Can students co-create course content? A student-contrived international conference.

HRADILOVÁ, Alena. Can students co-create course content? A student-contrived international conference. In IATEFL conference. 2023.

Basic information

• Original name: Can students co-create course content? A student-contrived international conference.
• Authors: HRADILOVÁ, Alena.
• Edition: IATEFL conference, 2023.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 60202 Specific languages
• Country of publisher: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Organization unit: Language Centre
• Keywords in English: student conference autonomy soft skills
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

Based on experience with an international online academic communication skills task for law students from Masaryk University and the University of Helsinki, the talk presents how we used the skills we gained while fully online and made our courses international by including an online communicative task which can now be readily used for any academic context or content. The talk will introduce the development of the manageable authentic task (designing and running an online international conference using tools offered by Teams or Zoom) that allowed the students to experience academic communication skills naturally, observe their peers actively, and discuss and reflect with each other on their observations and experience (thus completing the Learning cycle), even though they could not meet physically. We experimented with experiential learning promoting student autonomy and inviting students to co-create the content. It will be shown how the course online activities led to active community building. Along with the international aspect of the course which, according to the students, led to their better home preparation and classroom performance, student evaluations identified the new community-building component, i.e. being able to talk in international groups synchronously and without the teachers' presence, as essential to the learning outcomes. Based on feedback received from our students, the talk will report on how they reflected on the improvement of fluency and soft skills, not only from the public presentations, but also from working independently in teams in breakout rooms. It will also discuss how and why students valued their time together in the safe environment of the rooms.