Month: June 2016

As one of the key publishers for French as a Foreign Language (FLE) throughout the Francophone world, Éditions Maison des Langues (EMDL) is no stranger to innovation and driving new standards. However its newly-launched Espace Virtuel, a French language learning environment developed by Avallain and prepared on Avallain platforms, is set to change the way the French language is learned – and taught.

EMDL places its relationship with teachers at the heart of its publishing processes, using teacher workshops, surveys and conferences to ensure that its courses and methodologies are the most current and practical available. This approach has been critical to the development of Espace Virtuel as a responsive, integrated service, and one which embraces the principle of a ‘flipped classroom’, while also supporting traditional classroom learning. Searches filtered by grammar and language point allow teachers to assemble the resources that best suit their course and their class, and then monitor the performance of individual students, wherever the activities are completed. The bank of self-correcting activities and video resources will be updated regularly, making Espace Virtuel into an endlessly evolving service, capable of responding to new demands, trends and developments. In September, it will also be made available on computer, tablet and smartphone, ensuring that it is accessible wherever and whenever there is an opportunity to learn.

Emilio Marill, EMDL’s Head of Digital Publishing commented: “The Internet and ICT can all too easily become a source of stress and extra work for teachers, rather than a help. Espace Virtuel provides teachers with a one-stop tool, allowing them to extend the walls of the classroom while offering a versatile, turnkey solution for use in class. It represents a change of mentality: we no longer wish to offer a range of partitioned, disconnected products but instead, an integral service of assistance and support. We are delighted with all that Avallain’s technology and expertise has helped us to achieve.”

Ignatz Heinz, Managing Director of Avallain, said: “EMDL’s Espace Virtuel is a true success story, both as a responsive and dynamic learning environment, and as a partnership between firms of shared vision. We are certain that the quality and depth of Espace Virtuel, along with EMDL’s commitment to ongoing publishing and enhancement, will establish it as a unique and important addition to FLE education. Avallain will continue to play its part, providing Avallain Author for the preparation of premium content, and Avallain Unity to complement those resources with reliable and helpful educational tools.”

Éditions Maison des Langues is a leading publisher of language learning materials for high schools, colleges and adult learners. Supported by commercial partnerships with the renowned publishing houses Klett and Difusión, EMDL publishes courses and supporting materials for French, Italian, German and Spanish language learning.

Avallain’s co-founder, Ursula Suter, has been invited by The International Conference for E-Learning in the Workplace (ICELW) to present her vision for a revolution in the way educational resources are authored and delivered.

Speaking this week at Columbia University in New York, the Swiss educationalist and entrepreneur will outline how innovations in e-learning offer opportunities to enhance training for an increasingly dispersed and pressured workplace. Suter will explain how in the past, many attempts to deliver relevant and responsive online training have been frustrated by considerations of cost, time and complexity. She will then show how Avallain’s online authoring platform, Avallain Author, and its sister learning platform, Avallain Unity, allow institutions and training professionals to overcome these constraints.

In her conference session on June 17th, Suter will describe how Avallain Author allows training professionals to choose activity types and formats that best suit the material, and then, using the unique innovation of “Design Packs”, deliver them in a bespoke design and interface. Drawing examples from a range of Avallain projects, Suter will explain how a standards-based, modular architecture means that training may be delivered seamlessly to multiple devices and platforms. But she will argue that the flexibility need not end there. Suter will show how the Avallain Unity platform picks up where Avallain Author leaves off, providing a unique object-oriented approach to learning management, so that high quality, responsive content is delivered in an equally responsive environment.

To close her session, Suter will present experience and research drawn from Avallain’s a-ACADEMY, an e-learning programme for schools in Kenya endorsed by the Kenyan government. She will show a-ACADEMY’s substantive, measurable results, proving the real impact of properly devised and delivered e-learning.

