As a Spanish Coordinator I support language students, Spanish and Portuguese tutors and other colleagues providing ongoing feedback to promote continuing academic and professional development. I am responsible for ensuring the QA and QE of Spanish courses and materials. I am passionate about developing and improving delivery; I am a keen user of the VLE and I thoroughly enjoy writing, designing and editing teaching and learning materials, such as exams and assessments, audio materials and websites for the use of academics and students, maintaining and developing the LFA (Spanish) website. I use the Google Drive and email to communicate effectively with colleagues and students, supporting my professional practice. I have recently started using Padlet, a simple and easy to use tool that can be used to promote collaborative work and creativity.
Since October 2005 I have been in charge of the maintenance and development of the Spanish LFA website at the UoY. As the University website has been completely updated three times or so in the last ten years, I have redeveloped it accordingly while managing the Spanish online pages. I have populated the reading resources section and I have been compiling learning resources taking into account the student needs and feedback; feedback from colleagues, and knowledge gained from my growing experience in the area.
In 2011 I developed and delivered a workshop on the design of audio materials to promote and ensure QA and QE across all languages. The workshop covered how to write, record and edit language learning materials for classroom and assessment use, and it was open to all language tutors. In 2013 I revised the workshop and ran it at Leeds Beckett University, where I also work. This academic year, while conducting the listening assessment with my groups, I realised that it would useful to run the workshop again and my proposal to celebrate it on Wednesday 13th April has been accepted.
I work with students on a weekly and daily basis because of my teaching role, communicate verbally during the teaching sessions and keep in touch via email and the VLE. In addition to that, during the teaching terms I used to run fortnightly sessions at The Languages Hub, helping students with any queries they might have, grammar or language related, linked with the VLE and other digital resources. I encourage students to use language learning apps and resources shared through the Spanish resources page which I have been updating regularly taking onboard students’ and colleagues’ suggestions. Click here to read an email I received not long ago from a student who recommended an app he found very useful. I used Yorkshare to share the app amongst my students (in my VLE folders) and my colleagues’ students (using the announcement tool) and also uploaded the app information to the Spanish resources page.
Sharing knowledge and good practice with colleagues and students, I have discovered and tried new apps and tools which I have incorporated into my practice, for example: Google Sites, Weebly, Padlet and Kahoot, which my students really enjoy playing. I believe these apps have helped me enhance and stimulate the students’ learning experience. The more varied the input the more exciting and motivating education is - there is less room for repetition and monotony which seem to be conducive to boredom and apathy.
During 2013/14 I worked very hard to continue my development and expand my career. In November 2013 I received confirmation of the UoY Rapid Response Fund which supported a bilingual international collaborative project which I developed over a number of years to come to fruition. I wanted to design innovative and motivating learning resources to enhance and stimulate the learning experience of students at the UoY facilitating a deep-learning real-time online experience, and building links with universities abroad. At the end of the pilot the overall improvement demonstrated by the TANGO participants was outstanding. The collaborative learning experience with their language partners and the cultural insight and sensibility the students had acquired, contributed towards a first-hand experience which provided them with a deep understanding, not only linguistic but cultural, as well as on their own learning process.
In 2015 I spoke at 4 conferences disseminating TANGO and I wrote two peer reviewed papers; one of them was published in July 2015, in the proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (Edulearn) and the other one was published at the end of January 2016 by Research-Publishing.net in the volume titled Innovative language teaching and learning at university: enhancing participation and collaboration. This was the first year I had attended a conference as a speaker and I thoroughly enjoyed such a rich experience: meeting other speakers and colleagues, sharing knowledge and developing long-lasting links which will support work into the future. I use LinkedIn (email and Google Hangouts) to keep in touch with colleagues and former students, using the messages and notifications tools and reading and publishing posts and updates.
Since October 2005 I have been in charge of the maintenance and development of the Spanish LFA website at the UoY. As the University website has been completely updated three times or so in the last ten years, I have redeveloped it accordingly while managing the Spanish online pages. I have populated the reading resources section and I have been compiling learning resources taking into account the student needs and feedback; feedback from colleagues, and knowledge gained from my growing experience in the area.
In 2011 I developed and delivered a workshop on the design of audio materials to promote and ensure QA and QE across all languages. The workshop covered how to write, record and edit language learning materials for classroom and assessment use, and it was open to all language tutors. In 2013 I revised the workshop and ran it at Leeds Beckett University, where I also work. This academic year, while conducting the listening assessment with my groups, I realised that it would useful to run the workshop again and my proposal to celebrate it on Wednesday 13th April has been accepted.
I work with students on a weekly and daily basis because of my teaching role, communicate verbally during the teaching sessions and keep in touch via email and the VLE. In addition to that, during the teaching terms I used to run fortnightly sessions at The Languages Hub, helping students with any queries they might have, grammar or language related, linked with the VLE and other digital resources. I encourage students to use language learning apps and resources shared through the Spanish resources page which I have been updating regularly taking onboard students’ and colleagues’ suggestions. Click here to read an email I received not long ago from a student who recommended an app he found very useful. I used Yorkshare to share the app amongst my students (in my VLE folders) and my colleagues’ students (using the announcement tool) and also uploaded the app information to the Spanish resources page.
Sharing knowledge and good practice with colleagues and students, I have discovered and tried new apps and tools which I have incorporated into my practice, for example: Google Sites, Weebly, Padlet and Kahoot, which my students really enjoy playing. I believe these apps have helped me enhance and stimulate the students’ learning experience. The more varied the input the more exciting and motivating education is - there is less room for repetition and monotony which seem to be conducive to boredom and apathy.
During 2013/14 I worked very hard to continue my development and expand my career. In November 2013 I received confirmation of the UoY Rapid Response Fund which supported a bilingual international collaborative project which I developed over a number of years to come to fruition. I wanted to design innovative and motivating learning resources to enhance and stimulate the learning experience of students at the UoY facilitating a deep-learning real-time online experience, and building links with universities abroad. At the end of the pilot the overall improvement demonstrated by the TANGO participants was outstanding. The collaborative learning experience with their language partners and the cultural insight and sensibility the students had acquired, contributed towards a first-hand experience which provided them with a deep understanding, not only linguistic but cultural, as well as on their own learning process.
In 2015 I spoke at 4 conferences disseminating TANGO and I wrote two peer reviewed papers; one of them was published in July 2015, in the proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (Edulearn) and the other one was published at the end of January 2016 by Research-Publishing.net in the volume titled Innovative language teaching and learning at university: enhancing participation and collaboration. This was the first year I had attended a conference as a speaker and I thoroughly enjoyed such a rich experience: meeting other speakers and colleagues, sharing knowledge and developing long-lasting links which will support work into the future. I use LinkedIn (email and Google Hangouts) to keep in touch with colleagues and former students, using the messages and notifications tools and reading and publishing posts and updates.