About the CORALL project

The importance of autonomous learning is of particular significance in educational policy documents with an emphasis on competences for autonomy that can be developed at all educational levels and ages. A survey-based study involving more than 1,400 students identified the low level of autonomous learning skills of Hungarian students at BBS as a skill gap in 2017. Teachers at the BBS Department of Languages for Business Communication have been trying to tackle this problem in the following ways:

A professional dialogue was initiated with colleagues from other departments of the University including a round-table discussion at the Day of Applied Sciences at BBS in 2018.
Opportunities for international comparison were sought after, and an adapted version of the questionnaire was completed at partner universities among students of LSP. Pinpointing the international dimension of this problem, the results showed clearly that besides the differences, some areas were challenging for all participating students.
Research on international solutions was carried out and a growing number of European universities have been found to enhance autonomous language learning in (online) self-access centres. Besides providing materials and a language learning environment which promotes autonomous language learning indirectly, some centres offer direct support for autonomous learning in the form of advising or coaching. However, no transnational project has been found that would offer open educational resources promoting the autonomous learning of LSP.

The objective of the CORALL project is to launch a transnational initiative − developed in the framework of a strategic partnership − to fill the aforementioned gaps by supporting students in becoming more autonomous learners and supporting teachers of LSP in helping learners to become more autonomous. A further objective is to create intellectual outputs to support autonomous language learning, which will not only be available for the language teachers and students of each participating institution, but will also constitute open educational resources. Our aim is to support learners’ language development in LSP through the development of their autonomous language learning skills in an online environment. Teachers of LSP will benefit from the partner institutions’ practices and expertise, while the overall project will promote lifelong learning and contribute to the universities’ strategic aim of internationalization.

The project follows and develops the structure of the ICCAGE project further, implemented successfully in a different thematic area (intercultural communication) between 2015 and 2017. After the design of a conceptual framework (O1) in the initial phase of the project, the partners have developed resources (O2) to support students’ autonomous learning of LSP (in English, German and Spanish), as well as sample materials and modules (O3) for self-study and to integrate into LSP classes or LSP related projects to enhance autonomous language learning skills. Case studies (O4) were written to facilitate the future use of the resources and, in the final phase of the project, modules (O5) for language teacher development to support autonomous learning have been created. The project outputs are available HERE.

Please find the project partners HERE and an overview of other projects of the coordinator university HERE. You can find some of the articles and presentations about CORALL and related research carried out by the project participants on THIS PAGE.