Introduction
Center for Higher Education EMI Professional Development
EMI PD Center is led by Wenli Tsou, Director of the Foreign Language Center at National Cheng Kung University, Shihmei Kao, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at National Cheng Kung University, and Regine Lin, Director of the Center for Higher Education Accreditation for Teaching at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. The Center is located on the 2nd floor of the Hsiu Chi Building of NCKU. In addition to the above three PIs, the Center has also invited more than ten scholars and experts from major universities in Taiwan to join the teaching and research team. Moreover, there are six international scholars who provide ongoing professional assistance in the development of the Center and its EMI program.
The EMI PD Center would make professional development provision for university EMI teachers, with the attendance of a 36-hour course involving blending synchronous and asynchronous learning and which provides a certificate of completion. This constitutes 30 hours’ synchronous classes with input of information and discussion, and 6 hours’ asynchronous learning involving analysis of micro-lessons plus feedback and evaluation (See Figure 1 below for the framework of the course). Participants on the PD course can integrate their learning in designing and implementing a micro-lesson in her/his own subject discipline, and through self- and peer evaluation and feedback, and share insights generated in the learning process. Apart from providing such PD courses, the EMI PD Center will be involved in other functions, such as providing consultancy in curriculum development work, building professional learning communities, disseminating teaching and learning resources, and accreditation work for EMI teaching qualifications. (See Figure 2 below).
Figure 1. The framework of the blending course design of the EMI PD Center
Figure2. The goals of the EMI PD Center
The professional development provided by the EMI PD Center consists of two main themes: languaging and pedagogies. The former helps EMI teachers to improve their use of English in terms of fluency and intelligibility, in areas such as instructional language, interactional language and signposting language. The latter focuses on curriculum design (such as the ‘backward design” approach), the teaching process procedures (ODIR), learning task design, translanguaging, and multi-modal teaching strategies (See Table 1).
Table 1: Course content of the EMI PD Center
We use the term “languaging” to highlight the active role played by language(s) as a tool for communication. In the EMI classroom, the language users, like in social contexts, negotiate and construct knowledge and meaning through the use of languages. We focus on “pedagogies” because we realize that university teachers constitute the only population in the teaching profession who are not mandated to undergo professional training. Facing numerous challenges posed by educational reforms and the trend of internationalization of higher education, the authorities concerned must devise a scheme for providing relevant, systematic, glocalized professional education which is consistent with Government policies and which meets the specific needs of the situation, thus pre-empting a sense of helplessness felt by teachers and students. That is what our professional development course is about: to reassure, to reassure teachers, students and relevant authorities, with our emphasis on ODIR, 3 Rs (Revisit, Review, Re-design), Aspects of English (EGP, ESP, DLE), and Effective Strategies (AI technology support, translanguaging, multimodality).