Session Information
31 ONLINE 25 B, Literacy as 21st-Century Skill: Empirical Elaboration on the Construct, Acquisition Contexts & Learning Tools in a Global Perspective
Symposium
MeetingID: 832 9014 6517 Code: Wc7p1h
Contribution
The emergence of the pandemic and the school closure that followed, have caused an abrupt and dramatic reduction in academic instruction time for all students. To this end, teachers need tools that allow them to identify gaps in learning as well as the relevant academic content required to bridge the gap, assign realistic tasks to students, and involve parents to support their children whenever possible. Multilingual digital tools have a promising potential to help meet these challenges. However, these new technologies need to be well prepared and optimally implemented to support students in their catch-up phase. In this project funded by a MITACS grant, we studied the extent to which a multilingual digital resource called Binogi supported teachers in identifying the content that had been missed by each individual student. With this project, we evaluated the extent to which this new digital multilingual resource was implemented in 8 schools across Canada. We first aligned the content of STEM textbooks to the STEM curriculum of Canadian provinces and Binogi content and translated it into a Binogi online remedial resource for students in Grades 6 to 9. We then supported teachers to construct the profiles of each student and address the possible gaps by making a differentiated use of the Binogi content. Finally, we collected data that were automatically generated through the back end of the software, including performance metrics for each individual participant, which allowed us to measure academic progress. Back-end data also included the languages used by the students and generic usage characteristics, such as average duration of time spent on the digital platform, which provided an objective measure of the students’ engagement with the tool. We measured the impact of this resource by tracking the use and satisfaction of 18 teachers, 153 students and 30 parents. We used short surveys addressed to the three groups (Le Pichon, Cummins & Vorstman, 2021) before and at the end of the intervention. These surveys provided the team with feedback on different aspects of usability (e.g., students’ perception and engagement in STEM, teachers and students ‘reflections related to the use of online digital software, collaboration with parents). Results shed light on the conditions that may improve the uptake of multilingual online digital tools. In this presentation, we will discuss these success factors as well as the limitations of implementing such resources and present the questions that arise from this study.
References
Le Pichon, E., Cummins, J. & Vorstman, J. (2021). Using a web- based multilingual platform to support elementary refugee students in mathematics, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2021.1916022
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