Academic literature on the topic 'English taught programme'

The limited English language skills among Libyan learners threatens their ability to interact with the international environment. Therefore, improvement in the provision of foreign language programmes is imperative, and can be carried out using different methods such as evaluation to critically examine a programme in order to improve its effectiveness. This study aims to evaluate the current English language teaching (ELT) provision provided by the English department in the faculties of education at Zawia University in Libya. It seeks to establish whether the current English language programme has ever been validated or updated. Moreover, this study will design a framework that will enhance the quality of the English language provision at Zawia University by indicating the strengths and weaknesses of the current English language programme. This study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods to collect the data, which were gathered through a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The evaluation of the current English as a foreign language programme at Zawia University revealed a number of inadequacies in terms of programme delivery, teaching resources, the balance of language skills taught and students work assessment.

This study aimed to determine the perspective of ESP teaching on undergraduate nursing students at Hafshawaty University, Probolinggo, East Java. This research used qualitative methods, data were collected through questionnaires, interviews and documentation. The subjects of this study were seven undergraduate nursing students at Hafshawaty University (i.e. m1, m2, m3, m4, m5, m6 and m7) who were asked to fill in questions related to ESP teaching in their programmes and one English lecturer to be interviewed in this research. These undergraduate nursing students were selected because they were eager to learn English related to their programme and lecturer who are selected based on their expertise. The results showed that the material taught was beyond their ability level and could not be easily understood, but with the group work system, the material taught by the lecturer made the undergraduate nursing students understand it and were enthusiastic about learning English in the ESP class.

This article is aimed at showing the ways in which Business English teachers may be able to facilitate the use of metaphor for their students since it is a part of the lexicon which causes them the most difficulties. The inclusion of the study of metaphors in a specific English language programme can provide students with a useful tool to interpret vocabulary, improve reading skills and understand different cultural backgrounds. Our aim is to put forward a didactic proposal to be used in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) programmes at a Master’s course currently taught at the University of Almería, Spain, in order to develop students’ metaphorical competence within the foreign language learning process.

This paper reports the findings of a study undertaken with Malaysian nurses who studied for a locally provided part-time post-registration top-up Nursing Degree versus those who studied on a Transnational Higher Education (TNHE) programme. Both types of programmes are bridging courses that allow registered nurses to upgrade their Diploma qualifications to Degree level. What is not sufficiently explored in available literature is nurses’ rationales for choosing a local programme over TNHE programme. Using hermeneutic phenomenology, six Malaysian nurses (chosen by snowball sampling method) were interviewed, in English and Bahasa Malaysia (Malaysian language). Thematic analysis was used to analyse data. The structure of the course and taught theory influenced the nurses’ choice to study on a local programme: the deciding factor was the practice component that ensured a theory-practice connection. The findings principally provide insights to TNHE providers and may guide them to enhance their teaching delivery, support and courses.

<p>The ‘Use of English’ (UoE) or ‘English Composition’ is a freshman course taught in many universities around the world. In Cameroon, an officially bilingual (French/English) country, UoE is taught at the University of Buea, one of two English–Speaking Universities as a compulsory course for all students, irrespective of their major. The present investigation was undertaken to assess stakeholders’ perceptions of the relevance of this course, as well as to determine its strengths and weaknesses in view of future improvements.</p><p>To accomplish these objectives, structured questionnaires were applied to 500 students who had taken the course. Focused interviews were also conducted with the Coordinators and teachers of the course. Finally to validate the responses, pre- and post-diagnostic tests were conducted with a cohort of 200 students taking the course, marked and their performances compared.</p><p>The questionnaire survey indicated considerable stakeholders’ positive appreciation of the course while identifying weaknesses such as insufficient availability of course materials, inadequate pre-course preparation and inadequate emphasis placed on grammar during course delivery. Analysis of the results supported the positive impact of the UoE. We concluded that the UoE course is a necessary requirement that needs to be improved upon and applied in similar learning environments.</p>

The research is an attempt to investigate experimentally the effect of vocabulary and dictation ESP programme on Iraqi students’ achievement at College of Physical Education for Women. The learners have to know what a word means and what it look like. These are obvious aspects in teaching foreign language and teachers need to make sure that both these aspects are accurately learned.
 The sample of the present research is (46) students of first year stage, College of Physical Education for Women, University of Baghdad. At the academic year 2012- 2013.
 It is hypothesized that there are no significant differences between the experimental group taught ESP by vocabulary and dictation programme (Sadiq ,2012) and control group taught ESP with traditional English Course (Sadiq, 2010) in pre and post tests.
 To fulfill the aim of the research an experiments has been designed with two groups of students chosen randomly. Both groups were matched in the subjects’ achievement in English for previous academic year (2011-2012). Both groups have tested in pre and post tests. The experiment lasted nine weeks.
 After analyzing the results statistically, it has been found that there are significant differences between the two groups in pre- test as well as post test. This indicates that using the vocabulary and dictation programme is more effective in teaching these two skills. Accordingly, the null hypotheses have been rejected.
 Finally, English teachers at College of Physical Education are recommended to use the programme to improve the students’ achievement in vocabulary and dictation skills.

