Rachelle MEILLEUR    Department   Kyoto University of Foreign Studies  Department of British and American Studies, Faculty of Foreign Studies    Position   Associate Professor
Date	2020/06/07
Presentation Theme	CALL & Learner Development Forum: Learning transformations with Schoology, online workbooks, and Google Suites
Conference	JALTCALL 2020
Conference Type	International
Presentation Type	Panelist at Symposium/Workshop (Applied)
Contribution Type	Collaborative
Publisher and common publisher	Rachelle R. Meilleur, Michael Barr
Details	Over the past five years, we have been developing an autonomous learning project to help students develop their abilities and skills as language learners. Although some aspects of the project focused on using technology, it has, for the most part, remained a mostly analog exercise. However, over the past year, the goal of our project has been to take advantage of a range of G-Suite applications which are available to all incoming first year students. These have enabled us to exchange and develop student-centred content with an immediacy that was previously impossible. Experimentation resulted in clear and poignant lessons concerning best practices when utilising digital communication technologies in the classroom. Our goal and motivation was to allow students to take activities from our in-house text and take ownership of them. Students created study trackers, language learning histories, and shared ‘resources discovery’ materials. We tested and developed collaborative shared documents, sheets, and slides in order to achieve this. While this is a relatively new and ongoing study, lessons learned through this process should be of great interest to educators interested in expanding the reach - and horizons - of their classes and students. The efforts necessary to achieve this have produced a repeatable framework which can be used well into the future, for the benefit of students, educators, and institutions.