What will happen after Covid-19? How will teaching and training change? What are the challenges and opportunities? Is it a time for ‘risky thinking’?

In its first ever online annual conference, ICC-Languages hosted members and friends to discuss Teaching and Training in the Time of Covid-19 and the way forward when the pandemic is finally under control. Excellently organised by the ICC-Languages committee under its chair, Ellinor Haase, ably supported by Ozlem Yuges as ICC-Languages coordinator and Malou Berger, the conference featured presentations by teachers from Belgrade (where the original face-to-face conference was scheduled to be hosted), Naples, the ECML in Graz and London.

Quoting the Italian fashion designer, Giorgio Armani, saying ‘Fashion is ahead of its time’ in her opening keynote, Susanna Slivensky of the ECML (European Centre for Modern Languages) asked why language training should not also be considered also ‘ahead of its time’ and stressed the importance of the ‘human touch’ in successful teaching and teacher education and how Covid-19 had frustrated that purpose while promoting the search for fresh opportunities for communication online. She went on to describe the initiatives taken by the ECML to bring teachers together online to ensure  teaching and training was ‘fit for purpose’. Things will change for sure as a result of Covid-19, she said and expressed the need for innovative ways of reaching teachers and achieving the democratisation of teaching and learning. New innovation would demand ‘Risky Thinking’ she concluded.

Following the theme of achieving the human touch in spite of social distancing, Marijana Prodanovic from Belgrade explored humanistic approaches in online language testing. The practice of testing has always been a challenging one within the language teaching-learning process and required delicate attention paid by all the participants. The COVID-19 outbreak, which marked the beginning of the year 2020, has brought about abrupt and major changes on everyday life; education has experienced them overnight and so intensively that the old habits, approaches and teaching methods, as well as testing practices have to be adapted to a newly created virtual learning environment. A study has been conducted, aiming to illustrate some prominent perspectives of tertiary level ESP teachers and learners on language testing in online context. It has been concluded that the overall attitude towards the novel, Covid-19 imposed, language teaching-learning environment is rather positive – anyhow, all the parts of such an environment, testing being an important one, are still evolving and need humanistic approaches support along the path.

Barry Tomalin from Glasgow Caledonian University London turned the discussion to focus on intercultural training in the corporate world, stressing the importance of focus on the business requirement to improve performance in international business relations rather than a straightforward description of the cultural characteristics of a new partner or client or team. Expanding on Susanna Slivensky’s point about ‘risky thinking’, he invoked the recent work of Milton Bennett, director of the Portland University Oregon Intercultural Development Research Institute (IDR), and his concept of COVID-19 allowing entry to a new ‘constructivist’ paradigm which would allow teachers to connect more equally with students by a thorough process of inclusion as equals in the learning process, being tolerant and practising humility while embracing and respecting students’ cultural identity.

Emma Abbate from Naples, a teacher of history and Geography in CLIL approach, described her use of online tools to make her classes at once more lively and more involving while still being relevant. She uses the EU digital platforms European and Go-Lab to teach a foreign language together with subject’s content specific vocabulary and to promote multilingualism in classroom. Europeana is the European digital platform for cultural and scientific heritage: it provides free access to a collection of millions of digitised items – books, music, artworks and more- from around thousands of libraries, museums, archives and galleries across Europe. Go-Lab is a platform aimed at free access to online/virtual laboratories and is an integral part of Scientix, the community for STEM teaching in Europe. Both portals are also a great support for teaching online because they provide a lot of material for lesson planning and creating.

In the final presentation, Rob Williams, former chair of ICC-Languages and principal lecturer at the University of Westminster in London, initiated a discussion of how students and teachers could work together on co-creating assessments and methodology, always taking into account university regulations, thereby empowering and engaging students actively in the assessment process. Rob argues that within the limits of the examination format students could be involved in deciding the examination tasks thereby talking charge of their own learning rather than just practising tasks. As he said, “If students take an active role in how they are evaluated, they become more invested in the content of the course and in being successful on it.”

The discussion continued with a panel discussing opportunities for changes in language education following the pandemic and concluded with a ‘virtual cocktail’ offered by the chair, Ellinor Haase. A good time was had by all.