The Federazione Nazionale Insegnanti Centro di iniziativa per l’Europa (FENICE) (IT) in collaboration with the Universities of Grenoble Alpes (FR), Alicante (ES) and the Open University (UK), partners of the "LMOOCs for university students on the move" (Mooc2Move) project funded under the Erasmus + program, organizes the fourth international conference on MOOCs, Language Learning, and Mobility: design, integration, reuse
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, we transformed the Naples Conference into an online conference, keeping the dates of 9-10 April 2021 unchanged. Participation and presentations will therefore be virtual. Special technical details and training will be provided to attendees prior to the conference.
This fourth international conference aims to bring together higher education professionals, CALL (Computer assisted language learning) and applied linguists and language technologists from around the world to debate issues relating to three topical areas of research, such as MOOCs, language teaching/learning and student mobility, by providing a forum for exchange of ideas, research outcomes and technical achievements.
The agendas of Higher Education Institutions around the world seek to move beyond widening access agendas and towards a deeper integration into all aspects of the educational experience. This involves creating a more inclusive teaching and learning environment that better enables all students and institutions to achieve a fuller cognitive, social, emotional, and professional development, while respecting their individual and group identities. An ever more accepted model is the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) that has marked a milestone in the use of ICT for education. The potential and possibilities of MOOCs could be significant. However, they are not limited to global outreach: the same technology can be used to improve on-campus teaching and training inside companies and institutions.
Modern Europe is characterised by student and professional mobility. Whatever the reasons for moving into and within Europe—for example to take up studies, start a new profession, join one’s family, or seek refuge—proficiency in the language of the community in which the newly arrived live plays a key role in social and professional integration. The recent arrival of refugees and asylum seekers has added a further layer of mobility and has reinforced the challenge to develop pathways to integration for different groups of people. The increased mobility has posed significant challenges. Language testing and assessment has played a role in the way European states have responded to these challenges, with language tests being used in different ways for the procedures of governing mid-term residency, immigration and access to citizenship since the 1990s. This trend has also led to an on-going debate on the ethics, justification, fairness and usefulness of the role of using language tests in immigration, integration and mobility contexts.
Finally, students on mobility programmes usually have a B1/B2 level of language competence and they enrol in courses where they are required to negotiate the considerable difficulties of academic language and organize their learning activities autonomously and independently. However, competences necessary for everyday standard use of a language differ considerably from those required for communication in academic contexts.
The conference will explore three main phenomena:
