Not a language course (!): teaching global leadership skills through a foreign language in a flipped, blended, and ubiquitous learning environment

Abstract

This paper reports on the evidence learning found from a flipped, blended, ubiquitous learning Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) course teaching global leadership skills using a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to Japanese undergraduates through English. The purposes of the current study are to see if (1) there was any evidence of learning found in the students’ oral outputs, and (2) there were any changes in student perceptions about the course and their Target Language (TL) fluency over a 10-week period. The data were collected through two interview sessions conducted in Weeks 4 and 14. A similar set of questions were asked in both interviews to gauge student understanding of the course content, perceptual changes, and oral output skills. Three-semesters worth of interview data were transcribed and sorted into four categories; (1) transfer of words, (2) transfer of phrases, (3) transfer of concepts, and (4) application of concepts. The results indicated that the students’ perceptions of the course shifted from an English as a foreign language course to a leadership course, and they produced more course relevant answers.

Conceptualising language MOOC diversity: The creation of a defined taxonomy through the analysis of course indicators

“…More modestly, MOOCs using the foreign language for instruction are also found (Read, Sedano & Barcena, 2018;Tanaka-Ellis & Sekiguchi, 2019). It is the elements (content vs. language) to be assessed that determine their possible eligibility as LMOOCs.…”