Abstract The Faculty of Law at Masaryk University in Brno, the Czech Re- public, offers several fields of studies, one of them being the three-year Bachelor’s degree programme of International Trade Law. This programme includes two semesters of English for specific purposes which the students take in their first year of studies. However, as the programme is offered as a part time study, there are only 10 lessons of English taught within two days per semester. Preparing a course which would develop the students’ language abilities and skills in the international trade law environment appears to be rather challenging under such conditions. In the paper I would like to share the ideas and experience from re- designing the syllabus for this course of English for international trade law. I describe the process from the original syllabus to a new one in which the teaching situation and students’ needs are taken into account. The course in- tends to include both product and process oriented goals and helps to improve general professional needs. In order to cover the field specific vocabulary, language practice and soft skills development within the above mentioned limited time frame, the students need to work both before and after the classes. The course is going to be piloted this year and we expect further modifications after its evaluation.

English Language has been taught as a second language in a multilingual situation in India where a three language formula is in practice as language policy of the country. The other two languages are the regional language and Hindi the assumed national language. English language teaching begins at different levels in the different states of India. In states like Andhra Pradesh it begins from class1. To develop proficient users of this language has been the ultimate objective of teaching it at the school and collegiate levels. To develop the same, the need of the hour as it has been is the development of a cadre of facilitators of language learning whose abilities need to be of a high order and are equipped with a set of core and soft skills and with craft knowledge required for an effective transaction of the prescribed content and thus realize the desired curricular objectives. Besides, the teacher of English in the changing scenario has to be a willing co participant in the language learning process. In this background this paper attempts to identify those skills required of the practicing teacher and the need for having an alternative need based curriculum at the teacher training programme levels with special reference to in service teacher training programmes.

<p>This study investigated L2 leaners’ preferences between native-speaking teachers (NST) and non-native-speaking teachers (NNST) as their English pronunciation teacher, and examined the participants’ accentedness and comprehensibility in L2-English pronunciation after being taught by a NST and a NNST. The participants were 30 undergraduates who were doing non-English majors at a university in China. They went through 4-month English pronunciation classes. In the first 2 months, they were taught by a NST. From the 3rd to the 4th month, they were taught by a NNST. Their accentedness and comprehensibility of spoken English were tested at the beginning of the programme (pre-test), at the end of the 2nd month (middle test), and at the end of the 4th month (post-test). Information on their evaluation of the NST and NNST as a pronunciation teacher was collected with questionnaires at the end of the experiment. According to the results, (1) compared with that in pre-test, the participants’ accentedness and comprehensibility both improved slightly in middle test; (2) compared with that in middle test, the participants received significant improvement both in comprehensibility and accentedness; (3) the majority of the participants prefer a NST to a NNST to be their English pronunciation teacher.</p>

This study explored the interplay between teacher mindsets and grit levels of Turkish pre-service teachers taking their year of study into account (i.e., first-year vs the fourth year), gender, and the subject taught in a Turkish higher education setting. Student teachers from various programmes at a public university in Turkey participated in the study (N = 321). The participants completed the Teacher Mindset Scale and Grit Scale online after receiving the approval of the university’s ethics committee and signing the consent forms. The correlations between the components of teacher mindset and grit demonstrated that as growth teacher mindset scores increased, and effort scores also increased significantly. Furthermore, as fixed teacher mindset scores increased, interest scores decreased. First-year pre-service teachers had significantly higher fixed teacher mindset scores than the fourth year. In terms of grit, fourth-year pre-service teachers showed greater effort than the first year. There was no difference between female and male pre-service teachers regarding fixed teacher mindset. However, female pre-service teachers scored significantly higher on growth teacher mindset, interest, and effort scales. As for the subject taught, the Mathematics Education programme showed higher levels of fixed teacher mindset and the English Language Teaching programme showed lower levels of grit. Practical implications of our findings and limitations of the study are shared accordingly.

