Project description

Developing and emphasizing oral skills in foreign language learning in line with the Common European Framework of Reference for Language (CEF) seems to be the general trend in the whole of Europe.

WebCEF allows teaching staff to jointly evaluate the oral skills and proficiency of their pupils through a web-based environment.

The main objectives of the project are

• bringing teaching staff across Europe together,
• providing them with a community where their assessments can be validated by their colleagues and
• providing them and their pupils with tools to provide and share annotated video and audio materials on the internet.

The main activities in WebCEF are

• the development of a didactic model,
• the collection and joint analysis of oral proficiency samples supported by new and easily accessible technologies and
• the creation and maintenance of a European community-of-practice of teaching staff and pupils.

The outputs include

• the didactic model and a mindbook (manual) integrated in an EPSS (Electronic Performance Support System),
• an oral proficiency-specific database of validated and annotated video and audio samples,
• a pro-active community-of-practice geared towards European language teachers, teacher educators and teacher trainees,
• and a pedagogically-justified rationale for future foreign language education assessment.

The WebCEF activities are divided into 8 work packages:

• WP1: Project management and coordination: project management activities regarding the general management and coordination of the project, organized by the project management team under the lead of K.U.Leuven-AVNet
• WP2: Technology development and implementation: This work package, under the lead of the Open University, develops the appropriate tools to support the project activities. It will adapt existing tools or create new tools which can be used to upload audio and video samples of oral proficiency and allow them to be annotated. An environment is being created where the samples can be discussed by interested participants from the partner universities. The tools need to be compatible with the communication and collaboration tool that will be used to host the community of practice.
• WP3: Didactic model: The University of Helsinki - DASE will take the lead in this work package, where a didactic model will be developed, which underpins the entire project. A discussion on the pedagogical rationale has been set up and the different didactic principles that the partner institutions hold will be merged. DASE is also responsible for the manual on the WebCEF didactic model.
• WP4: Oral discourse sample collection & analysis: This work package, managed by the Université de Savoie, is responsible for the creation and collection of audio and video samples of oral language skills. Here, a conceptual and technical design will be developed for the creation of a database for the samples collected from the partner institutions. There is a close collaboration with the Open University to ensure that partners adhere to certain technical standards while creating their samples.  
• WP5: Deployment to wider community: As part of this work package, a community of practice is being designed and will be maintained. This CoP will exist of teacher trainers, teachers, teacher trainees and pupils from the partner institutions. In the second and third year, the community of practice will be extended to include interested participants from the national networks of the partner institutions. They will provide the participants with guidelines to assess the samples and summarize the assessments made by participants in the community of practice.
• WP6: Transfer to other languages: The University of Lodz will be responsible for coordinating the project activities in other languages than English in the third year of the project. They will be responsible for the transfer of the didactic model to the other languages and for stimulating the creation and collection of samples in other languages.  
• WP7: Future proofing : WP7 deals with keeping the WebCEF project on track with new trends and upcoming tools and technologies. It ensures the
  project’s relevance and the sustainability of its outcomes after the duration of the project. This work package is lead by the Technical university of Dresden.
• WP8: Evaluation: WP8 will control the quality of the project, through internal and external evaluation. This work package is lead by K.U.Leuven - AVNet and the project external evaluator, Prof. Em. Michael Goethals
• WP9: Dissemination: WP9 will organize the dissemination of the results of WebCEF to the wider community. This work package is lead by EUNEOS.

 For more information on concrete project activities, please consult the community pages on this website, or get in touch with the project team through webcef@avnet.kuleuven.be