This workshop will present the work of the EU-funded CLIL Open Online Learning Project (www.languages.dk). Since 2018, the project team have been updating and expanding the functionality of clilstore.eu - an Open Educational Resource which serves as a repository of open access materials and an authoring tool that enables educators to create multimedia learning units combining audio, video, text, images and Web 3.0 applications. Learner autonomy is underpinned by the way the authoring software treats embedded texts, that is, verbatim typescripts of audio or audiovisual recordings are automatically linked word for word to a nexus of online dictionaries that helps boost their reading skills.

This workshop will introduce participants to the ways in which Clilstore can support Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and language learning generally. A selection of sample learning units showing how Clilstore.eu is currently being used to good effect will be presented. Participants will then be given a hands-on demonstration of how to author a new teaching unit containing: video/ audio content, transcript with all words linked to online dictionaries in over 100 languages, and embedded learning tasks. Participants will also learn how to use Clilstore's inbuilt portfolio and personal vocabulary tools. The Clilstore user interface is currently available in the following languages: Danish, English, Spanish, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Italian.

During the 2020 academic year, the spread of COVID-19 made a systematic approach to teaching and learning almost impossible. Teachers and students faced a year of uncertainty about how classes were to be conducted, either in person, on demand or a variation thereof. At the presenters’ institution, a small private university in Western Japan, many teachers spent the entire year cobbling together an effective learning environment, while students coped with varying degrees of success. Given the upheaval experienced, and armed with lessons learned, the presenters sought to provide specific training for new and veteran students on how to tackle university learning with more success in 2021. In this ‘show and tell’ presentation, six principles for effective online learning will be introduced. These include: having the right technology, preparing a study space, making a learning plan, planning for self care, collaborating with classmates, and communicating with teachers. Each topic was introduced to students in a short video, and learners were invited to document their individual approaches to creating an effective learning environment in a video/ written portfolio. The topics were revisited over the course of the Spring semester to help students build autonomy by encouraging them to solidify and maintain their goals longitudinally. The presenters will report on the progress of the project and share student perspectives. While the ideas presented in this talk center on online learning environments, they are also applicable to a variety of teaching situations making this talk relevant to all educators.

The presenter taught online classes through Zoom with class sizes of 40 (General English for university first-year students, and Oral English for university second-year students). Students very rarely turned on their cameras in class, a story that this presenter has heard often from many teachers. Aside from some limited success with Zoom polls and text answers in Zoom chat, student participation was difficult to elicit. The presenter felt that the classes were not going very well, and considered the classes to be far below the quality of in-person classes. However, students’ own written responses in Japanese on anonymous, university-wide class evaluation surveys at mid- and end-of-term paint a surprisingly different picture of their experiences in the presenter’s classes. The presenter will share summaries of what the students valued in these online classes, and how the students’ descriptions of some of the class activities contradict the presenters’ own negative self-evaluation of the same activities, forcing the presenter to view the success embedded into what was self-evaluated as mediocre if not an outright failure.

Wrestling with the emergency remote teaching situation of 2020 and the immediate resultant reworking of curriculae, a variety of technology implementation was hastily put into action and the fallout quickly was upon both teachers and students. In the absence of emergency institutional policies or strategies for technological implementations, many institutions supported students as best they could with immediate solutions that were perhaps not pedagogically sound making the delivery of language teaching and learning disjointed and tremendously difficult. With limited apparent time to quality assure technology implementations, many teachers felt incredible stress and anxiety -which was shared by students- and suffered because of this lack of preparedness. In foresight to such possible situations, the Gallagher Technology Decision Matrix was developed then presented in 2019. The GTDM is a pedagogically based decision matrix that can be used to ascertain whether any new technology should be implemented depending on the situation in which the technology will be implemented. This presentation will dissect one such implementation of an online cloud-based video conferencing service implementation (Zoom) combined with 2 Learning Management Systems (1) WebClass and (2) Google Classroom. The presenter will show in detail the benefits and shortcomings of the main implementation by using the 2019 GTD matrix while going further to describe the pedagogical reasoning why good decision-making is highly relevant. Case studies from universities in each area of Japan -Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto, Chubu, Shikoku, Chugoku, Kinki, Kyushu, and the Ryukyus- will be showcased to reveal the variety and range of a number of technology implementations currently employed. Clear consideration will be made as to the specifics of how each scenario affected the language learning of students in real terms. The user experience from the perspective of both students and teachers will also highlight important considerations on the current situation and how best to implement the next new technologies as we move forward.

