We have winners ! Hackathon for teachers of languages for specific purposes’ results

Posted on by Giulia Torresin

 

Resources to teach languages for specific purposes (namely for a specific profession or subject) are scarce- an initiative to encourage content creation in teams of persons located remotely has been launched by the Catapult partnership.

With the motto “Co-create language resources for languages for specific purposes!”, a hackathon was organized in 12-13 November 2020, as part of DigiEduHack, which is a series of offline and online hackathons happening all around the world for two days, focusing on co-creating the future of education at the digital age.

Participants were students or teachers of languages (including languages for specific purpose) who got together and co-created language resources for their needs. We used Slack for remote group work and Zoom for real-time interactions in small groups of 2-3 persons. 21 persons registered to the hackathon.

The winning team, composed by Margarita Chatzoudi, Elizabetta Cazzolla , Danai Koutsoumpeli, submitted the project “The architecture through historical monuments ». It can be found here. Certificates of participation were given to all team members and the three winners received a gift card of 60 euros each.

Host of the event was Web2Learn, a company specializing in open and social learning services in the vocational and higher education sectors.

Additional links

The hackathon page

The page containing the result of the winning team.

Hackathon for teachers of languages for specific purposes.

Posted on by Giulia Torresin

When: Nov 12, 2020 at 2:55pm to 3:55pm

Where: Online

Dear all,
We, the CATAPULT project team, organise a hackathon for teachers of languages for specific purposes. Hackathons are fun, co-creation activities bringing together people sharing common interests and driving change in ordinary practices. The purpose of the Catapult hackathon is to give the opportunity to language teachers of specific purposes co-create LSP resources for a subject or a theme of their preference and for which the need support from peers (other team members) or a mentor.
The hackathon takes place on November 12, and is part of the global DigiEduHack (https://digieduhack.com/en/) hackathon, an annual event for enthusiastic people who wish to see change and operate collaboratively in a team spirit online.
Read about our hackathon and register!
https://digieduhack.com/…/en
We will offer a certificate to all participants and also a gift voucher to top three teams!
More details about the co-creation process will follow.

Training needs for LSP teachers : a Survey Infographic

Posted on by Giulia Torresin

 

This infographic provides a quick summary of the CATAPULT survey to LSP teachers than ran from September to November 2018 in 7 different languages ( DE, EN, FI, FR, GR, NL, PL)

The survey was distributed to language teachers with the aim of better understanding the current situation (current skills) and future needs in skills upgrading. It reached 560 respondents.

The infographic is available in all these languages here!

A situational survey into the skills and training needs of LSP teachers

Posted on by Giulia Torresin

The CATAPULT Situational Survey aimed at offering a better understanding of language teachers’ qualifications and skills (and lack thereof), especially those teaching Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) in Europe.

First of all, what is a situational survey ? It is the synthesis of various analyses that fruitfully combines several types of data (qualitative and quantitative data, as well as findings from literature review). A situational survey is therefore the most appropriate methodological approach for understanding a multi-faceted phenomenon and for allowing different perspectives to emerge!

These are some of the insights into the contemporary landscape of language teachers’ skills from the CATAPULT Situational Survey:

  1. Language and ICT skills are paramount in the adult education sector, however there is a mismatch in terms of supply and demand of ICT skills for teaching purposes. The study has shown how technology is not fully integrated by LSP teachers.
  2. A very small percentage (12%) of language teachers surveyed benefited from pre-service training during their university degree. Language teachers carry out mostly self-driven initiatives to acquire the necessary LSP skills, through lifelong learning opportunities and further studies. This situation reflects firstly the absence of appropriate training during university studies and initial teacher education but also the lack of standardisation in terms of qualifications, certifications and skills for LSP teachers in Europe.
  3. LSP teachers face a double difficulty in finding materials focused both on the right language and on the discipline taught. At the same time, the study has found that recruiters consider specialised domain knowledge important, which is something that in reality language teachers lack as they do not generally have domain specific qualifications.
  4. Teachers regret the general marginalisation that language teachers in particular have to endure and more specifically the pedagogical isolation of LSP teachers in specialised institutions, as well as the lack of collaboration with subject teachers.

If you want to get to know more, here is the link to the full study!