Digital education – phases and methodology 1. Our experience in education

Firstly, I would like to briefly outline the framework within which Anglofon Studio offers educational and complex foreign language services (interpretation, translation and special language training). The company employs specialists that are familiar with the technical language in the fields of law, banking, accounting, the European Union, environmental protection and energetics, and provides tailor-made trainings on subjects at the crossroads of business, law and communication.

Its high-level and differentiated Legal English language courses are unique on the market. As an educational institution accredited by the Hungarian Bar Association,

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it offers various courses to the legal community. The teaching activities of Anglo-fon Studio are centred around three main groups:

• Academic education: in this respect, we teach at several faculties of ELTE (Law and Humanities) – academic environment, courses integrated in a cur-riculum

• Private framework: educational activities offered through our own institution (Anglofon Studio) – typically evening courses, one-day or weekend train-ings, e-learning courses

• Occasional trainings: tailor-made occasional trainings or training series at request – development of particular skills: letter writing in English, presen-tation of Anglo-Saxon legal institutions

We have been teaching terminology in the fields of law and economics at Eötvös Loránd University’s Department of Translation and Interpreting since 2012, and at its Faculty of Law since 2016. In the academic educational setting we offer mainly terminology courses, whereas the courses held through our own institution, An-glofon Studio, focus on various other fields as well, from contract drafting to communication in the field of law or the development of other particular skills. To date, about 500 students have participated in our courses in academic settings, whereas around 1200 people attended courses organised by Anglofon Studio.

Educational materials developed by Anglofon Studio are being used by several other educational institutions for academic and language teaching pur-poses. To improve the effectiveness of contact hours, we have also developed an online digital teaching platform that we have been using since 2014 in courses for translator and interpreter trainees. We first introduced the platform as an experi-ment, and then began to use it with full functionality during remote learning in-troduced due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

2.2. Phases of the teaching process

First, I would like to analyse the teaching process. Dividing the process into four stages, I examine below how digital technology prevails in these phases, what specific challenges they present, and what opportunities each phase holds. The digital learning process is structured similarly to the traditional educational pro-cess, and the Presentation – Practice – Production (see, for example Ritchie, 2003) triple unit, which has long been known in language teaching, is supplemented with interaction based on IBM’s four-tier educational model (Hidvégi 2003). Not all subjects contain all four elements, however, in most cases it is advisable to con-sider all elements when planning the teaching process and to implement them into the course.

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2.2.1. Phase one – Presentation of the educational material, alias Listen! See!

Read!

Goals: the teaching process usually begins with a presentation of the topic at hand.

The teacher explains what is to be learned, provides information, while giving a comprehensive picture of the teaching material, and offering a pedagogical sum-mary of the topic at hand, while also giving instructions to the students on how to master the given topic most effectively.

Teacher-student interaction: by default, this section is – traditionally – the “most passive” phase of digital education, at this point the emphasis is still on the elucida-tion of material, teacher-student communicaelucida-tion is often one-sided. In academic settings, this step is traditionally implemented in the form of a lecture. In the case of digital education, material can be delivered in a variety of ways using digital devices. It is common practice for teachers to give an online lecture or to rely on pre-made materials, as the knowledge to be acquired can also be shared with the help of a pre-recorded video lecture or audio material. This can be supplemented or even completely replaced by presenting the subject with the help of written materials, readings, or by also using other tools such as figures, tables, info-graph-ic elements, process descriptions, etc.

Challenges: many believe that once this phase is completed, that is, the learning materials were presented or shared in written or even video form, digital education is accomplished. But this phase alone is not enough, the next two or three phases are also needed for students to master the subject. The biggest pitfall of this phase is monotony. We must strive to diversify the use of available tools, because these days, neither long lectures nor PDF documents consisting of many pages pass the stimulus threshold of the students sitting in front of the monitor.

Opportunities: contrary to popular belief, this phase does not necessarily have to consist of a one-way communication. In the Anglo-Saxon world, the pedagogical methodology of law universities adopted the so-called Socratic method, which is typically based on reasoning dialogues, raising questions, discussing problems and analysis and interpretation of (legal) cases in group (Aristotle’s peripatetic, infor-mal, group discussion method may be similar).

The question is, is this possible in the context of digital education?

