About the workshop
The Fifth workshop of the European Network for Teaching Arabic suggests strategies for resignifying teaching Arabic, taking into account both learners’ needs and class composition. In this frame, Connected Learning (CL) helps designing Arabic curriculum where students learn transferrable skills through an emphasis on acquiring both knowledge and skills. This approach combines connections between various components of the curriculum, theory and practice, students and their teachers, peers, and the wider society amongst other connections (Fung 2017). Fostering Relational Learning allows students and instructors engage in a dialogue about learning so that they learn from each other, share ideas and together create the learning/teaching experience.
Workshop participants will be able to identify what is meant by Connected Learning and produce learning content for one lesson/module that incorporates authentic tasks using Arabic in different contexts, Relational Learning and/or digital storytelling as examples of Connected Learning.
In the first part of the workshop (approx. 45 minutes), Dr. Ruba Khamam (University of Leeds) will give a presentation on Connected Learning and show an example CL in practice where students create and take part in authentic language tasks. Dr. Letizia Lombezzi (University of Siena) will introduce Relational Learning (RL) as a type of CL, explore the concept of being empirical and how it relates to CL, followed by a short elicitation session where workshop participants expand on CL/RL potentials. Dr. Hossam Ahmed (Leiden University) will demonstrate how to use Twine, a Digital Humanities tool for telling non-linear stories, to create highly customized non-linear learning paths that are effective in mixed-level classes. Mr. Zehad Sabry (University of Oslo) will demonstrate a connected learning unit (via digital storytelling), showing the steps of designing a digital-story-telling project-based unit, including instructions and rubrics.
In the hands-on part of the workshop (approx. 2h15min.), participants will work in groups to create Connected Learning experiences. Participants will design language learning modules which incorporate CL/DL/DST.