Europe Up Close - Nation Studies E-Portal
Modern Foreign Languages
Aims and objectives
The prototype
• To create an e-portal to enhance the
teaching of Nation Studies.
centred.
• A Blackboard community site was set up designed to be staff and student
• Staff are able to easily build up a bank of resources including texts,
videos, podcasts, external links, tasks.
• To reflect current scholarship and
development in politics, the business
and economic environment and social
issues in the countries studied on MFL
degree programmes.
• Students:
- have access to a wealth of up-to-date and reliable documents about the
country(ies) they study in a structured way.
- are able to test their knowledge via interactive tasks
- are able to become active researchers themselves via: a wiki space
where all students can share and review their resources and their own
personal space where each student can compile their own research-based
dossiers (e-portfolio).
• To encourage students to engage
with these issues and develop their
research skills.
E-Portal homepage
Example of resources
for France
Wiki space
Benefits for staff
Benefits for students
• Staff will keep up-to-date with the latest
developments in the countries they are
dealing with.
• Students’ conceptual awareness will be enhanced.
• Staff will use the portal as a tool for
contributing to the development of
knowledge and understanding of area
studies.
• Staff will disseminate their expertise and
their research.
• Students will have access to a reliable bank of material.
• Students will develop their research skills and contribute to the building
up of the resource bank.
• Students will enhance their key skills and study skills: conceptual
awareness, group work, information skills, organisational skills,
synthesising information.
• Nation Studies being the bedrock of many other activities on the degree
programme student’s knowledge and ability to perform in all their
modules will be enhanced.
Feedback
• Students responded very positively
• They felt that they would greatly benefit from such a portal.
• The wiki space was seen as extremely useful as it would enable them to share
resources.
• They also commented on the fact that they were concerned about the reliability of
the resources found on the web and would welcome a portal of resources designed
by or chosen by specialists in the field.