Mobile Enhanced Language Learning (MELLT) goes OEP: Future skills for prospective English teachers and English lessons

The overarching aim of the project is to promote media and foreign language didactic skills, including through the development of adaptable learning and teaching materials for the needs of teachers. Such materials are particularly important for the digitalized society and as part of the professionalization of prospective teachers and will certainly become even more important in the future.

The two-pronged structure of the project provides for the development of subject-specific didactic self-learning materials on current didactic theories, models and methods (e.g. digital literacies). This can serve as support for students in their teacher training and provide teachers with an additional opportunity for self-directed further training. At the same time, materials for digitally supported English lessons are created in cooperation with students from the subject didactics seminars of the Master of Education on the basis of research-based evaluations of digital tools and technologies. In cooperation with teachers at schools and at the IQSH, OER materials are also created as part of Master’s theses at the Chair of English Didactics. The continuous evaluation of the materials is a key feature of quality assurance. The cooperation #LernenVernetzt and the implementation in the practical semester also enables the practical application and practical evaluation of the materials by the students themselves.

Ultimately, the publication of the developed materials as permanently usable and adaptable OER not only contributes to educational equity, but also enables low-threshold availability for students, practicing teachers and interested parties outside the formal education sector. Supporting teachers in the procurement of high-quality OER is therefore a particularly important concern of the project, as finding such materials on German servers is still associated with hurdles. In addition, publications that contain theoretically sound and thoroughly evaluated materials can offer a certain degree of security for users with regard to the problem of the quality of educational materials published on the Internet.