“At Avallain, we believe that technology must never eclipse inspiring and effective educational design,” comments Suter, who has been working in the field of e-learning since 1997. “We wanted to develop tools that empower educators to devise, shape and deliver online learning to suit their changing needs, without the involvement of technologists. I welcome this opportunity to show how these tools are already delivering real outcomes in a variety of educational contexts.”

The ICELW is an international conference bringing together the corporate and academic worlds to realize the vast potential of e-learning in business and industry. This year’s conference will be held at Columbia University in New York, from June 15th-17th.

Speaking last week at the German Adult Education Conference in Berlin, Joachim Gauck, the German President, singled out the learning portal for immigrants developed on Avallain technology as a “particularly impressive” example of digital education for adults.

The President was referring to Ich Will Deutsch Lernen, an online learning environment produced for the German Adult Education Association (DVV). Released in 2013, the portal is designed to support and enhance integration courses for immigrants provided by community colleges. It offers extended self-study material, online tutoring, assistance with job applications, and general vocational help and advice.

The President’s speech comes at a time of seismic change in Germany’s adult education sector, driven by what Gauck described as a “digital transformation” and also by the largest number of immigrants in post war history – more than a million in the last year alone – all of whom must be integrated into German society. He used his speech to highlight the role of community colleges in providing education to all, in reflecting social change, and in engendering civic responsibility. In this context he pointed to the opportunity afforded by digital education to expand the boundaries of community colleges and offer more accessible, personal and motivational learning to all.

The President closed his address by pointing to the Ich Will Deutsch Lernen as an example of best practice in the field, recognizing its strengths as a powerful learning environment, and its wider civic importance.

Ursula Suter, Co-Founder of Avallain commented: “Since the project’s inception we have been acutely aware of its social and educational importance. Working with Avallain and our technology, the DVV has produced an environment that achieves the highest standards of educational design, and is truly responsive to the considerable need. We are delighted that these efforts have been recognized in this way, and that the President has highlighted the importance of continued investment and innovation in this field.”

The German Adult Education Association (DVV) promotes the training and education provided by adult education centers and represents the interests of more than 900 community colleges at federal, European and international level.

For more than a quarter of a century, Difusión has played a leading role in the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language. Now, its launch of Campus Difusión underscores its place at the vanguard of the industry. Prepared and delivered on groundbreaking Avallain technology, Campus Difusión brings a dynamic and responsive digital dimension to Difusión courses, to the benefit of students, teachers and institutions.

Centred around a wealth of instructional videos, highly interactive exercises, language-controlled news activities, and digital editions of textbooks, Campus Difusión offers students a unique environment in which to learn and collaborate, and teachers a platform upon which to enhance and extend their lessons and their classroom. Students may personalize their learning, see their progress and submit work for review, while teachers are able to guide the work of their class, and set and evaluate tasks. Difusión is making this offering available to the widest possible audience with its innovative ‘freemium’ charging model, which makes much of the content cost-free, and a premium service easy to sample and access.

Katia Coppola and Jaime Sala, CEOs of Difusión commented: “We are delighted to share Campus Difusión with students and teachers, confident that it is true to our core values of exceptional quality and innovation. Campus Difusión represents a step-change not only in the way teachers and students engage, learn and teach, but also in the way we as publishers aid those interactions with enhanced content and meaningful, pedagogically useful tools. It also marks a new era in our own digital workflows, in which we are now using Avallain’s platforms to publish even more quickly and responsively.” 

Ignatz Heinz, Managing Director of Avallain, said: “We are very proud of Campus Difusión, both as a demonstration of very effective collaboration, and as an exceptional product. With a development time of only months, Difusión and Avallain had to prepare all the content and solve technical challenges such as platform integrations and a transition from Moodle, and we achieved a startling result.  With content prepared in Avallain Author and delivered seamlessly to multiple devices on the Avallain Unity learning platform, Campus Difusión achieves an elegance of architecture and a simple but engaging user experience, consistent with the very highest standards of digital publishing.”