Abstract
College of Medicine, China Medical University
Highlights of the Implementation of “The Program on Bilingual Education for Students in Colleges (the BEST Program) – Key Cultivation College”, 2022-23 academic year
Highlights of our Bilingual Education Program
The College of Medicine actively promotes the BEST program, hoping to build an international-friendly medical college and promoting the faculty's ability in teaching EMI courses. By introducing EMI courses from basic medical courses to clinical courses, we aim to improve students' professional English proficiency and cultivate world-leading biomedical researchers with interdisciplinary innovation and international competitiveness. To promote bilingual education, the College of Medicine has established a Bilingual Education Promotion Committee to regularly review the implementation of the strategies. The committee also works closely with the Bilingual Education Resource Promotion Center, which is a university-level unit, and shares resources for developing EMI courses with all bilingual education units on campus to promote the English proficiency of all faculty and students. We would like to explain the implementation of our bilingual education program in the following three areas: I) Training of EMI Teachers, II) Promotion of EMI Courses, and III) Holding English Enhancement Activities.
I) Training of EMI Teachers
Excellent EMI course teachers are an essential factor in the success of the bilingual education. The following are the highlights of our EMI Course Teacher Training.
1) Providing a comprehensive EMI training workshop for basic medical and clinical teachers: the College of Medicine has provided an intensive EMI teacher training workshop (2022/1/17~1/19), which included EMI teaching pedagogical methods as well as an EMI course teaching demonstration, and course observation by peers. Thirty teachers (15 from the College of Medicine), including the Dean of the College of Medicine, have completed this intensive EMI teacher training workshop. The workshop helped teachers to learn EMI teaching strategies and encourage them to get involved in the EMI program.
2) Providing continuous education of teaching pedagogical methods and uninterrupted online learning: with the promotion of EMI teaching by the College of Medicine, quite a few China Medical University (CMU) teachers show interests in teaching EMI courses. Currently, 61 faculty members (including 30 from the College of Medicine) are taking the Cambridge EMI Teacher Online Certification Course to enhance their competencies in EMI teaching.
3) Organizing professional development activities and create a faculty’s support community to help teachers grow: we have established an EMI class observation and feedback mechanism and also provided one-on-one EMI mentoring sessions for EMI teachers. Through systematic EMI class observation, giving feedback, and consultation, teachers can learn from each other, improve the EMI teaching skills and class quality, and enhance the overall teaching efficacy of EMI courses. In addition, we have also established an inter-disciplinary EMI faculty development group, in which teachers can share their EMI teaching experiences. They held EMI-related seminars, organized English Corner for teachers and administrative staff in order to facilitate a friendly bilingual educational environment.
II) Promotion of EMI courses
1) Promotion of EMI courses: At the beginning of the semester, we held EMI courses and English enhancement activities at three campuses of CMU, in order to encourage students to take the EMI courses. For example, at the beginning of the semester, only single digit number of students enrolled in a new EMI course "Biochemistry in Life", but after the promotion, the number of students enrolled in the course increased to 50.
2) Designing interactive EMI classroom activities: through case study and group discussions in class, students can relate textbook materials to related cases, overcome their mental barriers and feel more comfortable to express themselves in English in the interactive EMI classroom activities. CMU EMI courses empower and motivate our students to step out of their comfort zone and equip themselves for reaching out to the international community in the near future.
3) Recruiting EMI Teaching Assistants (TAs): the participation of the EMI TAs helps EMI teachers to facilitate interactive discussions in the classroom, and students are more willing to express themselves in English. In addition, our EMI TAs reported that their participation in the EMI courses helped them to improve their professional and English language skills, and to become more confident in discussing and expressing themselves in English.
4) Implementing Student Learning Outcome Survey: the EMI Course Survey conducted at the end of the 2021-22 academic year indicated that the three most important gains for CMU students who took in the EMI courses were: improvement in oral communication skills (67.1%), improvement in English listening skills (60.5%), and enhancement in professional presentation in English (55.3%). Most of the students gave positive feedback about the EMI courses.
5) Holding Video Contest: to encourage students to take EMI courses, we held the "EMI Course Learning Experience Video Contest and Popularity Award Voting Activity" at the end of the 2021-22 academic year. More than 2,000 people watched the EMI course learning experience videos and voted for the best videos. The top three videos in the general and advanced categories were posted on the College’s EMI website: https://cm.cmu.edu.tw/news/186
The video contest has received a lot of positive feedback from students and helped students to know more about the EMI courses.
III) Holding English Enhancement Activities
In addition to the EMI courses, we also offer a variety of extra-curricular English enhancement activities to improve students' English proficiency. From service-learning courses for college freshmen to international seminars for graduate students, we make every effort to invite renowned experts and scholars from both the domestic and international communities, to meet and interact with students. Our diverse English enhancement activities are designed to support and enrich the students’ bilingual education learning experience.
1) Offering a Variety of English Enrichment Activities: the wide range of English enrichment activities we offered included study abroad and overseas career development sharing sessions, Golden Brain Research Presentation Competition, EMI course learning experience video competition, International Culture Week, TOEIC on campus, and weekly English Corner, etc.
2) Holding Service-Learning Master's Forum – an all-English Service Learning Volunteer Experience Sharing Session: the Master's Forum invited distinguished international professors to share their international volunteering services experiences with freshmen students. The forum was held in collaboration with the Office of Academic Affairs, the Office of Global Affairs and Asia University. The Forum attracted about 1,000 participants, with more than 260 students from the local community including Asia University and neighboring high schools.
3). Holding World-Class Conferences: CMU also aims to create an international learning environment by inviting world-renowned researchers to give speech either physically or online to motivate our faculty and students through interacting with prestigious scholars. In 2021, we held the first annual "International Conference on Advanced Biomedical Science" (ICABS, Taiwan). Speakers in the conference included Nobel Prize Laureates, members of the National Academy of Sciences, and members of the Academia Sinica. The conference attracted over 1000 participants, including about 200 CMU students.
