Technology-Enhanced Project Based Language Learning
Project Based Language Learning
Project-Based Learning (PBL) is founded on contextualized, learner-centred outcomes and social practices that emerge as the participants collaboratively move toward shared goals and output. (…) Stemming from Project-Based Learning, the implementation of PBLL aims to foster the development of language learners’ cognitive, social and communicative skills through their engagement in authentic activities (and sub-activities that lead up to the project output). The activity sequence is carefully designed by the teacher so that it is essential for the learners to deploy integrated competencies and thereby reach the intended output of the project.
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Central to the premise of PBLL is the notion that language projects are authentic, not simulated language situations. Within the parameters of PBL, authenticity might reside in different domains of the learning activities (e.g. purposeful project topics and contexts, outside-the-classroom collaborators, project output and project audience within the community, etc.). For PBLL educators, this authenticity of task (and roles) underscores the purposefulness and authenticity of the target language use. (Dooly, 2013, p. 78, p. 80)
Work cited:
Dooly, M. (2013) Promoting competency-based language teaching through project-based language learning. In M.L. Pérez Cañado (ed.) Competency-based language teaching in higher education (pp. 77-92). Dordrecht: Springer.
Telecollaboration
Etymologically speaking, telecollaboration can be defined simply as “collaboration” coupled with the Greek prefix “tele,” which means “distance,” as in telegraph, telephone, telescope, or telepathy. Thus, we have “collaboration at a distance.” However, this definition is far too facile to encompass the complexities of the underlying learning principles and the activities involved in educational telecollaborative endeavors. Futhermore, such endeavors are not limited to language learning, nor even to education, as telecollaboration can also take place in the workplace, or in volunteer work or similarly oriented online communities. Thus, the definition of telecollaboration used [here] is the process of communicating and working together with other people or groups from different locations through online or digital communication tools (e.g., computers, tablets, cellphones) to co‐produce a desired work output. Telecollaboration can be carried out in a variety of settings (classroom, home laboratory) and can be synchronous or asynchronous. In education, telecollaboration combines all of these components with a focus on learning, social interaction, dialogue, intercultural exchange and communication all of which are especially important aspects of telecollaboration in language education. (Dooly, 2017, pp. 170-171)
Work cited:
Dooly, M. (2017). Telecollaboration. In C. Chapelle & S. Sauro (Eds.) The handbook of technology in second language teaching and learning (pp. 169-183). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.