On February 16, 2023 the Foreign Languages Department of the Philological Faculty at the L.N. Gumilyov University held its regular scientific and methodological seminar entitled "Becoming a Better Teacher: Exploring Professional Development".
The seminar was devoted to the use of adaptive learning technology in higher education, the role of a foreign language as a means of forming the value orientations of future specialists, in particular, their theoretical and practical aspects were considered: how to Implement Adaptive Learning in the Classroom to improve student performance and retention and how to increase the value orientations of future specialists in the educational process and some recommendations for improving various areas of teaching and learning foreign languages.
The following lecturers presented their topics of speeches:
1) Adaptive Learning Systems- - Jeffrey Stier, lecturer at Saybayev University, Almaty
2) The formation of the value orientations of the future specialists by means of foreign language - master, senior lecturer of the department Kasbayeva G.S.
Master, senior lecturer Eshtayeva E.G., who initiated the meeting with Jeffrey Stier, introduced the teaching staff the guest speaker Jeffrey Steer, noting that he is a lecturer of foreign languages at Satpayev University who has been working in higher education for 19 years. He has been teaching English for polylingual groups at Satpayev University for more than 5 years. He is a highly qualified lecturer of English and prepares students for IELTS. Jeffrey Stier is engaged in various research programs and projects in the field of higher education.
In his presentation Geoffrey Steer elaborated on the introduction of adaptive learning in classrooms, which, in his opinion, can improve academic performance and involve students in English classes. He noted that adaptive learning is a learning technology based on building an individual learning trajectory for a student, taking into account his current knowledge, abilities, motivation and other characteristics.
Jeffrey Steer is convinced that adaptive technology allows you to vary learning and to create new lesson structures. Students are given the opportunity to continue their activities at each subsequent lesson. At the same time the influence of individualized features and conditions for the course of this activity is taken into account. He informed about levels of Adaptivity and Personalization, Examples of Adaptive Learning Systems, such as Waggle, LS (Learnsmart), the World’s prominent adaptive learning companies, etc. The speaker dwelled on the effectiveness of adaptive learning.
Candidate of pedagogical sciences, associate professor of the department Mukhtarkhanova A.M. asked questions about possible risks of adaptive learning technology and his personal experience in this system. Jeffrey Steer provided detailed answers to these questions.
The second speaker master, lecturer of the department Ilyasova Kasbayeva G.S. presented her presentation entitled “The formation of the value orientations of the future specialists by means of foreign language”.
In her presentation in Kazakh with a slide show in English, Kasbayeva G.S. paid great attention to the importance of studying English for non-linguistic majors at the university. As it was noted in the speech, the knowledge, skills and abilities of future specialists, formed in the process of foreign language teaching at university, are the main competence of future specialists for employment in a prestigious job and career advancement in the future. In our society culture depends on the knowledge of languages. Culture education is an important aspect of the educational process. Language and culture are inextricably linked, so the study of foreign languages at a university is of great importance in the process of shaping the personality of students.
During the presentation the formation of students value orientations of non-linguistic majors in teaching English at a university was also discussed and active teaching methods and techniques used by teachers in foreign language teaching for students were described.
Lecturers of the department Kuzar Zh.N. and Bakhyt A. highly appreciated the demonstrated video fragments of practical classes, indicating that the sections of the units of the program educational material fully correspond not only to the presentation topic, but also to the good presentation and organization of the classes themselves.
Summing up the results of the seminar, the participants expressed a unique positive opinion about the relevance of the issues considered, their novelty and the value of the information received for further practice.
