Webinar On Learner-centered Environment Through Social Negotiation and Collaboration

From http://nmelrc.org/nmelrc-webinar-april-20th

The National Middle East Language Resource Center (NMELRC) invites you to participate in a webinar on Friday, April 20th at 1 pm Eastern Standard Time in the U.S.

The topic will be: Encouraging student collaboration, negotiation, and engagement in meaningful and relevant environments. This 60-minute webinar will be led by Dr. Nicole Mills, coordinator of the Beginning French language Program at Harvard University and previous coordinator of beginning and intermediate French at the University of Pennsylvania.

The webinar will focus on how to create a learner-centered environment by providing opportunities for social negotiation and collaboration through active and authentic language use in meaningful and realistic environments. Dr. Mills will present a brief overview of research and theory associated with the value of experiential and constructivist learning and student engagement in the foreign language classroom. She will then discuss a global simulation curriculum grounded in Paris, France in which students create a fictive yet culturally grounded world, assume the role of a self-developed French character, and collaborate with fellow community members (Magnin, 1997). Adapted from this curriculum, she will propose an adapted curriculum in the Persian language context. With the help of the participants, she will propose ideas for a global simulation curriculum in Beginning or Intermediate level Persian grounded within the Shiraz, Iran context. Ideas will include possible course themes, interactive writing tasks, oral exams, in-class activities, and a final play assignment which encourage student negotiation, collaboration, and active participation. The format of the webinar will be a live webcast with participants emailing in questions and comments before and during the broadcast.

For more information and to RSVP go to http://nmelrc.org/nmelrc-webinar-april-20th