Developing creativity, soft skills and skills for life in international legal podcasting

CHUDOVÁ, Kateřina and Hana KALLUS. Developing creativity, soft skills and skills for life in international legal podcasting. In INCOLLAB Collaborative Learning and Teaching Conference. 2021.

Basic information

• Original name: Developing creativity, soft skills and skills for life in international legal podcasting
• Name in Czech: Rozvíjení kreativity, měkkých dovedností a životních dovedností prostřednictvím studentských podcastů
• Authors: CHUDOVÁ, Kateřina and Hana KALLUS.
• Edition: INCOLLAB Collaborative Learning and Teaching Conference, 2021.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 60202 Specific languages
• Country of publisher: Czech Republic
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Organization unit: Language Centre
• Keywords (in Czech): Angličtina pro specifické účely; právnická angličtina; podcasty; týmová práce; měkké dovednosti; tvrdé dovednosti; životní dovednosti
• Keywords in English: English for specific purposes; legal English; podcasts; team work; soft skills; hard skills; life skills
• Tags: International impact

Abstract

In today´s world full of challenges caused not only by the pandemic, we strongly believe that teaching should go beyond the syllabus and focus also on life skills, providing students with space for creativity, investigation and learning their own way. In our presentation we will share our hands-on experience with podcasting in an international environment. We will describe the whole process of the international cooperation with our Polish colleagues from Toruń University without any project support. First, we will describe the collaboration from the teachers´ point of view, i.e., what communication channels we tested with students, what guidance and support we provided etc. Then, we will share a summary of students´ feedback on the whole process as well as some of the results. The students were well aware that not only the product – a podcast on a legal topic - but also the journey towards it was a learning experience. They had a real-life opportunity to experience how hard it may be to set up an international team, what a challenge it could be to manage the time, they had to use English as a tool to negotiate, justify opinions, research a topic, reach an agreement, and convey a message using the right register, vocabulary and structure. Most importantly, they had to work autonomously, take responsibility for individual steps in the project, and thus improve valuable life skills.