On 25 January 2023, at 13:00, the QuILL Project hosted a Knowledge Sharing Event on the theme "From the quill to the pen drive", focusing on Quality in Language Learning.

The event was attended by a large number of experts from various disciplines, representing higher, secondary and primary education institutions, scientific societies and organisations, including teachers, educators and project experts.

Prof. Dr. Ferenc Pap, Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Education, praised the project in his opening speech.

The aim of the event was to present and promote digital language teaching materials for higher education and to introduce the training and e-book developed in the project. The presentations were given by Dr. Ildikó Szabó, Senior Research Fellow, and members of the QuILL project team in Hungary, who are also the organisers of the event, and who are foreign language teachers at the KRE-PK.

The number and typology of participants

On 14 December 2022 the Uni Károli team sent the programme in e-mails to several universities, educational institutions, organisations, academic association that are relevant for the project. In the invitations the programme with a link to register for the multiplier event was attached. This way we could continuously follow the number of people interested towards our event.

The participants represented several areas, fields and levels of education:

Higher Education lecturers arrived from different regions of the country (Budapest, Baja, Esztergom, Nagykőrös, Kecskemét, Debrecen). This regional variety ensures that the project results will reach into culturally, socially, economically different parts of the country; it also supports the horizontal spread of project results. The HE lecturers either teach English or German as a foreign language, English or German for LSP or both.

The HE lecturers also represent different fields of education. As our faculty is of Teacher Training, most of the participants are from this discipline. Nevertheless, there are participants who teach LSP in Engineering, Accountancy, Management; this way a more varied approach to the project results is guaranteed.

Besides horizontal aspects, vertical ones are also represented with the participants as they are from several levels of education, and represent all the target groups of QuILL project: HE lecturers, students, language educators, decision makers, policy makers.

Among the applicants there were state language examination centre representatives (3 persons), all of which language exams are related to a HE institutions. Language examination centres regularly organise (intensive) language courses that prepare HE students for a language exam (which is a must, a requirement to get a BA/MA degree in Hungary), therefore they can use the project result in language courses in HE in all disciplines.

A language school (Korona Bt.) offers the LSP courses in many firms (e.g. Mercedes in Hungary), so the project results support their LSP courses.

Teachers of English and German from bilingual education were also present teaching several disciplines in English or German; some of them teach either LSP (Logistics, Tourism, Commerce) in English at technical institutes, or English/German as a foreign language in high school, in both cases preparing students for HE.

Academic associations were also represented by participants. Óvó- és Tanítóképzők Egyesülete is a national association for all HE insitutions offering teacher training courses; therefore their representative can distribute the project result among these insitutions. Magyar Pedagógiai Társaság (The Hungarian Pedagogical Association, HPA) is an academic association he oldest and largest Hungarian non-governmental, professional, multi-disciplinary association for all-age-education and education-centred professionals as well as semi-professionals. Several Hungarian higher education institutions support the work of the HPA, including those universities are involved in teachers’ training of CPD; therefore their representative being present at the ME can serve as a link between HE and QuILL project results. Magyar Olvasástársaság (Hungarian Reading Association, Hunra) is an academic association including HE experts and researchers. Their activities and programmes focus on supporting literacy, including digital literacy; and language skills. They have a strong professional link with Hungarian educational institutions, teachers in e.g. Slovakia, Romania, Slovenia, Austria (where Hungarian minorities live); therefore for example the Hungarian, Slovakian OERs collected in IO1 and the Training Package could be promoted through them.

Decision makers were represented by a school principal of a bilingual school and by a representative of Diocesan Catholic Schools Board. The latter is responsible for professionally managing different kinds of educational institutions, following and implementing innovations in them; the project results can be promoted through this board very efficiently.

Policy makers were represented by representatives of Magyar Felsőoktatási Akkreditációs Bizottság (The Hungarian Accreditation Committe) that is a national expert body for monitoring, safeguarding and evaluating the quality of teaching, scientific research and artistic activities in higher education. This is the national body that accreditates any educational programmes in Hungary, therefore their acknowledment of the project results could promote them in HE in Hungary.

