A Joint Project: WebEnhanced English for Academic Purposes

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A Joint Project Web-Enhanced English for
Academic Purposes

• M. Schcolnik, M. Bensoussan, B. Oded, S. Hirsch,
  S. Kol, E. Avinor, O. Bogdanov, K. Goldfrad, P.
  Brand

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About Us
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Why Use the Web?

• new authentic communicative contexts
• digital literacies for academic purposes
• easy access and selection of up-to-date resources
• collaboration any place, any time
• variety of media
• course material always accessible

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Why Collaborate?

• Our advanced courses have similar needs, purposes
  and populations.
• We are all developing online components.
• Together
• a larger bank of relevant online materials
• fruitful interchange of ideas
• better and richer learning products
• No need to re-invent the wheel at each
  institution.

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Collaborative Work Procedures

• Email
• good for summarizing positions and decisions
• works better after group becomes team
• lack of immediacy
• Video conferences
• importance of preparation
• good decision-making mode
• almost as good as face to face
• Telephone conferences
• effective for communication between two teams
• easy to arrange

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Content-Based Units

• Modern History
• Jewish History
• Education
• Science and Technology
• Ethics in Medicine
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Intelligence

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The Units

• Each unit will provide about 12 hours of student
  work.
• The units will focus on reading, but listening,
  speaking and writing will also be tapped.

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Development/Evaluation Criteria

• overall unit
• stimuli
• links
• tasks
• forums
• polls
• technical issues

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Development Scheme

• Each unit is developed by a team made up of
  teachers from two universities.
• For example, Modern History is developed by
  Haifa and Jerusalem, while Ethics in Medicine is
  developed by Tel Aviv and Bar Ilan.

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Evaluation Scheme

• Each university will evaluate the units it is
  not developing.
• For example, Haifa will evaluate Jewish History
  with Tel Aviv, Science and Technology with Bar
  Ilan, Ethics in Medicine with Jerusalem, and
  Sociology with Bar Ilan.

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Projected Use

• The four institutions together have about 240
  advanced English classes (8,000 students) that
  will use the materials each year.
• In the future, the materials will be available to
  all institutions of higher education in MEITAL.