Past Events
An Invisible University: Implications of Informal Learning in Morocco
Champaign , USA
Education Building Room 192
Education Building Room 192
Event Type: Lecture
Speaker Information: Dr. Mark Dressman
Along with affordable intercontinental jet travel, the rise of digital communications such as satellite television, smartphones, and the Internet has made it easier than ever before in history for people to find authentic, “comprehensible input” in other languages. This is nowhere more the case than in Morocco, a multilingual nation whose youth and leadership have chosen English over French as their link to the world outside the Middle East. This presentation focuses on the stories and statistics of 107 first-semester English students at three Moroccan universities and demonstrates how widespread and powerful learning English from an “Invisible University” of digital and face-to-face resources can be. The findings of this study also raise important questions about what and how people learn digitally and what implications there might be for the development of curriculum in more formal settings.
Cost: Free
Contact: Ann Jones
acjones3@illinois.edu
Sponsor: College of Education