Participants of the academic association, decision makers and policy makers are HE lecturers who are either qualified to teach foreign languages or teach LSP in their professional field.

Katona József County Library is very committed to promote intercultural communication and langugae teaching resources. This library has a European Collection and a department names Europe Direct, which provides free of charge information from traditional and electronic resources, and it implements tenders or projects in connection with the EU for any age-group. This mission of them is very much in line with the objectives of QuILL project; therefore they can promote the project efficiently.

HE students were also represented by two insitutions. Consulting Club Corvinus is an international student organization operating at Corvinus University. Its representative teachers the subject ‘Case Interviews’ in English, so it is a course where LSP is heavily relied on. Offering HE students reliable OERs to promote their LSP knowledge in Business and Accountancy very well supports Corvinus courses. Hungarian Mensa is an international organisation the Hungarian national organisation of which actively cooperates,  and their representatives meet annually to exchange experiences. There are often joint programmes. The so-called EMAG (European Meeting of the European Midwives) has become a tradition, where members from all over Europe are welcome. Digital language learning OERs are therefore very useful and helpful for their members to learn languages, especially as they come form several areas, fields where LSP is also a matter of consideration.

The profile of teachers involved

Six members of the Uni Károli team were the presenters at the ME.

Andrea Petrik-Zseni teaches German Linguistics, German children's and teenage literature, methodology of teaching German as a foreign language, German pedagogical language; her field of research is Applied Linguistics. Her presentation served as the lead-in to the project as she introduced the aims and objectives, the partners and all the IOs in a general level before the following presenters went into details.

Attila Mócza teaches English language courses from beginner to advanced level in HE, Communication skills, Hungarian as a foreign language, Business English, English as a foreign language for the profession of information technology, English B1-B2 language course for university teachers of Agrarian studies. In his presentation he introduced the working methods in the project and showed all the IOs on the project platform.

Ildikó Szabó is a teacher of Englsih and took part as an expert in several EU projects. Her research areas are literacy, TEFL, bilingual education. She gave two presentations at ME. In the first presentation she focused on IO1, she introduced the template that was used to collect OERs, the translation process, and the analysis based on Rivoltella’s theory (2018) about the OERs using all teams’ results. In the second presentation of hers she introduced IO2, the Training package, the template that was used to design all the 3 modules, the content of each module and their availability on the platform.

Tamás Csontos teaches English for Specific Purposes, Research Methodology, First Language Acquisition and his field of research is Linguistics, First Language Acquisition. His presentation focused on IO2, the Training Activity in QuILL; after a brief introduction he conducted a practical session on how to create resources; he used the training activities we implemented at IPB, Braganca in July 2022.

Judit Hardi conducts her research mainly in the field of Second Language Acquisition and language pedagogy, but her academic papers also include professional language, psycholinguistics and pragmatics writings. whigher education, she founded her professional career at Kecskemét College Teacher Training Faculty, but she also took part in the professional language teaching of the Horticultural and Technical faculties. She is the professional supervisor of the practical training of the English-specialized students who take part in teacher education. She is an accredited examiner for the ECL and BNE language examination centre. She introduced the Publication, IO3 in her presentation, introducing all the six chapters.

Krisztina Neumayer-Streitman teaches British History, British and American civilization, Intercultural Communication, Children’s literature, Methodology, Reading, Writing skills, Pedagogical language; her relevant fields of study are intercultural communication; language acquisition and language coaching; positive psychology and pedagogy. Her presentation was about the IO3, concentrating on the publication. In her presentation she focused on active learning as a key approach to digital OERs.

As a conclusion in the last session of the ME an interactive phase came; the question was: What we take along from QuILL? The participants could ask questions or reflect on the input they gained throughout the event. One of the questions we discussed for a while was the changed role of the teacher in the world of digital resources.

The final phase (Evaluation) was devoted the Project Evaluation by end users. On 21/01/2023 we sent an e-mail to the registered participants asking them to bring along their own laptop or tablet so that they could evaluate the IOs.

The conclusion achieved

In addition to the theoretical summaries, the practical demonstration was a great success, in which the participants were able to gain an insight into the mysteries of digital curriculum development. It ended on a high tune according to the participants.