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/.

The use of video streaming has exploded over the past several years, in part, due to the ubiquity of smartphones and advancements to mobile network technology. However, while the topic of video for second (L2) learning has been studied extensively in CALL research, the use of video streaming for out-of-class, informal foreign language (FL) learning has received little attention. This presentation details a study that addressed this gap in the literature. Specifically, the study examined Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ practices and views concerning the use of subscription video streaming services for informal language learning. To this end, a survey was administered to Japanese students at four universities, with a total of 256 participants fully completing the survey. Moreover, 12 of these participants were interviewed to gain deeper insight into their views of subscription video streaming for informal foreign language learning. Results showed that informal language learning through subscription video streaming is a common social practice among the participants and that they had positive perceptions towards using these services for L2 learning. Additional findings and implications from the study will also be discussed in the presentation.

In 2020, as courses moved online, many university instructors incorporated asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) tasks to adapt to the virtual learning environment. Posting on online message boards is an example of such a task, yet it lacks real-world authenticity for second language students in part because they only communicate with peers from their own country. However, students who participate in the International Virtual Exchange (IVE) Project can communicate with international university students on a global platform (Hagley & Cotter, 2019). The primary author incorporated the IVE Project for some of her first-year courses at Rikkyo University, which is a private university in Tokyo, Japan. The participants were undergraduates whose English proficiencies ranged from low intermediate to advanced. At the end of the semester, some participants recommended designing a more specific rubric tailored to the course in order to clarify expectations regarding their written output for IVE Project posts. According to Giacumo (2012), providing students with rubrics for assessment of contributions can increase participation and interactions in the long-term. Therefore, during this presentation, the authors (a) discuss the aims of Rikkyo University’s English discussion course, (b) explain the IVE Project, (c) review various literature on creating asynchronous, online discussion rubrics as well as their theoretical justification, and lastly, (d) describe the process of creating and evaluating a rubric for the IVE Project. At the end of the presentation, we invite feedback from audience members regarding the rubric we created as well as ideas for adapting the rubric to different courses and contexts.

Saturday language schools in America play an important role in supporting language education and community cultural diversity. While most Saturday language schools were previously face-to-face classes, the Covid-19 pandemic has been an obstacle to traditional learning and teaching. Taking safety into consideration, many schools have moved their activities online. This study was designed to hear different voices from students, teachers, and parents on online language learning from a Saturday Chinese school in New York state. This was a mixed-method study. An online survey was distributed by the school principal to the whole Chinese school community, including students, parents, and teachers. The survey asked participants to evaluate the online learning experiences and learning outcomes. Based on the survey answers, 4 students, 2 parents, and 1 teacher volunteered for the follow-up interview. Grounded theory was used to analyze the collected data. Results found that the language proficiency of students improved to some degree over the semester of online learning, but students preferred to have classes in a traditional classroom setting, where they could interact with classmates and teachers more. Teachers and parents agreed that they should have classes virtually during the pandemic, but they suggested the Saturday school arrange workshops to prepare teachers, students, and parents for virtual classes. Some participants explained that they dropped Saturday Chinese school because there were fewer program activities than before, such as student competitions and festival celebrations. This feedback indicates that this Saturday school efficaciously promoted Chinese culture in the Rochester area before the pandemic, which helped to attract students to study with them. All in all, this study attempts to offer suggestions to Saturday language schools in America, and to enlarge the database of studies on online language learning.