This case study investigates teachers’ and students’ perceptions about engaging with the disciplinary and linguistic demands of a new Italian law programme, launched for the first time in academic year 2006-2007, taught entirely in English in an Italian university. The study examines students’ and teachers’ perceptions as they engage with teaching and learning law in English. This is a timely international higher education case study, given present policy initiatives in the European Union (EU) towards upgrading language education in the region, and in parallel, raising Europeans’ language mastery and skills from monolingual to plurilingual status by promoting and improving the conditions for the learning of at least two additional foreign languages other than the mother tongue for all citizens. The case study is far-reaching in that the present need for cutting-edge methodology in the EU calls for renewed ways of articulating the curriculum to teach subjects and foreign languages. This study compares two new but very different pedagogical models, English as medium of instruction (EMI), the design adopted for teaching law in English at the Italian law programme, and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), a rival methodology which consists in the ‘integration’ of language and learning subjects within a single curriculum. Based on the data submitted, the study questions the assumption that teaching a subject in a foreign language at university automatically results in language learning. Given the nature and degree of complexity of the subjects taught in the courses researched, in satisfying the university requirements for high quality teaching and learning to achieve ‘high quality’ learning for all, there are certain conditions which impact the learning process (e.g., teaching approaches and styles, level and use of English by teachers and students, intercultural preparedness of students to work together). The study confidently predicts that without these pre-set design conditions, the type of teaching and learning methodology implemented in the programme examined, generalizable to other programmes, is destined to perpetuate poor quality delivery and unfulfilled educational goals.

This dissertation reports my collation of the language learning narratives of international students taking degree programmes taught through English in the Netherlands. Narrative representations of the experiences of seven internationally-oriented students reveal learner perspectives of language acquisition beyond the formal classroom. Meanwhile,I have used personal narratives to represent my own interaction with participants and data, resulting in a portrayal of my growth from teacher into qualitative researcher. I record the learning experiences of the participants through Language Learning Histories (Murphey, Chen & Chen: 2004), semi-structured interviews and journal entries. This has enabled me to show how local participative practices have impacted upon language acquisition at different stages of the participants' educational lives. Narrative interpretations of the data provide a record of the identity work required for participants to achieve participation and negotiate agency in their core learning community (ICF) and other communities. The narratives of these learners are grounded in notions of situated learning. I use Communities of Practice (Wenger 1998) as the main conceptual framework during this investigation, discussing language acquisition in terms of participation in communities through legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) and mutual engagement. However, I also draw on perspectives from within the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), notably a heuristic understanding of Activity Theory (Lantolf & Favlenko 2001; Ivanic 2006). This research provides an example of how narrative interpretations of language learning experiences can provide an understanding of the impact of local educational practices on learner participation in and across communities. I conclude that there is a need for greater transparency and awareness of the relationship between language learning, identity work and participation.

Teaching the history of the English language (HEL) leads one naturally to talking about its geographical and social diversity—its dialects and varieties and their features. This chapter will address the role of diversity and change within the History of English, focusing especially on regional dialects, and providing specific examples of written and audio resources that can be used in the HEL classroom. In particular, it refers to an introductory undergraduate course on Studying the English Language developed and taught by the author, explaining its rationale, exemplifying its content, and discussing how it can feed into subsequent courses and topics of a degree programme.

The bachelor's degree in Creativity and Business Innovation is a joint study programme offered by the Polytechnic of Porto (P.PORTO), through the Porto School of Accounting and Administration (ISCAP), Vilnius Kolegija - University of Applied Sciences (VIKO), from Lithuania and the Estonian Entrepreneurship University of Applied Sciences (EUAS), from Estonia. This is a pioneer degree in the context of Portuguese higher education, taught in English. Due to its innovative character, it responds to the new paradigms that higher education institutions (HEI) will have to face. With innovative syllabus, teaching/learning methodologies and assessment methods it develops new paths for higher education programmes. To conclude this degree, students must develop and present a Final Thesis (Project). Thus, the present book compiles, in the form of chapters, some of the work presented by the students during the academic years of 2020/21 and 2021/22. They have been organised in the form of volumes, being the first volume presented (Volume I). The objectives of this book are (1) to allow students of this bachelor's degree to develop and consolidate knowledge in the various disciplinary areas of Management, (2) to support students in finalising their Final Thesis (Project), and, finally, (3) to promote the transfer of knowledge from Academia to Society. The organizer and the authors of the chapters are grateful for the support of the entrepreneurship and innovation research line of the Center for Organisational and Social Studies of Polytechnic of Porto (CEOS.PP).

