Digital teaching: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

 The Digital Classroom - opportunities and threats in delivering Chinese-English Translation for postgraduates online and in hybrid mode.

Dr Paul Golf is the Programme Director for the MAs in Chinese-English Translation and Audiovisual Translation at UoB. He teaches applied translation and interpreting with Chinese, semiotics, and visual marketing. Outside of the university he runs a language services business and is a consultant in geopolitical affairs for Oxford House Research Ltd.

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Our programmes focus heavily on practical and professional application of language, namely disciplines related to translation and interpreting, video game localization, subtitling etc. A method of content delivery and assessment that could take place online and be meaningfully controlled for quality (e.g. conference interpreting examinations) needed to be quickly devised at the start of the pandemic. As well as managing the overall MA programmes I am also responsible for teaching delivery across units including conference interpreting, Chinese-English translation, and subtitling, and for acting as personal tutor/supervisor to several dozen students a year.

I was awarded a commendation from the university for our rapid response and adaptive approach in responding to further pandemic contingencies in Autumn 2020 and beyond, which had a particular impact on our programmes as more than half of our student cohort remained in China for some or all of the academic year. Last minute changes in government and institutional policy required preparing for in-person, online-only, hybrid, and multi-location teaching and assessment whilst retaining a focus on staff and student wellbeing and a high quality of learning experience for the students.

Having now conducted over 200 classes, examinations, and conferences (including with simultaneous interpreting provision), we have found certain strengths and weaknesses to online synchronous/asynchronous delivery that have left permanent changes to the way we teach. This presentation will consider the following:

• The way online synchronous delivery affects student learning experience and class dynamics, especially when dealing with Chinese-background students. For example, some students would more readily contribute in an online session vs in person, which was unexpected.

• The use of breakout rooms and varied tasks to help mange ‘attention fatigue’ and improve dynamic content delivery.

• The technological challenges of using a system like Zoom, and ways to mitigate the potential for problems (e.g. how to design interpreting examinations to deal with possible wifi failures?)

• The new possibilities offered by these new technologies. For example, we are now drafting a new MA programme that specifically looks at the discipline of Remote Simultaneous Interpreting, as the professional industry has also undergone widespread and permanent changes in this direction.

• How online synchronous delivery exposes things we often take for granted when teaching in person, such as being able to walk around the room and pick up on body language cues, and how to best adapt to this in the online-space.

Socially Distanced Assessment: Lessons learnt and the way forward

Amparo Lallana (SFHEA) is Associate Professor in Spanish and the Director of the Languages and Culture Content Area at Regent’s University London. A founding member of ELEUK, the Association for the Teaching of Spanish in Higher Education in the UK, she has published on computer-mediated language learning, intercultural exchanges, employability, and intercultural communicative competence (ICC). She recently published on ICC training for language teachers in the Journal of Spanish Language Teaching.  

Esther Lecumberri is Senior Lecturer in Spanish at Regent’s University London. Her research interests include the use of mobile devices and learner generated digital content in language learning and teaching. She has presented and published on global simulation, the use of blogs and wikis to encourage student collaboration, and learner generated materials. Her most recent work is a co-authored book chapter on learner digital materials and student engagement for the edited collection Five years of the ELEUK conference. 

Dr Victoria Pastor-González is Senior Lecturer in Spanish and Film at Regent’s University London. Her research interests include fact-based drama, multimodal pedagogies, and curriculum design. Her latest work on transnational biopics appeared in the Journal of Comparative Cinema . She recently co-authored a book chapter on learner generated digital materials and student engagement for the edited collection Five years of the ELEUK conference. 

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Adapting to the reality of teaching during the pandemic forced the entire education sector to fully reassess teaching practices and assessment processes. In many cases, ours included, little time was afforded to complete the transition to an online environment, and we had to develop at great speed suitable pedagogic approaches to online learning, teaching and assessment.  

We faced the additional challenge of having to manage a mid-term assessment one week after the move to online teaching; this required quick thinking. For reasons that we shall explore in our presentation, transferring the existing paper-based assessments to an online format was not an option, hence, we had to look for alternative ways of enabling students to demonstrate that learning outcomes had been achieved. 

