Pool of Media Projects in English Studies

When I began this pedagogical blog, “Media Projects in English Studies” (2011), I was an active member of the ANGLOTIC project, formed by a group of instructors at the Department of English and German Philology, coordinated by Dr. Barry Pennock, and funded by the Servei de Formació Permanent i Educació Educativa at the University of Valencia. ANGLOTIC members took an active part in the implementation of a wide range of ICTs within the context of the European Higher Education Area and the new academic degrees and student-centered methodologies that resulted from it (2008-2013). Our original aim was to use blogs, forums, wikis, collaborative platforms, eportfolios, digital stories, and websites in the university classroom and to create teaching materials and learning objects that could be used in English language, culture, and literature classes throughout the world. These pedagogical applications were later examined in case studies and scientific articles.

In 2017 I began to coordinate a new teaching innovation project, NAPCED (New Applications of Critical Pedagogy and Education for Development to the Teaching of Anglophone Literatures, 2017-2021), funded by the Servei de Formació Permanent i Innovació Educativa (SFPIE-UVEG) at the University of Valencia. This project has now been transformed into “NAPCED 4.0. Nuevas aplicaciones de la Pedagogía Crítica y de la Educación para el Desarrollo al análisis de textos literarios anglófonos en contextos digitales y performativos” (2021-2022). The members of NAPCED and NAPCED 4.0. have also been creating resources and materials to be used in Literature courses of our degree. Some of these materials can be found in the group’s specific website:

http://napced.blogs.uv.es

This blog remains a repository of re-usable learning objects designed and produced by university students in the Degree of English Studies at the University of Valencia.

Most of the projects published in this site have been carefully researched and engineered by the students themselves under my close guidance. They are meant to be used as LEARNING OBJECTS and, for this reason, all of the educational videos are accompanied by pedagogical activities. The selection was carried out by each generation of students via peer-review. Many of them were designed by first year students and they may contain occasional pronunciation errors. We apologize for this but wanted to preserve them in their original state as evidence of their learning and progress.

(See MENU: “ICT Projects by Subject” on the right).

ICT RESEARCH INTERESTS:

I have been studying the multiple uses and effects of CMC (computer-mediated communication) on English language, literature and culture modules for several years (see Publications section). In addition to my articles and books on Anglophone literatures, ethnic studies, and film, which are available in my Researchgate and Academia pages, my current research interests include the didactic implementation of virtual forums, educational social networks, Booktube, video-essays and digital stories in a variety of English Studies modules such as Literature of the United States, History and Culture of the English-Speaking Countries, Pre-19th Century British Theatre, Introduction to English Literature and World Literatures in English. I specifically analyze the impact these digital technologies have on students’ participation, on their rhetorical, argumentative, critical thinking and linguistic skills, and their level of cognitive engagement with the subject matter.

The introduction of media projects and technology among students of English Philology is usually received with an interesting mixture of excitement, fear and suspicion, even though many of them already are digital natives. However, as students learn to navigate the technical and pedagogical aspects of these projects, they are generally encouraged by the creativity and flexibility offered by these multimodal channels, which allow them to experience, create, and analyze texts in a new light.

Multimodal projects generally maintain the textual nature of the activity while fostering cognitive engagement, motivation, critical analysis, online bibliographical research, communicative competence, public speaking skills and creativity. They also sharpen team-building skills and collaboration between peers as students learn from one another and, thus, interactively increase their knowledge of ICT and of the subject matter.

Media projects can be easily turned into re-usable learning objects and incorporated into a variety of instructional contexts such as English language, literature and/or culture-oriented subjects in secondary and tertiary education. The learning objects we present here come accompanied by brief manuals of use or supplementary didactic activities although they may also work as individual or complementary units embedded in other learning contexts.

 

If you have any questions about these learning objects or would like to give us feedback you can e-mail me at: Anna.M.Brigido@uv.es