The bachelor's degree in Creativity and Business Innovation is a joint study programme offered by the Polytechnic of Porto (P.PORTO), through the Porto School of Accounting and Administration (ISCAP), Vilnius Kolegija - University of Applied Sciences (VIKO), from Lithuania and the Estonian Entrepreneurship University of Applied Sciences (EUAS), from Estonia. This is a pioneer degree in the context of Portuguese higher education, taught in English. Due to its innovative character, it responds to the new paradigms that higher education institutions (HEI) will have to face. With innovative syllabus, teaching/learning methodologies and assessment methods it develops new paths for higher education programmes. To conclude this degree, students must develop and present a Final Thesis (Project). Thus, the present book compiles, in the form of chapters, some of the work presented by the students during the academic years of 2020/21 and 2021/22. They have been organised in the form of volumes, being the first volume presented (Volume I). The objectives of this book are (1) to allow students of this bachelor's degree to develop and consolidate knowledge in the various disciplinary areas of Management, (2) to support students in finalising their Final Thesis (Project), and, finally, (3) to promote the transfer of knowledge from Academia to Society. The organizer and the authors of the chapters are grateful for the support of the entrepreneurship and innovation research line of the Center for Organisational and Social Studies of Polytechnic of Porto (CEOS.PP).

The bachelor’s degree in Creativity and Business Innovation is a joint study programme offered by the Polytechnic of Porto (P.PORTO), through the Porto School of Accounting and Administration (ISCAP), Vilnius Kolegija - University of Applied Sciences (VIKO), from Lithuania and the Estonian Entrepreneurship University of Applied Sciences (EUAS), from Estonia. This is a pioneer degree in the context of Portuguese higher education, taught in English. Due to its innovative character, it responds to the new paradigms that higher education institutions (HEI) will have to face. With innovative syllabus, teaching/learning methodologies and assessment methods it develops new paths for higher education programmes. To conclude this degree, students must develop and present a Final Thesis (Project). Thus, the present book compiles, in the form of chapters, some of the work presented by the students during the academic year of 2021/22. They have been organised in the form of volumes, being the third volume presented (Volume III). The objectives of this book are (1) to allow students of this bachelor’s degree to develop and consolidate knowledge in the various disciplinary areas of Management, (2) to support students in finalising their Final Thesis (Project), and, finally, (3) to promote the transfer of knowledge from Academia to Society. The organizer and the authors of the chapters are grateful for the support of the entrepreneurship and innovation research line of the Center for Organisational and Social Studies of Polytechnic of Porto (CEOS.PP).

Is English a bridge or a barrier to economic advancement and social mobility as it spreads worldwide? To what extent do domestic and global politics determine those outcomes? Who are the winners, losers, and resisters? How are France and China using the “soft power” of language to overtake English, and to what ends? What role do globalization, a knowledge-based economy, and neoliberalism play in these developments? Using education as its lens, this book critically unpacks these and related questions in a sweeping journey across four continents through diverse political and historical settings. It begins in Europe with the European Union and its promotion of multilingualism and with controversies over English-taught courses and programs in universities in the name of internationalization. It then moves to the postcolonial world, where disputes over English in the schools reveal longstanding grievances and the inequities of historically rooted and politically motivated language policies, and where French is losing its hold to English in some former French-speaking colonies. It finally shifts to the United States, where state and local officials and grassroots organizers are addressing the “foreign language deficit” and initiating programs that promote multilingualism. Drawing on a vast store of interdisciplinary research, interviews, court decisions, political commentary, literature, and popular culture from across the globe and in multiple languages, the book makes the case for a common global language (English for now) as a core component of multilingualism in a world that is growing smaller, more diverse, and more politically uncertain by the nanosecond.

Learn why special or corporate libraries must align with their parent organizations in order to survive in these difficult economic times—and how to foster and demonstrate this critical relationship. Special Libraries: A Survival Guide analyzes what has happened—and is still continuing to happen—to corporate libraries in order to identify the strategies that must be taken to protect their staff's survival. Through a careful examination of a series of case studies of corporate library reductions and closures, authors James M. Matarazzo and Toby Pearlstein suggest key strategies, tactics, and survival tools that all types of special library managers can use to minimize their chances of becoming a victim. The book underscores the importance of collecting data as a survival tool. Additionally, it identifies what needs to be taught to students currently enrolled in library and information science (LIS) programs to give them a leg up in careers. This advocacy book is essential reading for staff at special/corporate libraries in the English-speaking world who wish to retain their positions, but it also contains information applicable to today's academic, public, and even school libraries. It is appropriate for students in the field of library and information science, LIS faculty, and corporate executives responsible for the management of the information function.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