As I see it, digital technology is not narrowing, but rather expanding our pos-sibilities. The smartly built platform allows the development and application of a number of tools that can support and even implement the above process. One of the simplest ways of accomplishing this is to supplement the video lectures with quiz type exercises which allow the student to proceed to the next section only if the questions are answered correctly. Learning can also be effectively supported by the so-called flashcard features. By introducing interactive flashcards,

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ing facts and key information to be remembered can be highlighted in the learning materials. Boring text reading can also be made more interesting by adding inter-active functions to the text, either by integrating a dictionary function or by high-lighting, explaining and assigning additional content using html tools. Learning materials can be processed indirectly with the help of well-formulated, directed questions. The role of the teacher in such cases is to ask students questions, to make them think for themselves, and to point out the critical points of the subject matter.

2.2.2. Phase two – Practise the learning material, alias Try it out! Practice!

Goals: supporting the acquisition of the learning material and putting knowledge into practice by giving students tasks to be solved mostly independently. In most cases, an important element of practicing are the so-called drills, i.e. solving a large number of similar tasks (Bárdos 2000).

Teacher-student interaction: this step is certainly based on the activities of the students. Practice can be accomplished with the participation of the teacher during task-solving activities, on the one hand, or by completing the tasks given by the teacher in the form of independent learning, on the other hand.

Challenges: it is important to set the difficulty of the tasks so that they can be solved by everyone. At the same time, the tasks should not become monotonous, because it has the opposite effect on the learners.

Opportunities: we can easily incorporate digital technology into the practice phase through interactive tasks, making a large number of digital exercises avail-able to the students to support the acquisition of knowledge. Drills are an integral part of any learning process, but students may find the sequence of identical tasks dull and tedious. The solution to this can be to differentiate between the difficulty levels as much as possible, as the learning materials should include easier and more difficult tasks. We provide feedback on the results of the tasks in the form of a matrix, from which participants can get an idea of their strengths and weaknesses in each area at each level. These tools automate the traditional teacher functions.

The use of artificial intelligence can also take over the role of the teacher as a helper or supporter, giving much more space to individual, personalised skills development. Finally, the gamification of the learning material offers countless additional opportunities for the interactive sharing of knowledge.

2.2.3. Phase three – Interaction: Listen and see how others do it!

Goals: joint processing of the learned and practised material by also involving the other members of the group, or group work, during which the participant receives feedback from other students or the teacher, and can compare their own progress

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and results with others, while also assessing what others are better at and trying to overcome their shortcomings.

Teacher-student interaction: it is an interactive part of digital education, the participation of the teacher is definitely useful, although students can also learn a lot from each other.

Challenges: not everyone likes to expose themselves, therefore students should be given the possibility to stay anonymous, so that less extroverted participants and students who feel insecure are also given an opportunity to safely participate in this phase. Care should also be taken to ensure balance within groups should some-one have a huge head start in a field.

Opportunities: in the case of online education, practising can be done in the form of live online lessons (such as holding a seminar in a video conference), consulta-tion occasions, or even group forums. Various applicaconsulta-tions can be used for col-laboration, such as chats, teams, virtual classrooms, communicating with the teacher online. These techniques help students learn from the shared experiences in groups.

As discussed above, in an optimal situation, lecturing can be supplemented or entirely replaced by discussing and analysing the educational material in the form of questions and answers. In addition to these, there are a number of interactive digital tools available, all of which are designed to engage students. For this pur-pose, Anglofon Studio has developed an application called Comparative Writ-ing, which displays the written material submitted by each student (which can be answers to an open question, translations, compositions, rewordings etc.) on one screen and allows targeted feedback to be sent electronically.

2.2.4. Phase four – Production: Evaluate by putting it into practice!

Goals: evaluating, checking the acquisition of knowledge, giving assignments, testing, examining, and using what has been learned in a live environment.

Teacher-student interaction: this step is based on the student’s activity, the teach-er’s task is limited to correcting and giving feedback, however, in an optimal situ-ation, this task can be automated.

Challenges: it is very important that the exam draws from the range of tasks that the students have practised and that the difficulty level of the final test is accu-rately calibrated. Marking exams and administering exam results can be very time consuming if the platform does not provide an auto-correction feature or sufficient integration. Any mistakes made during the examination are poorly received by students, so special attention must be paid to accuracy.

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Opportunities: examination is typically highly digitalisable in the form of elec-tronic exams, the improvement of which can be fully or largely automated, depend-ing on the type of exam. This is the element that is easiest to implement in digital education as plenty of platforms offer testing options.