Innovation in Language Learning

From 2010 until 2015, the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports (NEXS) at the University of Copenhagen offered, in cooperation with the Center of Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use (CIP), a pre-semester introductory workshop on English Medium Instruction (EMI) for all students in the English-based master programme. This highly successful two-day workshop presented the students with the opportunity to establish the level of their individual English skills, to understand the requirements of English academic skills in the master programme, and to obtain tools and strategies to cope with the challenges of EMI.
Under the auspices of the Language Strategy, a research-supported project aimed at improving the language skills of the students across the University of Copenhagen (2013 – 2018), NEXS in cooperation with CIP, ‘reinvented’ the EMI workshop and developed on the existing learning platform an online blended learning design of the original onsite workshop: The Toolbox for English Medium Instruction (TOEMI). Maintaining the same high standard of knowledge delivery but offering more flexibility through the e-learning format, the department aims to reach an increasing number of students willing to prepare for EMI and thereby further supporting the learning process of the students.
The TOEMI consists of online lectures on the four academic skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking), screencasts on how to read academic articles and texts, links to relevant websites, further reading and online self-assessment tools.
In this talk, I will elaborate on (1) the general background of the TOEMI, (2) the challenges we experienced in developing the videos such as, for example, the pitfalls of ‘teaching’ in front of a camera, and (3) the efficiency of the videos (as opposed to in class teaching). Finally, I will present our preliminary experiences and reflections of teachers and students on the transfer from a face-to-face language workshop to a blended learning design. To illustrate my talk, I will show short clips of the TOEMI videos.

Keywords: EMI, academic literacy, digital learning;