This paper will explore a two-stage journey from traditional unseen testing of discrete skills (e.g., reading, writing, grammar) to one-to-one VIVAs first, and later to a more authentic form of assessment via in-tray exercises.1  

Having implemented VIVAs and piloted in-tray testing, we shall share the reflective process that we engaged in to develop an assessment that 

(1) involved all skills 

(2) ensured parity and consistency across levels and languages  

(3) mitigated accessibility issues and time zone differences and  

(4) ensured good academic behaviours off campus and minimised instances of plagiarism. 

The transition online has sparked conversations about assessment across the Higher Education sector, with calls to limit the number of unseen, time-constrained exams in favour of more authentic methods of assessing learning, not just in Languages but in all subjects.  

The alternative assessment we trialled over two years aligns well with the principles of authentic assessment for learning. Feedback from colleagues, external examiners, and students have guided discussions on the merits and weaknesses of the model and contributed to its enhancement. Consequently, we are at present seeking to make permanent what started as a temporary response to unprecedented circumstances, and thus ensure that our assessment methods remain fit for purpose, robust and resilient. 

Postgraduate Pandemic Pedagogies: Learning to Teach…online.

Rachel Beaney is a PhD student at the University of Exeter and Cardiff University. She is pursuing doctoral studies thanks to a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). She has taught on Spanish language (grammar and translation into English) and cultural modules for Cardiff and Exeter.

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This paper will discuss my experience as a postgraduate tutor as I joined Spanish language teaching teams at the University of Exeter and Cardiff University during the COVID-19 pandemic, between 2020 and 2021. Working with teams delivering mitigation year abroad modules, returner revision classes, and first year undergraduate translation classes, I needed to learn on my feet and adapt to online teaching as one of my early experiences in the classroom. As such, I present some highlights and challenges of the process, discussing the importance of good colleagues, sharing my love for grammar and disdain for MS Teams, and the notorious virtual third year abroad.

In the first instance, the paper will present my prior knowledge and experience of teaching, touching on pedagogies I learnt when undertaking the HEA Associate Fellowship. I reflect on how, prior to the pandemic, I was learning to incorporate elements of gamification, implement various questioning styles, and support diverse learners. I then consider to what extent these approaches to teaching could be adapted for virtual classroom formats and discuss which virtual pedagogical methods I felt confident employing.

The paper then turns to consider and reflect on what we have learnt about asynchronous and synchronous resources, arguing that as language teachers, our classes were ‘blended’ all along. Focusing specifically on my experience of delivering mitigation year abroad online classes, I reveal how Brookfield and Preskill’s theory of ‘tales from the trenches’ (2012) allowed me to connect with students, and how the integration of applications and instant messaging fostered a sense of online community in my lessons.

Revisiting 20th Century Spain Women’s memory through Collaborative Audio-visual Project Based Learning.

Isabel Santafé is a Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Exeter where she teaches Spanish to all levels as well as teaching on undergraduate culture modules and postgraduate translation modules. She holds a PhD in Translation Studies and currently she is the translation coordinator and production assistant for CartasVivas project. Her main research interests focus on collaborative learning approaches, content and language integrated learning, the use of translation in the language classroom and translation in global advertising.

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Our final year module Women and Feminism in 20th Century Spain, taught to Hispanic Studies students (DMLC), was redesigned in 2020-2021 as a response to the Covid educational emergency, embedding research project CartasVivas (sponsored by Santander Foundation). CartasVivas is a free online audiovisual testimonial library for knowledge and debate that explores women who played a key part in the 20th century or actively participated in the social and literary world of Spain and Latin America. Our students work in groups in the production of a CartaViva in Spanish with English subtitles as their summative assessment: they create an audiovisual portrait constructed after studying these women (one assigned to each group) and their work, they even get into the character and perform her in front of the camera. This Project Based Learning (PBL) approach provides students with a unique opportunity to engage with this module as researchers and content creators. Furthermore, they put into practice their linguistic skills and engage with what we believe are essential skills today: digital skills, team-work skills, project management, creativity and work in partnerships in professional scenarios, which will certainly enhance their employability.