Communicating at University in a Second Language: The Contribution of Microlearning
My Session Status
Presenters : Jérémie Paradis; Nancy Gagné et Isabelle Savard
- Students
Institution : TELUQ - Kwe Portal
The project is part of the Kwe l ’Université Portal! and presents the first iteration of a propaedeutics course aimed at the development of second language communication skills, in an academic context for First Peoples. The target second languages are French and English for academic success.
An initial needs analysis was produced by the Kwe l’Université Portal team! (Savard et al., 2023). One of the needs is to offer flexible training to allow a work-study-family balance (Savard et al., 2023, p. 6-8). This training should allow students to stay in their community, hence the importance of choosing distance asynchronous microlearning teaching. Distance learning offers flexibility and limits travel (Savard et al., 2023, p. 8).
Microlearning presents short, concise and focused teaching sequences (Kadiev et al., 2021 in Alias et al., 2023). It allows learners to benefit from short training courses when they need them. The hypothesis is that by including learning capsules on discursive knowledge in the portal, participants will be able to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills necessary to develop the communication competency, when they need it, that is, as they progress through the university program of their choice. Discursive knowledge refers to all knowledge relating to the different ways of communicating. In the academic context, this includes the various types of communication (assignments, exams, emails, etc.), their structures, and the expectations associated with adequate communication.
The pedagogical design approach for these microlearning modules will be presented. In addition, this sharing of practice will make it possible to discuss the training needs and the design of such modules.