the IWitness platform in Portuguese. The assumption of such a project consisted of effectively integrating ICT into education materials to improve students’ skills, namely what has come to be known as 21st century skills (e.g., critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration). Despite the seemingly historical emphasis of the project’s resources, their main goal has been to stir discussion in the History and Portuguese Language classrooms, to name a few, and encourage empathy based on historical events that regrettably are still up-to-date.
Therefore, we intend to present one of the six activities created within this project that target the Portuguese compulsory secondary education and Higher Education levels, where we sought to build a story around the topic “The Rescuers”. By using the strategy of storytelling (cf. Schallié & Spaar, 2021, online), each activity intertwined excerpts of different testimonies that ultimately enabled the construction of a/the bigger picture. We also wish to account on the manner students received this particular activity, by retrieving information from teachers and students’ reports.
