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Digital Literacy in University Contexts
Titre du projet
Digital Literacy in University Contexts
Description
As digitalisation progresses, new technologies can offer valuable support to academic writers. However, research and practice show that students and their lecturers are often not aware of the applicability of available tools and are unable to exploit their full potential. These are the issues addressed by the DigLit project, supported by swissuniversities and the partner institutions. Writing in most contexts today is done with digital, computer-assisted support. Technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI) such as intelligent tutoring (IT), automated writing evaluation (AWE), automated text production (ATP) and machine translation (MT) present new opportunities, perspectives, and risks for tertiary education. The challenge in university contexts is to determine how the advantages of AI-related technology can be leveraged in language teaching and academic writing while minimizing potential issues such as ineffective communication, miscommunication, and misuse (e.g. plagiarism). The main goal of the project is to show how they can be brought systematically into classrooms and coaching as surrogates for how to exploit AI in education, empowering lecturers and students by demonstrating how smart machines can help students to improve their writing. In order to meet this goal, we will evaluate the applicability of various types of digital multilingual writing support in Swiss universities and heighten current and potential users’ awareness of the opportunities and risks they entail.
Chercheur principal
Date de début
2021
Date de fin
2024
Chercheurs
Organisations
Centre de langues
2 Résultats
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- PublicationAccès libre“I Looked It Up in DeepL”: Machine Translation and Digital Tools in the Language Classroom(Venise: Edizioni Ca'Foscari, 2023-12-07)
; ; Steele, ElizabethThis article looks at a widespread yet erroneous use of machine translation (MT): looking up single words, thus treating MT systems as online bilingual dictionaries (ODs). After a literature review of this trend in research about MT, we consider data from a large survey that we carried out in 2021 at all Swiss universities on MT use and users’ attitudes. When analysing users’ metalinguistic awareness, we discovered that nontranslators perceive the text to translate, mostly at word level, leading to the misuse of MT systems as ODs. Moreover, the survey results revealed confusion between the different digital tools for language learning, namely MT, online parallel corpora like Linguee and ODs. We therefore suggest broadening the scope of MT literacy to include training learners in general digital literacy to enable them to use such tools appropriately. - PublicationAccès libreIntégrer GoogleTranslate comme support d’enseignement au niveau débutant : atelier pratique pour un public de réfugié·e·s ukrainien·ne·s(2024)
; Le dispositif didactique analysé et décrit dans cet article suit un objectif double : amener les participant·e·s à développer leur apprentissage en autonomie et leur littéracie en traduction automatique neuronale (TAN). Ces outils sont massivement utilisés par les migrant·e·s, mais pas toujours à bon escient. Il est donc crucial de cadrer et de thématiser leur utilisation dans les classes de langues, même au niveau débutant. Plusieurs types d’exercices ont été créés : 1. Pour introduire ces outils à la fois comme de bons modèles et des bases pour la communication ; 2. Pour montrer que la TAN a des limites (ne représente pas toute la langue ; peut proposer un output fautif) ; et 3. Pour fixer un cadre et des situations où l’utilisation de cette technologie n’est pas utile. L’évaluation de ce dispositif a montré son succès relatif, même si une introduction théorique à la TAN aurait pu permettre un meilleur développement de la littéracie en TAN des participant·e·s.