ICT in Supporting Content and Language Integrated Learning: Experience from Poland

Abstract

Political and economic changes in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, competition in the global market, and greater people mobility contribute to increasing number of students studying in a foreign language who expect to improve both their knowledge and language skills. Following the design research approach, we propose a framework for creating university courses that support content and language integrated learning (CLIL) within a virtual learning environment (VLE). The framework was developed on the basis of our experience and a survey conducted among students of Cracow University of Economics, Poland, who study in a non-native language. It incorporates a blended-learning model. All course materials are prepared in Polish and English and are available for multilingual student population in a bilingual VLE course. The framework might be useful for other transition economies where a political and economic transformation has brought similar shifts in language skill requirements.

Keywords:

• transition economy
• Poland
• e-learning
• blended learning
• CLIL
• design research
• VLE

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the guest editors of the special issue and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions that contributed to the significant improvement of this paper. We are also deeply grateful to Meghan Meenghon Lew for the proofreading.

Notes on contributors

Grażyna Paliwoda-Pękosz is assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Cracow University of Economics (CUE), Poland. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from CUE and M.Sc. in Computer Science and Mathematics from the Jagiellonian University of Krakow, Poland. Her research interests include enterprise system adoption, application of ICT in education, and Semantic Web technologies. Dr Paliwoda-Pękosz has published in Industrial Management & Data Systems, Information Systems Management, The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, and in conference proceedings such as AMCIS, ICTM, ICEEE, and ICEL.

Janusz Stal is assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Cracow University of Economics (CUE), Poland. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from CUE. His research interests include application of ICT in education, mobile technologies, and cloud computing. Dr Janusz Stal has published in International Journal of Strategic Management and Decision Support Systems in Strategic Management, and in conference proceedings such as SIGCSE/SIGCUE, IIS, ICEEE, and ICEL.