English-taught business degrees now represent an important part of the global education market. These attract students from all parts of the world, many whose first language is not English. Universities hosting these courses have developed language support mechanisms and programmes which have proven effective in supporting language needs in the academic context. However, these have not generally included specialised attention to group-work where the demands for communicating in English may be significantly more challenging than in a classroom environment. In this chapter, the authors consider the growth of English language support mechanisms in general, and outline a study that quantifies the impact of English in group work performance. They also detail the design of a short intervention programme focused on group-work that can improve the skills learned by students with English as a second language, and increase their performance significantly. They use this study to suggest mechanisms, and to propose improvements to English support programmes.

In the Netherlands, from 1863 on, schools for secondary education in which mathematics, sciences and other subjects were taught to all pupils, were established in several towns. At that time algebra already was an art which was relatively wide-spread among Dutch mathematical practitioners and teachers of mathematics. Textbooks in Dutch, but also in English, French and German and journals were available to provide knowledge about algebraic techniques, simple exercises and problems. Thus when in 1870 a national mathematics curriculum was formulated, ideas about the elementary algebra to be taught in lower secondary school were reasonably well established. However, what algebra topics should be taught in higher secondary was less clear. During the next 150 years there were about seven relatively influential changes in the mathematics curriculum. In this paper the reasons for and effects on the algebra programme of the first three of these changes will be discussed.

Abstract Among the many contributions that Professor Bernard Rudden has made to comparative law, of no little importance has been that of making English property law accessible and understandable to civil lawyers. I was early exposed to his mastery in clearing the forest for foreign explorers as a student in the property law class that he taught in 1980 at the London School of Economics within the programme chaired by Professor Clive Schmitthoff. Ever since, I have been interested in grasping the basic principles underlying the many technicalities that make property law sound so much of a domestic business In this chapter, I will continue that exploration, and I will try to approach trust law from the perspective of a European legal system considering whether or not to codify it.

Ysgol Merllyn (Merllyn Community Primary School) is located in the village of Bagillt in North Wales (UK), an old lead-mining village in a semi-rural location. It is a state primary with 150 students aged three to eleven, of which 26% are entitled to free school meals and 12% have English as an Additional Language (EAL). Transiency is 8% and 12% of students have Additional Learning Needs (ALN), including 8% with behavioral needs. The school had previously taught the infants (aged four to seven) using a synthetic phonics programme, however, there were many children coming through the infants who still did not have a secure knowledge of sound-spelling correspondences, and were not able to segment, blend, and manipulate phonemes. Many children in the juniors required intervention due to poor reading and decoding skills.

The illegitimate son of a servant from the Scottish Highlands, William Campbell effected his own upward social mobility by becoming a teacher. The state paid for his apprenticeship as a pupil teacher in the small village of Durness and then his teacher training programme in bustling Edinburgh. After his training and an initial job in the village of Nethybridge, he settled into a position as an elementary teacher in the scattered crofting community of Rogart in Sutherland in 1898. Though he followed Whitehall policymakers’ directives and taught quite a bit of English history and literature during school hours, he went to great lengths to acquire Gaelic dictionaries, grammars, and works of literature so that he could teach the language and literary culture to children and adults alike in the evenings. This was no defiant gesture of nascent Scottish cultural nationalism. Campbell was determined to serve the distant British state ...

This chapter presents the results of a case study conducted in 2016-17 at the National School of Higher Studies in Morelia (ENES-M), Michoacán, Mexico, where a pilot programme was implemented at bachelor’s level for students learning English as a foreign language. The platform used in this study was composed of small digital units called Learning Support Units (UAPAs) first developed in 2011 to help students practice and develop their linguistic skills at two levels, basic and pre-intermediate. These selected UAPAs were hosted in a portal named Ambiente Virtual de Idiomas (AVI) (Language Virtual Environment) administrated by the Coordination of Open University and Distance Education (CUAED). Later, in 2015, it was proposed that a more complex and complete platform be designed and in 2016 the new UAPAs for levels A1, A2, B1 and some of B2 were developed and then piloted for further evaluation. As a result, the experimental groups exposed to a blended teaching reported higher scores in the post test than control groups that were taught with no use of technological elements, hence proving that blended-learning teaching is a good pedagogical option for university students.

