By Àngels Pinyana
Over the last two decades, higher education institutions have progressively moved towards the international higher education market. In this context, universities have begun internationalising their curricula by offering international programmes and modules within their regular study programmes whose goal is to accommodate an international audience and to prepare students for life and work in a global environment. The establishment of such programmes and modules, however, presents universities with specific challenges and problems, one of which is quality assurance.
The paper English Mediated Instruction (EMI) pedagogic practice and its implications on quality presented by Àngels Pinyana as part of the colloquium Teaching in English in Higher Education: Linguistic Considerations on Quality at the 5th ICLHE conference that took place in Copenhagen from 4 to 7 October 2017, addressed the issue of quality in International programmes/modules.
Pinyana’s paper emphasised the fact that quality has become a major concern in tertiary education since the 1990s. With the aim of pursuing excellence, higher education institutions have been required to adopt quality measurements which encompass a range of indicators, such as student and staff ratios, teacher’s disciplinary knowledge or accomplished research. However, in EMI contexts, where teachers and students do not have English as their native language, pedagogic skill is an essential component that quality experts need to focus on. This is of foremost importance because different levels of language proficiency, not only among students but also between teacher and students; time pressure to cover all the course content; and fear of oversimplification of content force EMI teachers to hone their pedagogic skills to communicate effectively.
ICLHE is an annual international conference whose goal is to promote exchange of opinions, experiences, initiatives and research concerning the interface between content and language (ICL) in higher education (HE). In particular, in Copenhagen, content and language university teachers, language experts, as well as education developers and administrators from different international contexts presented their views and their professional practices within the following strands: a) educational approaches that promote ICL in HE, b) learning disciplinary content through an additional language, c) ICL course and program design, d) assessment and evaluation -e.g., teacher, student, programs- and d) ICL teacher training and support.