This will be a show-and-tell presentation about using a multi-author blog site (WordPress) in pre-service English teacher education. We will first discuss the way the site is intended to promote teacher development and then show how it is configured and used. The site was designed to help student-teachers internalize what are known as conceptual tools. In the foreign language education class, student-teachers are exposed to such conceptual tools as task, comprehensible input, pre-reading activity, etc. Through reflecting on their teaching through the lenses of these concepts and writing their reflections in their ePortfolios, student-teachers develop their own unique understandings and ways of using these conceptual tools. The ePortfolios can also inform curriculum development as the instructor can grasp how students perceived concepts learned in the class. After discussing the rationale behind developing the site, we will show some of the technical aspects behind setting up the blog to encourage student-teacher development. More specifically, we will show how students write into their ePortfolios and interact with one another, as well as how tagging is used to link conceptual tools with the students’ ePortfolio content. Lastly, we will invite audience members to match a post with its relevant conceptual tool(s) as well as to comment on ePortfolio posts for which student-teachers have given approval.

Although teaching in-person remains the most preferred format of instruction for most of the subjects, using Zoom application for online classes may offer extra advantages for demonstration, practice, and performance control in teaching different aspects of oral presentation and public speaking in a foreign language. This paper discusses the author's experience in teaching Advanced Oral Presentation (using Zoom application) to two groups of 4th year Japanese university students majoring in EFL, during the Coronavirus epidemics in 2020-2021 Fall semester. Phonetic exercises were used to correct pronunciation mistakes and practice English intonation. Students' live or video-recorded short speeches and PPT presentations were watched and analyzed in class. The results of the online instruction show that using Zoom application proves to be very effective in overcoming “stage fright” and mitigating pronunciation difficulties that Japanese students usually experience in developing oral presentation skills in English as a Foreign Language. Comments from the students show that they enjoyed the online instruction and think that it was very useful. For example, they wrote: “Zoom made me think and talk about the people behind the screen,” “The teacher's pronunciation class left a strong impression on me,” “I learned about the difference in pronunciation of the words like 'liver' and 'river', 'pray and play' for the first time,” “I could learn and grow in two respects in this class: I could learn correct pronunciation and I was willing to speak English,” “Previously, I had no confidence in speaking English in a public place. However, thanks to this class, I became confident in speaking English. The class made me mature.”

Using the Moodle LMS, the International Virtual Exchange Project (IVEProject) promotes cultural understanding and the development of English language skills by giving students the opportunity to experience authentic communication with peers in other countries. In 2020, over 7000 tertiary-level students from twelve countries communicated with each other through forums. To ensure a quality experience for as many students as possible, teachers need to actively monitor student engagement. Unfortunately, typical forum reports only provide simple metrics such as word count and number of posts which do not necessarily reflect student interaction. To aid teachers and IVEProject administrators, a new set of Moodle reports was created to provide detailed quantitative forum metrics at the individual student level, the discussion level, the group level and the country level. These reports are currently being trialed as a method to quickly understand student and group engagement. Of primary importance, this data enables administrators, early in the exchange, to identify students with low engagement in the discussions and to plan interventions to improve the quality of the exchange. This presentation will introduce this new Moodle discussion metric report, its role in the IVEProject and data from its trial application in the spring of 2021.

In recent years the increase in the availability of computerized speech recognition and speech synthesis has lead to exciting possibilities in the field of foreign language learning. Computerized speech essentially represents a final stage in the development of a human-computer interface, and in this context, it offers substantial advantages over traditional touch-based interfaces which can eschew language altogether. One activity where this is particularly pertinent is in spaced-learning activities where traditionally students do not need to vocalize their responses, and indeed the responses are often not available to instructors at all. Speech Recognition has further benefits in that every utterance is immediately displayed for students, giving them a more accurate indication of their success with the tested language constructs. The advantage to instructors is in the ability for utterances to be stored as text in a database allowing computer analysis of speech patterns to discern common errors. As the 3rd year of a four-year cross-institutional research grant from the Japanese Government (Kakenhi), this paper will present a speech recognition and speech synthesis system developed by the author within the context of a spaced learning program. We will further show (a) a pattern analysis of the accuracy of the system and patterns of learner usage, (b) an analysis of the effectiveness of spaced-learning using online speaking on student outcomes over 3 institutions, (c) student feedback and reactions on speaking to a machine, (d) how the system deals with pronunciation.