Abstract:

This was a three-way international collaboration in a project-based language learning (PBLL) course where graduate students from Japanese computer science (CS) university collaborated with undergraduate students from the same university on the topic of smart homes (SH). The graduate students acted as mentors for undergraduates in the process of completing the assignments. The graduate assignments were mostly based on a reflective assessment of the undergraduate assignments completed. During the process of this internal cooperation, the graduate-undergraduate group from the Japanese university had to communicate extensively with German university partners (graduate class on advanced technical communication) as clients, and transfer the SH assignments over to them who took the materials as content for their content management and delivery systems, ontology preparation and metadata creation activities. The project ended with joint international conference presentations and workshops, focusing on international collaboration and exposure.

Students in both graduate and undergraduate courses had to do reasonably extensive online reading to better understand IoT-based technologies and complete the assignments. For the group-based PBLL activities, students focused on SH technologies (e.g., Amazon Echo family, Google home, home security systems, smart thermostat, etc.) in the Japanese and European markets by:
(1) planning video production with taxonomy and ontology design,
(2) analyzing existing online smart home commercials based on advertising rubrics and
(3) producing video commercials on SH technologies.

In this soft CLIL-based CALL classroom, students learned English using video production (with Adobe Spark), information design (with Venngage and Canva) and ontology-oriented software (with MindMeister, Sketchboarding and IHMC Cloud) on the topic of smart homes (SH).

Finally, as a retrospective analysis, graduate students had to undertake an audience analysis with a small group of respondents from different parts of the world to better understand the acceptance of the SH technology in their daily life and reflect on whether the assignments completed perhaps could and should have been done differently based on the audience (potential customer of the SH technology) feedback.

The paper explained how students have performed:
(a) with their planning of the videos using concept/mind mapping software,
(b) how they analyzed the web commercials on SH technologies
(c) students' ability for information design on SH technologies for print media and
(d) their introductory skills in designing and producing SH technology videos.

A detailed evaluation of how students have performed with these weekly exercises will be highlighted. The idea of the paper is NOT to focus on student perceptions about these assignments which are rather unique and advanced in their English as a foreign language (EFL) learning context, or on the student grades, but to focus on examples of the approach to completing such assignments based on the rather detailed assignment instructions. The paper will help readers get a glimpse of the extent to which these assignments were completed with adequate details and explanations.

This paper will help understand the logistics of such a PBLL context that can help develop language acquisition skills, group dynamics, collaborative practices, intercultural exposure, and awareness of the global technology marketplace.

Keywords:

Project-based language learning, collaboration, CLIL, information design, technical communication.