The acceptance of English as the lingua franca of the academic world has triggered the flourishing of different approaches to promote the learning of English as a foreign language in higher education. Under the umbrella of supranational regulations (as in the case of Europe), the promise of linguistic gains runs parallel with the necessity to attract international students, to promote the international and institutional profile for the universities, and to enhance employability for graduates. At the university of Córdoba, studies or courses taught through a foreign language are part of a larger university policy, and the decisions were based on clear definition of content and language learning outcomes and human and material resources available. This chapter describes the implementation of bilingual programs at this university, offering a picture of the challenges and problems that emerged and of the initiatives that were adopted.

This chapter suggests that successful and sustainable implementation of EMI in higher education can benefit from a systems approach. Drawing on general system theory, this approach enables a systemic development process for having academic programmes taught through English so that the roles of all key components of a university as an ecosystem are harmonized. The established and emergent components of the process are identified through a key development indicator matrix. The matrix enables holistic coordination so as to maximize the potential for long-term quality impact of teaching through English. The matrix is described here with respect to a 2015-2019 higher education languages strategy implemented at a major public university in Mexico, which has led to development and launch processes for English-medium education.

This study explores consumer demands in the Egyptian market of university education. Three aspects discussed are the value of university education in Egyptian culture, consumer perceptions regarding the quality of university education, and consumer preferences regarding the university education service. Results of the empirical investigation indicate that university education is highly regarded in Egyptian culture, however, consumer’s perception of its quality is moderate. Consumers prefer university studies in courses taught in the English language, universities in a nearby geographical location, governmental universities, and top class faculties. The study focuses on university education in Egypt and the authors hope to shed light on higher education in countries that share the same cultural characteristics. Many studies investigated higher education in different cultures, yet relatively few have considered it in an emerging nation. The present study addresses this gap.

This chapter looks to identify the role of communicative competence as an objective for language teaching through the different periods and methodologies which have marked language learning in England over the author’s thirty-five years as a middle school language teacher and researcher. As an autobiographical account it therefore focuses on Cuban’s second level in the multi-layered curriculum: the teacher ‘deciding what to teach and how to present it’. Cuban’s curriculum model is particularly relevant to this paper’s exploration of how the intended curriculum, the official framework within which modern foreign languages are taught, is subject to a range of different influences. The development of intensive language programmes to supplement classroom language learning demonstrates how teachers can respond to an identified problem, here the difficulty of developing productive language skills that are essential for communicative competence.

German higher education institutions attract students from all over the word for degree mobility, especially after the Bologna reform has led to an increase in internationally-oriented, English-taught study programmes. With such programmes, universities serve the politically intended purpose of attracting highly qualified talent in the form of international graduates that might potentially stay for the German job market. But for the transition from studies to the work market to be successful, it is essential for international students to acquire social capital in the form of contacts to people from the host country. This paper firstly presents results of a study on the situation of students who come to study in international engineering programmes at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany, focusing on the unsatisfactory contact situation of international and German students revealed in the study. Secondly, measures of the project ELLI2 – Excellent Teaching and Learning in Engineering Sciences – are introduced that aim at improving this situation, fascilitating contact between German and international engineering students. The set-up of a tandem-programme is presented, as well as participation structure and evaluation results of the first two runs of this programm in 2017/18. In addition, an international student council network will be introduced.

In 2013, our university has implemented a new educational model that puts team projects at the core of all BSc programmes, requiring that students develop teamwork skills. On top of this, in 2018, our Chemical Science & Engineering BSc has become an English-taught, international programme. In consideration of this challenging transition, we have developed additional training to facilitate students' acquisition of knowledge, skills, tools, and attitudes to aid conscientious intercultural teamwork. For this, it is paramount that students become aware of, and learn to appreciate, differences in the educational and cultural backgrounds of themselves and their peers. Concurrently, students should practice what they have learned and adjust their behaviour when appropriate. In this paper, we share our experiences, best practices, and lessons learned. More specifically, our study: i) explores which factors are key to a successful intercultural team, ii) investigates how diversity in teams can be cherished and used for the benefit of the team, its members, and its goals, and iii) how these teamwork skills can effectively be taught in engineering programmes. Building on this, the paper describes how the new curricular education has been designed, what is taught, and how an inclusive, regardful, and pleasant atmosphere has been created for the intercultural project teams.

