The LearnWeb Project for Multiliteracy Practices in Higher Education

This chapter1 focuses on a multidisciplinary collaboration aimed at promoting multiliteracies practices and reflection in university courses. It discusses two ongoing sets of educational projects based on multiliteracies for pre-service and in-service teacher education (YELL/TELL: Young English Language Learners/Teen English Language Learners) and for language studies in a university degree in foreign languages for interpreters (LabInt). Albeit developed for two rather different educational contexts and professional needs, these projects have in common the aim of enhancing multiliteracies as co-construction of knowledge, reflection, and expertise through open educational practices and user-generated resources. The practices presented in the chapter are also relevant to improve the general offer for higher education students learning English as a foreign language and to meet some of their needs as language experts, such as enhancing their digital skills and multimodal competences while learning languages. The ultimate goal of our collaboration within the LearnWeb project is to enhance the multiliteracies experience for language learners in a lifelong learning perspective by optimising an adaptable digital environment on the basis of actual user requirements and feedback. The research questions we investigated in our studies are the following: 1 How was the multiliteracies approach integrated into the LearnWeb project? 2 How can the LearnWeb collaborative environment be implemented to meet the needs of various learning scenarios? 3 How do participants use online affordances in their teaching profession and their learning? This chapter provides an outline of the context and the main theoretical framework of the educational sets of projects; next, it presents and discusses the development of the two case studies over the years. The concluding remarks summarise relevant results and further developments.