Lee Arnold
University of Electro-Communications
About
In teaching among four different insitutions in the Tokyo-Saitama area, I come across a variety of learners with diverse interests. Many of them are engaged in STEM majors and are looking towards future research within these challenging and fascinating areas. I enjoy the caliber and sense of strong motivation among them, and while the COVID-19 pandemic has upended many of our assumptions about the classroom and what occurs in it and from it, it has created opportunities for us to step back and re-imagine what the learning space is, and how our learners can adjust to what is still a new frontier of learning, and discover new avenues within it.Sessions
Sponsored Presentation Reimagining learning communities online more
Sat, Jun 5, 16:15-17:30 Asia/Tokyo
Connecting with the theme of the last year of emergency remote teaching, presenters explore the development of language learning communities during online classes. In the spring of 2020, we were all suddenly faced with the obstacle of bringing our institutions of learning to a fully online environment. This undoubtedly challenged the way we interacted, worked, and learned. How did learners and teachers first respond to the emergency? What problems and questions were encountered? How did learning evolve into a “new normal”? What aspects of this new normal will affect the ways the community will return to classroom learning? In this Learner Development SIG Forum at JALTCALL 2021, we will hear both teacher and student narratives into the social constructs that developed with online learning. Digital presentations will explore the evolution of communities in synchronous online learning platforms. In addition, the attitudes of learners and teachers to both their devices, learning management systems, and even particular game-based learning applications will be discussed. Presenters and participants will have time to share both the rewards and barriers that they encountered in this period of online teaching. We will also explore how these experiences could challenge future directions to learning and learner development. For detailed abstracts for the individual presenters, please visit the Learner Development SIG Forums page at https://ld-sig.org/ld-sig-forums/.
