۱- Introduction

۲- Literature review

۳- The project

۴- Actioning towards curriculum 2.0

۵- Curriculum 2.0 complete with student content

۶- Conclusion F

References

Abstract

This paper reports on an action research project designed to develop and integrate a new conceptual learning and teaching approach into four language-related courses in an Australian university. Being named Curriculum 2.0 after Web 2.0, the approach places the production, sharing and learning of student content at the centre. In this paper, we recount the project, focusing on how its aims were methodically pursued through reflective experiments to incorporate student content-based pedagogy into the selected courses. Among others, three major actions will be discussed, namely segmenting content, building a content bank and developing an equitable system for assessing individually created content, which proved effective in implementing the new approach. The course and outcomes of the project, to be presented in this paper, will inform the continuing evolution of the scholarship of language learning and teaching.

Introduction

Language teaching has evolved from teacher-centredness towards student-centredness in both language (Biçer, 2017; Brown, 1994) and translation courses (Gonzalez-Davies, 2004
; Kiraly, 2000). However, student-centredness may not be accomplished due to a missing link, that of student content. The reliance on teacher content has been and continues to be prevalent in most language courses and may undermine the positive impact of student-centred pedagogy on the learners, especially in the era of Web 2.0 which is characterised by crowd production/sharing and cloud storage of content (O’Reilly, 2005). In addition, routines for the learning, teaching and assessment of student works have yet to be developed to make them a viable content option. Recognising the importance and potentials of student content, we, i.e. the researchers, conducted an action research project in two Chinese language courses and two translating and interpreting courses in a leading Australian university from 2005 to 2016. The project was designed to experiment with a new teaching approach that incorporated the crowd creation/ sharing and cloud storage-based use of student content. As the project had been conceptually inspired by DiNucci’s (1999) revolutionary concept of Web 2.0, we decided to name the new approach Curriculum 2.0. In this paper, we will first review how we identified student content as a major issue to address in the project in Section 2. Then, we will describe the project methodology, three of the major actions and the project outcome.