Collaborative Italian: Using technology to support student-led language teaching

Abstract

Collaborative Italian—Collit—is an online language learning program for adult students of Italian in higher education with at least a B1 level of the Common European Framework. Collit is free, open and extracurriculum. 
Collit provides the learners with a communicative learning experience based on collaboration and social interaction. It promotes social constructivism and embraces Web 2.0 pedagogies by relying on the openness of the online environment and social media. Collit emphasises ownership of learning by encouraging student-controlled intended learning outcomes and tasks, and student-generated learning content, consistent with the cognitive and the experiential approaches to course design onto which Collit is theoretically grounded.
On this basis, Collit addresses questions concerned with the effectiveness of open pedagogies for student-led language learning. This contribution presents Collit as a case study for the investigation of novel language learning dynamics supported by the web and social media.