Motivations to enrol in EMI programmes in China: an exploratory study

A recent interest in English Medium Instruction (EMI) has led to the flourishing of studies that examine motivation in EMI classrooms. Some of these studies tend to compare language learning motivation of students who are and are not enrolled in EMI programmes (see e.g. Doiz, Aintzane, David Lasagabaster & Juan Manuel Sierra. 2014. CLIL and motivation: The effect of individual and contextual variables. The Language Learning Journal 42(2). 209–224; Sylvén, Liss Kerstin & Amy S. Thompson. 2015. Language learning motivation and CLIL: Is there a connection? Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education 3(1). 28–50), showing that EMI learners are typically more motivated than their peers in non-EMI contexts. This has led to the common perception that learners enrol in EMI primarily to improve their English. Yet, there is a dearth of comprehensive studies exploring learners’ reasons behind their enrolment in EMI programmes and how these change throughout their studies. To address this gap, 247 university students from a range of universities across China filled in the questionnaire, which included scales pertaining to reasons for choosing an EMI programme. The data were analysed in SPSS. The results show that enhanced future job opportunities, opportunities for contact with an international community as well as potential gains in learning content and language specific vocabulary are the most strongly endorsed drivers that motivate EMI students to undertake their studies in English. They also tend to pursue their ideal visions of themselves as bilingual professionals and derive pleasure from EMI classes. To a lesser extent, students are motivated by what is expected of them and the actual pedagogy in the language classroom. Their motivation tends to stay stable over their years of study. However, the survey also revealed that not all students are equally motivated and resolved to continue with EMI studies. The findings highlight that, whereas students tend to be strongly motivated, there is a potential to improve the delivery of EMI courses.

Educational Games Design

Video games are widely and increasingly adopted in the educational field thanks to their inherent engaging, immersive, and adaptive capacities. Yet, one of the greatest problematic in educational games design remains how to create ludic and adaptive experiences without going astray from the targeted learning objectives. In creating adaptive educational games, modeling the learner/player is a prerequisite. This chapter highlights the importance of educational standards in learning content design and proposes an adaptive mechanism “AMEG” based on IMS learning design and artificial intelligence that model learners using game metrics and adapt the gameplay as well as the learning content. As a practical experimentation of the mechanism, MathQuests, an educational game that helps in teaching mathematical operations for first year middle school students was created.

Critical Praxis Through a Social Media Ecosystem

The use of social media in language education is evident in the plethora of online content generated by education organizations. Teachers and learners alike have used platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram to access and disseminate learning content in the forms of text, images, podcasts, and videos. However, despite the prevalence of social media in the language-learning sector, its pedagogical use has been limited to learning language features. This chapter analyzes the potential use of an ecosystem of social media platforms to augment varied modes of TESOL instruction, namely live, online, and hybrid, through a critical lens in higher and adult education. The integration of critical content and critical thinking development in social media platforms, in which authentic content is directly consumed, co-created, and disseminated, enables TESOL teachers to help learners become aware of how power shapes information, how to resist coercion, and challenge the status quo.

Art of the Constructive Academic Social Brag to Improve Competition and Performance for Social-Shared Teaching and Learning

If social media is about the social brag and the pose, academic social media has dedicated platforms that enable such shares: learning content sharing platforms (educational channels on social video sharing sites and social image sharing sites, learning object referatories, digital libraries, slideshow sharing sites), research sharing sites, publications and review metrics platforms, social learning sites (MOOCs, LMSes), and others. The academic social brag does not have to be negative or offending; it can be designed and harnessed to improve competition and performance among peer academics (in their social sharing), given the reliance on learner/user numbers to justify the original creation and sharing. This work explores academic social bragging across various academic social sharing platforms, dimensions for how these are judged (positively or negatively), and ways to turn academic social brags into something constructive for social-shared teaching and learning.

Students' Acceptance of Gamification in Higher Education

Gamification provides a practical approach to improving learning processes, especially the learner's motivation. However, little research has been conducted on student intentions to use gamification in higher education. Therefore, this study explored the gamification in higher educational courses by collecting surveys and discusses the factors influencing the acceptance of gamification in higher education. Based on the PLS-SEM results, students should take initial game-based learning content to be more familiar with gamification; furthermore, they could have a positive experience so that they would increase their intention. Performance expectancy is the most important factors influencing a student to accept gamification. Other factors, such as effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, involvement, skill, and control, are also important factors. With the results of this study, the instructor designer could have substantial help in planning the course content and enhance its efficiency and effectiveness.

