This chapter1 focuses on a multidisciplinary collaboration aimed at promoting
multiliteracies practices and reflection in university courses. It discusses two
ongoing sets of educational projects based on multiliteracies for pre-service
and in-service teacher education (YELL/TELL: Young English Language
Learners/Teen English Language Learners) and for language studies in a university
degree in foreign languages for interpreters (LabInt). Albeit developed
for two rather different educational contexts and professional needs, these projects
have in common the aim of enhancing multiliteracies as co-construction
of knowledge, reflection, and expertise through open educational practices
and user-generated resources. The practices presented in the chapter are also
relevant to improve the general offer for higher education students learning
English as a foreign language and to meet some of their needs as language
experts, such as enhancing their digital skills and multimodal competences
while learning languages.
The ultimate goal of our collaboration within the LearnWeb project is
to enhance the multiliteracies experience for language learners in a lifelong
learning perspective by optimising an adaptable digital environment on the
basis of actual user requirements and feedback.
The research questions we investigated in our studies are the following:
1 How was the multiliteracies approach integrated into the LearnWeb
project?
2 How can the LearnWeb collaborative environment be implemented to
meet the needs of various learning scenarios?
3 How do participants use online affordances in their teaching profession
and their learning?
This chapter provides an outline of the context and the main theoretical
framework of the educational sets of projects; next, it presents and discusses
the development of the two case studies over the years. The concluding
remarks summarise relevant results and further developments.
