Developing students’ linguistic and digital literacy skills through the use of multimedia presentations

Abstract

With the immense presence of English language video content in the online digital environment and students’ everyday exposure to multimedia content, this project aims to explore how to replace traditional in-class presentation with video presentation within an autonomous learning environment, examine the impact of doing so on the development of English language and digital literacy skills, and develop assessment rubrics at both individual and group levels. The project was conducted as part of an English language course for undergraduate students majoring in English in the context of a higher education institution in Hong Kong. Data were collected through multiple methods: survey questionnaires, open-ended questions, and face-to-face interviews. The results showed that the video production mode of presentation could not only replace traditional in-class presentation but also improve students’ learning autonomy, and language, collaborative, and digital literacy skills. The analysis of videos elucidated how the video production (VPR) group of students use multimodal semiotic resources to design their relationships with viewers while simultaneously adapting their discoursal identities. In addition, the comparison between VPR- and non-VPR-group presentations demonstrates that constructing audio-visual resources in a collaborative environment contributes to a variety of aspects to a higher extent. Implications for foreign language curriculum and instructional design, as well as recommendations for future studies of digitalization of students’ oral assessment tasks, are discussed.

CALL and professionalisation: short papers from EUROCALL 2021

“…Interestingly, several experienced informal language learners also acknowledged their initial unpreparedness to web-based interactions and urged language instructors to allow students to experiment with unconventional genres at both school and university levels. Such findings support prior findings of Reinhardt and Thorne (2019) and Yu and Zadorozhnyy (2021) who emphasised the importance of altering 'anachronistic' conventional language teaching approaches and recommended L2 instructors to consider integrating multimodal composition and digital storytelling projects to expose students to nonstandard language forms .…”

Student Initiative of Producing Their Own Mini Videos for Language Learning

“…Multimodality promoted flexibility and diversity in presentation style, which is also revealed in Yu and Zadorozhnyy's (2021) research which claimed that the application of digital technologies provides students with new ways of presenting their ideas and thoughts. The integration of in-class presentations and technological affordances enabled students to create a presentation by building on the strengths of the utilized digital affordances and to demonstrate their speaking skills in the best light.…”

Student and staff perceptions of student digital competencies on an English-Medium international foundation year programme in Europe, with reference to the EU’s Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp)

“…Technology is seen as enabling innovative learning and teaching (Fedorova & Nikiforova, 2022), and has therefore proliferated. Laptops and smartphones are considered necessities (Yu & Zadorozhnyy, 2022) because many learning activities are mediated through technology. Students access learning resources hosted on Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), collaborate and communicate online, and often require technologies to complete assessments Coldwell-Neilson, 2018).…”