The EC Communication ‘Multilingualism: an asset for Europe and a shared commitment’ (2008) followed by a Council Resolution on a European strategy for multilingualism (2008) addressed languages in the wider context of social cohesion and prosperity and focused on actions to encourage and assist citizens in acquiring language skills. It also invited the EU Member States to: - Promote multilingualism with a view to strengthening social cohesion, intercultural dialogue and European construction; - Strengthen lifelong language learning; - Promote (better) multilingualism as a factor in the European economy’s competitiveness and people’s mobility and employability. Furthermore, the Renewed EU Agenda for Higher Education (2017) emphasises the need for effective skills development and usage of technology to offer new ways of structuring the organisation of learning and teaching, including open, online and blended learning, also with an aim to increase flexibility and teacher-student interaction. It is also emphasized that open educational resources (OER) and learning analytics have potential to improve learning, though they still remain under-exploited. The context of the project is three-folded: - Digital competences of teacher education students (as prospective teachers) and their awareness of how to benefit from online learning environments in their teaching practices; - Professional development of teaching staff at HE to increase quality/relevance of teacher education in the context of an increasingly digital society; - Promotion of multilingualism in the EU by ensuring mobile language learning opportunities for all, and in particular for Erasmus+ exchange students. The objectives of the project are: - To equip teacher education students and in-service teachers with tools and methods on online language learning opportunities (CALL and MALL) by providing both hands-on experience accompanied by OER course material and relevant theoretical background; - To increase awareness of specific features and context of mobile/online language learning by designing and providing trainings/webinars for further professional development of academic staff, therefore increasing the quality of teaching in HE; - To establish a sustainable and scalable framework for creating a high quality mobile language learning App, by experimenting a crowdsourcing approach and involving EU universities (students and academics) in its content creation. The specific target groups to be reached by project activities are: - Higher Education Institutions targeting both: a) teacher education students and b) academic staff; - EU students (including the specific group of exchange students) and all EU language learners willing to improve their language skills; - Policy makers to consider/discuss and propose effective measures both for promoting multilingualism across the EU and increasing the quality/relevance of language teaching in the increasingly digital society. This proposal implies establishing a transnational cooperation model to strengthen the cooperation among partner institutions for further effective pedagogical, technological knowledge transfer, peer learning and exchange of practices. The project will be implemented by University of Paris 1 (France), University of Alcalá (Spain), University of Vienna (Austria), University of Lodz (Poland), University of Aveiro (Portugal), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), University of Eastern Finland (Finland) and European University Foundation (Luxembourg).
The LLOM (Language Learning Online in the age of Mobility) project was coordinated by the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and was launched in September 2018. It aims to maintain but in a different way the OLS (Online Linguistic Support) in the promotion of multilingualism and to diversify the methods of language learning and teaching. The main objective is to support mobile exchange students with online learning tools that combine an innovative pedagogical approach with gamification elements. The second objective of the project is to offer training (practice) to future language teachers in order to develop digital skills that they can use in their courses, thus adapting courses and methods to an online teaching mode. The aim is to strengthen the e-learning and e-teaching skills of both students and teachers. The LLOM project therefore addresses teachers and students and promotes the development of language teaching methodologies and student learning resources and strategies. The activities implemented have brought together more than a hundred people (teachers, students and university staff) to collaborate on a common work/project. This project, like other European projects, promotes links between European nations. It defends the linguistic and cultural specificities of the participating European countries. This work, which is based on the sharing of knowledge and methods in order to build a unique and common project, mirrors the motto of the European community: "United in diversity". The participants in the LLOM project: University of Paris 1 (France), University of Alcalá (Spain), University of Vienna (Austria), University of Lodz (Poland), University of Aveiro (Portugal), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), University of Eastern Finland (Finland) and European University Foundation (Luxembourg). Here is the link to all the documents (reflections, analysis, webinars, videos, etc.) that have been provided and shared by the partners throughout the project to meet its expectations: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WrAG6AAghm2A6isv_MiKeMevl2zX2xxq