Project Investigator(s): Maria Carbonetti, Lecturer, French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies; Carolina Navarrete – Postdoctoral Fellow (Liu Institute – French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies)
Project Description
This project will create assessment tools and surveys for evaluating the impact of the community-based experiential learning component in Conversational Spanish courses on communicative performance (oral, aural, and cultural) and their affective response towards second language use and learning. Data collected in the past term Winter 2017 from 26 students of one section of Spanish 207 (aural tests, journal entries and oral interviews) on the community-based pilot project in partnership with South Granville Senior Center will be the base for creating more effective tools for evaluation and assessment of students’ performance and affective response. The aim of creating these tools and resources is to apply and run them in the next academic year where we will continue the project, this time with 2 sections of the course, about 50 to 60 students.
Research Questions
1. What is the tools effectiveness as a learning practice towards the learning outcomes of the course?
2. What is the students’ affective response towards the language and their own learning process?
Impact on teaching and learning at UBC
The assessment tool developed will be applied to a larger group (between 50 to 60) and tested during the second term. Once revisions are made, the long-term goal is to implement the assessment tools to more sections-courses and to evaluate the performance and impact outside specific courses on the volunteers participating in the Spanish for Community initiative.
These tools have the potential to be used as a point of departure for creating similar experiences in other languages where there is an interest in exploring community-based learning. Part of the assessment tools to be designed can be applied to improve the experience of the participants of Spanish for Community at large, which is an initiative where the community-based project is housed and which is open to students of different levels and courses, graduates, and instructors.
Project Outcomes
“While I have been developing and running community-based learning projects in Spanish language courses since 2011, and had informally collected some data about students perception on the experiential learning through interviews and journals, engaging in the SoTL process allowed me to look at my practice with precise lenses and from a healthier distance than before. The SoTL Seed Grant not only provided me with the necessary expertise and support needed to design and implement the study, it offered me the opportunity to reflect deeply about the process and application of community-based experiential pedagogy. The results of the study informed changes that I made to my approach to facilitation and eased my need for structure and control over community-based projects. In addition, this healthy distance to look at teaching and curriculum development through SoTL has confirmed, with clear and relevant data, a central fact I knew by intuition and experience – how relevant and effective this pedagogy is for language learning and how positively it impacts the affective response on students. I absolutely would encourage my fellow instructors to participate, to be supported as I have to be able to self-reflect, to learn and improve changing what needs adjustment and also to be surprised by those things that work amazingly well!”