This paper explores the experience of engineering students in an innovative context, namely, Problem-Based Learning (PBL). It first describes some particular details of PBL framework implementation at the BSc Degree in Software Engineering, an English-taught Honours Programme at the Faculty of Computers, Informatics, and Microelectronics (FCIM), Technical University of Moldova (TUM). The research also addresses some specific aspects of its implementation, preparation for collaboration, milestones, working processes, guiding sessions, etc. A comparative study between the 2022 and 2021 editions of BSc graduates in Software Engineering was conducted to identify the efficiency of several dimensions of PBL as one of the most recently adopted learning environments at TUM.

TThe aim of this paper is to offer an overview of how an EMI (English as a Medium of Instruction) programme was designed at the University of A Coruña (Spain) to implement courses taught in English by its teaching staff. The final goals of this initiative were twofold: to attract an increasing number of foreign students through mobility or as new admissions; and to promote internationalisation at home for both students and lecturers. Some of the steps taken in this process (from coaching to EMI) are explained as well as the principles on which a particular teaching methodology for non-native speakers of English is based. Content knowledge and a B2 level of English is presupposed, but a further level of teacher professionalism is aspired to, involving commitment, reflection, responsibility. A shift in focus, from teacher- to student-centred learning is required. Instructors should show their students how to learn and guide them along their learning paths. This implies a shift in the original mindset that is strongly rooted in particular teaching traditions. Communicative competence is also a key factor: knowing how to transmit and communicate is at least as important as the material content itself, and lecturers should be good communicators.

There is a clear dominance of English in the most cited research journals, as well as in English as lingua franca communication contexts in academia. This does not mean, however, that high quality university education does not continue to exist and flourish in other languages, including contexts with German, French or Spanish as lingua franca. The academic context selected for analysis in this paper is an internationally accredited German MBA programme in Romania, where the dominant medium of tuition is German, with only a few courses taught in English. Academic writing is, thus, mainly in German, and the Master dissertations have to be written in German. The main aims of this small scale study are to explore the features of this multilingual environment, in terms of both challenges and opportunities involved. We will look at the benefits of encouraging an internationalised quality agenda, which promotes the observance of academic requirements characteristic of anglophone and German Higher Education. Where do they meet? Are they always in harmony? What are the challenges for students (whose mother tongue is neither English nor German) of reading most of their research literature in English and writing their master dissertation in German? To answer these questions we have resorted to text based and corpus driven research, complemented by focus group discussions and interviews with students and teachers. The findings are meant to inform future curriculum developments, the 'research writing' module, and interdisciplinary cooperation with and among subject teachers, with a focus on enhancing the quality of student dissertation writing and their academic competences, in general.

There is a great need for Master-Craftsmen who are highly valued in industry locally but are not afforded the same recognition as in Germany, so in order to encourage more applicants a bridging progression to a Bachelor’s degree should be devised. There are several paths to the education of engineers. Traditionally students of engineering attend secondary school from which they matriculate to a tertiary institution. In many countries candidates may opt to do an Associate degree articulating to a Bachelor’s degree. However, in some countries, it is possible to become an engineer without a traditional degree, usually in a more practically-oriented apprenticeship programme. In Britain for example, such candidates complete National Vocational Qualifications(NVQs) in engineering while working at a company. NVQs typically range from Level 1 to Level 8, Levels 6 and 7 being equivalent to Bachelor’s and taught Master’s degrees respectively. In Germany, there is also an alternative qualification to the Bachelor’s degree, the more practically-oriented Meister (Master-Craftsman in English), both of which are equally recognized and respected professionally and are both pegged at Level 6 in the 8-Level German National Qualifications Framework (NQF). The MIC Institute of Technology has adopted a Master-Craftsman programme which is accredited by the German Chamber of Crafts and Trades. Candidates have to first complete the (trimester) Journeyman programme comprising three years, about 50% of which comprise industrial attachments/internships. Successful Journeyman graduates can progress to the Master-Craftsman qualification by completing an extra (trimester) year of study. This paper deals with the progression of Master-Craftsman graduates, through advanced placement, in a Bachelor of Technology programme. The Master-Craftsman curricula have to be mapped against a typical Bachelor of Technology programme to determine the gaps in mathematical, theoretical and other areas and mechanisms to fill any gaps.

