ILOCALAPP
Incidentally Learning Other Cultures and Languages through an APP

Período
1 de outubro de 2015 a 1 de setembro de 2018
Duração
35 meses
Resumo

The ILOCALAPP project (Incidentally Learning Other Cultures And Languages through an APP) aims to facilitate student mobility by means of a smart tool specially designed for mobile devices. The ILOCALAPP  project will develop an app for the incidental learning of 4 cultures and languages: Finnish, Italian, Polish and Portuguese. Following the principles of incidental learning, the acquisition of language and culture will rely on the learners’ participation in the process of knowledge creation, and will happen in an informal setting. ILOCALAPP will offer to mobility students the possibility to get acquainted with local language and cultural in a smart way, thus enabling them to integrate in and interact with the country hosting them. The objectives of the ILOCALAPP project are: 1) to promote the integration of students in the new reality by providing them with a tool easy to be used; 2) to boost communication thanks to contents and situational experiences useful for everyday life; 3) to develop a tool aimed at the removal of cultural barriers thus improving social and behavioural competences and fostering integration and intercultural dialogue.

The project addresses the needs of mobility students who are the main target users. They will be involved  in the activities at various stages throughout the project, starting from the initial months when a wide consultations on their expectations will be conducted. The culmination of the students’ involvement will be represented by the piloting phase of the app. Their feedback will be crucial as an indicator of achievement and will guide towards the finalised app.

Resultados

The results of the ILOCALAPP are thought to be exploited at all possible levels, from the local one to the international one. The app is based on the local contextualisation of the learning materials and it can thus be used in one of the four University cities of the project. But the final users are mobility students, i.e. students arriving there to spend a learning and/or training experience. They can come from all over Europe and even from the rest of the world. Moreover, the methodology which will be developed can be applied at higher levels than the local ones: it will represent a document for further exploitation related to other languages and cultures too. If the short-term impact is mainly linked to project participants, the main actors engaged in the long-term impact of the project results will be International Offices and Erasmus Offices of the participating institutions and of all institutions reached by dissemination activities, which will have the opportunity to propose the app to incoming and outgoing students also in the long term, after the end of the project.

Parceiros

Universidade de Bolonha, Itália (entidade coordenadora do consórcio)

Universidade da Lapónia, Finlândia

Universidade Adam Mickiewicz de Poznan, Polónia

Investigadoras/es
Anabela Fernandes
Clara Keating (coord)
Joana Cortez-Smyth
Olga Solovova
Palavras-Chave
student mobility, incidental learning, languange and culture, mobile app
Financiamento
Erasmus+