EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES EXPANDING LANGUAGE CLASSES LIMITS: AN EXPERIENCE REPORT ON LANGUAGES WITHOUT BORDERS-ENGLISH AT UFSM

Abstract

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, teachers and students have been compulsorily transferred to a remote teaching/learning context. The Language without Borders (IsF) program has gone through the same reality and had to offer its courses remotely. In this transitional period, the main didactic obstacle has been the lack of a specific guideline on what technologies would be used (and how they would be used) in online classes. Based on this context, we report here a pedagogical experience in three remote IsF-English courses at Federal University of Santa Maria, in the second academic semester of 2020. Our objective is to present a contribution to the discussion on problems and possibilities of remote teaching/learning, grounded on teaching technologies. In classes, we used Google Forms, Google Meet, Google Slides, Google Docs and Google Drive, in addition to social networking websites and email. These technologies have been important for the three courses to be successful. One of the main positive results of our experience was conversations with foreigners about cultural elements, which would be almost unachievable to run in face-to-face classes. Moreover, these technologies have increased IsF’s target audience, since students from campuses in cities other than Santa Maria could have been enrolled. We hope our report may serve as a facilitator of ideas when it comes to teaching methodologies - especially in additional language classes -, in this dynamic period in which we have to search for faster and faster solutions to new problems related to education.