Language plays a pivotal role in science teaching and learning as it serves as both the medium through which the teachers and learners think and also communicate in the classrooms. Science and Life sciences in particular comprises of a unique scientific language register with a lot of technical words and terms borrowed from other languages other than English. Previous researchers acknowledged the difficulty teachers face when teaching science in a language different from their own and that of the learners. Consequently, the current study explored the various ways in which English-second-language Life Sciences teachers taught Life Sciences in order to mitigate language difficulties for themselves and those of their learners. The study was guided by the research question: how does English as a second language influence teacher practices when teaching Life Sciences to grade 12 learners? Using a qualitative research design, six Life Sciences teachers with various levels of teaching experience, two novices, two relatively experienced and two very experienced teachers, were purposefully selected from six different schools. The assumption was that teachers at various levels of experience may have different experiences of teaching the subject in a second language. Each teacher was observed once whilst teaching the same topic to grade 11 Life Sciences learners to establish their teaching practices. Incidences of learner engagement with the content, teacher-learner and learner-learner interactions were captured and scored using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol rubric. Lesson observations were suitable for data collection as they allowed the researcher to examine even non-elicited behaviour as it happened. The findings indicated that language difficulties were prevalent and affected both teachers and learners in engaging with the concepts at hand. For instance, most of the teachers whether experienced or not, struggled to explain and elaborate vital Life Sciences concepts in a comprehensible manner due to lack of proficiency in the language of instruction. The teachers mostly utilised code-switching as it enabled them to explain and elaborate scientific terms and processes in both English and their home languages. Because learners were allowed to express themselves in their home languages, the level of interaction also increased. In addition, teachers used transliteration and demonstrations as teaching strategies that also reduced the challenges of using English as a medium of instruction. The study informs both pre-service and in-service teacher development programmes.

Recently, the business world has evinced a growing interest in the concept of "inclusive hiring", and software and technical - oriented enterprises such as Microsoft, Ford, Hewlett Packard Enterprises, and IBM, have implemented Human Resources neurodiverse talent programmes. According to Harvard Business Review, interviewed employers mention that the benefits of employing neurodiverse people include "productivity gains, quality improvement, boosts in innovative capabilities, and broad increases in employee engagement". Thus, neurodiverse people are considered a competitive advantage for technical companies because they prove to have excellent digital and mathematical skills, creativity and pattern recognition competencies. Having said that, one must also be aware that neurodiverse employees thrive only when their special needs with regard to the working place are met. The present article looks into the issue of neurodiversity with a view to tackling the way in which the concept can be introduced to technical students who study interviewing skills as part of their English for Professional Communication seminar. After a short overview of the main characteristics of Generation Z, whose education and day-to-day life have been constantly informed by technology, we proceed to the presentation of the concept of "neurodiversity" highlighting the reasons why engineering students should be aware of and understand its complexity in order to be better prepared for an inclusive work environment. The paper presents various seminar tasks by means of which neurodiversity may be taught using online sources such as companies' statements on the topic, testimonials from employers or employees or interviewing practices for neurodiverse candidates. Exposing the students to these aspects develops their sense of inclusiveness which is a value they should be able to transfer from the educational context to the professional setting.

Critical social and organisational skills are increasingly becoming a desired quality in most of the service sector jobs in India. Personality development, self-improvement and public speaking are now marketed in urban India through several educational enterprises that charge an exorbitant amount of money from the customers. People from rural and marginalised backgrounds often lack the sophistication and confidence to compete with their privileged counterparts in urban India despite having technical and vocational skills. Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) initiated the program Going Online as Leaders (GOAL) —to connect urban volunteers with rural women online to provide them guidance and support in digital skills to bridge the information gap. Initially, the program connected four women from the rural indigenous community with 25 skilled urban women, the program is now expanded to— states. Data comparing the baseline and end-line survey of the program shows that the number of those who want to pursue higher education has doubled. Also, at 26 per cent, the largest number of mentees wanted to work towards establishing digital connectivity and engagement in their communities, a nine per cent increase from registration. Remarkably, there was a 44 per cent rise in mentees who want to do social work showing their aspiration to be the change-makers in their community. // The programme‘s provision of smartphones is a transformative experience for mentees. None of the mentees interviewed had owned a phone prior to GOAL, while their brothers and fathers did. Mentees described that interacting with mentors had enabled them to speak ‘my mind‘, ‘not be shy' and ‘dream big'. They started using WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube to connect with the larger world. They browse the internet avidly for information, supplement studies, and learn crafts. They also download apps for English translations to karaoke singing. Music, films and serials are routinely sourced online. Mentors have taught them to use technology safely and responsibly. Mentors and trainers observe that the mentees’ ‘quality of conversations’ has improved sharply and that they have learnt to think about themselves’. The GOAL program was adopted by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India and is now being replicated in several states. Using the GOAL program as an example, the presentation will demonstrate how digital technology, with planned programs can bridge the geographical inequalities in accessing education and acquiring skills.