BET on Top Hat: challenges to improve language proficiency

Within the business context, communication and interaction tends to be considerably rooted in the use of English (as lingua franca), as well as in ICT use. Thus, professionals have to be able to speak the English language, resorting to specific, internationally recognised terminology and be proficient in the use of manifold ICT tools. In fact, the tendency is for the great majority of higher education (HE) students to own mobile devices (laptops, smartphones and/or tablets) and use them to access information and communicate/interact with content and other people. Bearing this in mind, a teaching and learning strategy was designed, in which m-learning (i.e. learning in which the delivery platform is a mobile device) was used to approach Business English Terminology (BET). The strategy was labelled as ‘BET on Top Hat’, once the selected application was Top Hat (https://tophat.com/) and the idea was for students to face it as if it were a game/challenge. In this scenario, the main goals of this exploratory study were to find evidence as to: i) the utility of m-learning activities for learning BET and ii) if and how m-learning activities can generate intrinsic motivation in students to learn BET. Participants (n=23) were enrolled in English II, a curricular unit of the 1st cycle degree in Retail Management offered at Águeda School of Technology and Management – University of Aveiro (2014/15 edition). The data gathered included the students’ results in quizzes and their answers to a short final evaluation questionnaire regarding their experience with BET on Top Hat. Consequently, data were treated and analysed resorting to descriptive statistical analysis, and, when considered pertinent, the teacher’s observation notes were also considered. The results unveil that, on the one hand, the strategy had a clear positive impact on the students’ intrinsic motivation and, on the other hand, the students’ performance as to BET use tended to improve over time.

Evaluation of online higher education: learning, interaction and technology

The work presents a theoretical framework for the evaluation of e-Teaching that aims at positioning the online activities designed and developed by the teacher as to the Learning, Interaction and Technology Dimensions. The theoretical research that underlies the study was developed reflecting current thinking on the promotion of quality of teaching and of the integration of information and communication tools into the curriculum in Higher Education (HE), i.e., bearing in mind some European guidelines and policies on this subject. This way, an answer was sought to be given to one of the aims put forward in this study, namely to contribute towards the development of a conceptual framework to support research on evaluation of e-teaching in the context of HE. Based on the theoretical research carried out, an evaluation tool (SCAI) was designed, which integrates the two questionnaires developed to collect the teachers' and the students' perceptions regarding the development of e-activities. Consequently, an empirical study was structured and carried out, allowing SCAI tool to be tested and validated in real cases. From the comparison of the theoretical framework established and the analysis of the data obtained, we found that the differences in teaching should be valued and seen as assets by HE institutions rather than annihilated in a globalizing perspective.