Job Shadowing as a Training Tool for Lecturers in Higher Education Bilingual Teaching

The current context of higher education institutions is guided by targets of internationalization and globalization which adopt different forms, one of them based on the essential role of language learning as an operational instrument that contributes to international activity. Different approaches have been devised to promote language learning—content and language integrated learning (CLIL) or English-medium instruction (EMI)—characterized by the use of a foreign language as a teaching device. In tertiary education, the implementation of bilingual programs demands the use of professional and academic language, communicative skills, and training in methodological abilities. The challenge for lecturers is considerable and they have reported the demanding overload of work, effort, and time, but training in dual-focused teaching is essential to achieve goals successfully. Job shadowing is suggested as a training tool focused on developing bilingual professional skills, knowledge, and competences through observation, action, and reflection while accompanying a professional.

A Systematic Review on the Neuro-Cognitive Correlates of Game-Based Learning in Higher Education Learning Environments

Game-based learning is one of the sustainable education methods for future professionals from the higher education learning environment. To attain these innovative and sustainable teaching pedagogies, the components of games and simulations need to be incorporated into the teaching-learning content. The integration of neuroscience and cognitive concepts has become an essential feature in understanding various phenomena in game-based learning with regard to higher education learning environments. Several neural and cognitive processes are involved while engaging in such activities. These activities have played a pivotal role in the pedagogy and teachers had to think on their feet while engaging students in higher education as well. Game-based learning has proven to be a very effective method of engaging higher education students.

The Utilization of Technology Tools and Preparation of Preservice Teachers for Literacy Instruction in the Age of Virtual Learning

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced a sudden shift to virtual teaching and learning for teachers and students at all levels across the country. Surveys of K-12 teachers resulted in a compilation of technology tools utilized for reading instruction during virtual learning. Content analyses sought to connect technology tools to various components of the lesson cycle, and longer-term research to examine quality tools and pedagogical approaches to teaching reading in virtual settings is discussed. Implications for educator preparation programs and future curricular directions are examined.

Tactical and Substantive Educational Templates on Formal Open Learning Content Sharing Repositories and Referatories

To enable more efficient work, educational templates have been created for various contexts: online learning, assessments, video creation, document creation, and others. This work involves the exploration of 191 template-related digital learning objects shared on a learning object repository/referatory, an LMS-related object-sharing site, social slideshow sharing site, and social video sharing site, as an environmental scan. This work culminates in a definition of a “tactical and substantive educational template” (TASET) as a collaborative object and various requisite features for quality and heritability.

Al-Farabi’s creative heritage and his scientific-pedagogical ideas

Introduction. The study of Al-Farabi’s pedagogical heritage is relevant, since it allows forming a scientific idea of the level of progressive experience in teaching and upbringing in the conditions of the early Middle Ages, in the era of the flourishing and rise of culture in the East. Research purpose is to consider Al-Farabi’s creative heritage and give an overview of his scientific-pedagogical ideas. Materials and methods. The authors used Al-Farabi’s treatises, reflecting his pedagogical ideas, as well as the works of modern teachers, historians and philosophers. Research methods: analysis, synthesis and historical-pedagogical interpretation of the data contained in the sources; systematization and generalization of materials obtained as a result of studying open Internet sources and modern scientific literature. Research results. Despite the fact that Al-Farabi’s ideas were based on the works by Plato and Aristotle on the cognizability of the world, the scholar has developed original applications of this theory in relation to the needs of that time, taking into account the state religious policy. According to the thinker, the ideal of upbringing and education includes the mastery of scientific knowledge, moral and aesthetic perfection of both the student and the teacher. The rules proposed by Al-Farabi asserted the social significance of teaching and upbringing based on mutual respect of teachers and students. The educational system and teaching methods proposed by Al-Farabi made it possible to activate the students’ creative and cognitive activity, contributed to the development of logical thinking and comprehension of the information they receive. Discussion and conclusion. The study and analysis of Al-Farabi’s treatises show that the thinker considered all aspects of the educational process: educational goal, learning content, teaching methods and tools, the duties of the student and the teacher. The thinker’s entire creative heritage is imbued with the ideas of humanizing and democratizing society through its improvement by upbringing and educational tools.