Since the global Covid-19 pandemic of March 2020, many universities have decided to transfer their face-to-face teaching provision to online platforms. Overnight, academics and students have seen their working environment change dramatically. Initial discussions among the academic community seem to indicate that the transition is not without a number of hurdles, despite prior experience in using virtual learning environments and/or incorporating a distance component to face-to-face teaching. While blended learning approaches have been widely encouraged and often applied in university contexts, the speed and wholesale nature of the recent transition has prompted many to rethink how they teach and to look for new pedagogical ideas.
Translation and Interpreting Studies (TIS) have also trialled blended learning approaches in the teaching of these subjects for a number of years. Recent efforts to administer TIS course content at a distance have led to a call for more research investigating the use synchronous and asynchronous media (Colina and Angelelli, 2016). Although currently underexplored in TIS research, Distance Learning represents a substantial area of research in other fields, such as Education. There are notorious difficulties that arise from moving face-to-face course content into virtual environments, from designing an online course to administering assessment and fostering collaboration, interaction, and engagement.
In this special issue, we are proposing to explore some of these difficulties in TIS. We will invite contributions covering the following key themes:
• Online pedagogy (latest trends)
• (a)synchronous teaching: challenges and opportunities in TIS
• TIS curriculum and module design for online delivery
• TIS technologies at a distance
• TIS online Assessment
• Fostering TIS (a)synchronous collaboration, interaction, and engagement
• Acquiring online translation/interpreting work experience
Following a recent set of workshops on the topic of online teaching organised by the Association of Programmes in Translation and Interpreting Studies (APTIS), several academics in TIS have already been identified as potential contributors to this special issue.
Call deadline: 31 July 2020 extended abstracts; 31 October 2020 full papers
For more information, click here
