News

The UOC signs an agreement to market its online language learning tools

03/04/2018
SpeakApps is an initiative that aims to promote web 2.0 tools for language learning

The University's Knowledge Transfer and Entrepreneurship team at its Knowledge Transfer and Research Support Office has signed an agreement with Medialab Grupp S.L. to market these tools. Medialab specializes in tech consultancy in the education sector and offers innovative tech solutions and services to meet people's educational needs.

The project was developed between 2011 and November 2014 and coordinated by Christine Appel, professor at the Centre for Modern Languages. It received funding from the European Lifelong Learning Programme to produce tools to support oral language learning activities in Catalan, Croatian, Dutch, English, French, German, Irish, Italian, Polish, Spanish and Swedish.

SpeakApps includes four tools that let teachers assess their students' pronunciation and fluency.

  • Langblog is a videoblog built in to the virtual classroom. It is used to practise and improve students' oral language skills.
     
  • Tandem is a content management system that makes it easier to organize different materials for students, so that they can take part in synchronous oral interaction tasks.
     
  • Videochat is a tool that lets up to six people take part in videoconferences.
     
  • Open Educational Resources is a tool to save and access tasks and activities to practice interaction and oral language skills.

The SpeakApps project was coordinated by the UOC and involved the following European universities: Dublin City University, Ireland; University of Groningen, Netherlands; Jagiellonian University, Poland, and the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.