Learner Development College and University Education Research-Oriented Presentation
Teacher reflections on a student-led group seminar project
Project-based learning (PBL) is a progressing development in education that suggests tremendous benefits for learners, such as mastering 21st-century academic skills, developing learner autonomy, increasing motivation, and building group dynamics through collaborative work. In this presentation, the authors will attempt to demonstrate the accuracy of the above statement by reflecting on the effectiveness of the PBL approach which they implemented in a student-led group seminar project for an advanced English course at a private university in Tokyo. After providing a brief overview of the PBL approach and a complete description of how each stage of the student-led group seminar project relates to this approach, each instructor will report their unique observations of the project flow in their classes together with observations regarding whether the educational benefits of PBL were achieved. In addition, ways in which the project could be further improved to better facilitate learning outcomes of the PBL approach will also be discussed.
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Anna Belobrovy is currently employed as an English lecturer in Rikkyo University. She has vast teaching experience in tertiary English education and has taught in multiple academic institutions in Japan. She is a graduate of a Master program in Tesol from Teachers’ College Columbia University. Her research interests are learner development, learner autonomy, classroom discourse and engagement.
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Ian Hurrell has been an adjunct lecturer at Rikkyo University's Center for Foreign Language Education and Research since 2017. His research interests center around the implementation of learner development concepts, such as learner autonomy and project based learning, to language teaching. He is also interested in the development of world Englishes and the interplay between world Englishes and intercultural communication.
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Travis West has taught as an academic English instructor in South Korea, Japan, and the USA, and has held a position as English lecturer at a university in Tokyo for the last seven years. Travis has an M.A. in Applied Linguistics and TESOL from the University of Leicester. His research interests include critical thinking in a second language, project-based learning, corpus linguistics, and curriculum development in task-based language teaching.