drs. G.A. (Gerdientje) Oggel

My teaching is centered around the teaching and learning of Spanish as a Foreign Language at University level. At secondary education level I am teacher trainer for Spanish Didactics.  

Next to this I am active as a Virtual Exchange trainer and advisor, within my own university but also nationally and internationally. Virtual exchange is is a pedagogical activity guided by trained educators in which digitally-mediated interaction and collaboration between students from different cultural backgrounds is central. This type of active and inclusive, international online learning is perfect for students to develop language skills, media literacy, intercultural competence and to learn how to approach course content and/or societal issues from different cultural and/or disciplinary perspectives. It can be a complement or an alternative to physical mobility.

Within our team we work on the following innovations:

Virtual Exchange - We have managed to implement a mandatory international component in all courses from the A2 level onwards in the form of interdisciplinary virtual exchange projects with partner universities in both Spain (teacher training) and Latin America (focusing on minority groups and social justice in politics, language, culture and literature)   

Gamification - The first course of the plus track (which starts at A2 level) is gamified with a focus on the difficulties students encounter in Spanish language acquisition in order to foster their autonomous learning by providing students with tools to learn to learn which they will then continue to implement in the follow-up courses 

Teacher training - For more than 10 years we have an international teacher training program in place for which we have created materials to foster interpersonal, didactical, pedagogical and organizational teaching competences such as a public podcast (la RR de la RUG - Retos y Recomendaciones para estudiantes de Español) that is being used for teaching teaching and teacher training worldwide and virtual exchange projects that involve teacher trainees and language learners.  

Active Learning - We created a CLIL project in which students carry out different tasks in which they discuss cultural, political and linguistic aspects of the Spanish Language in order to better prepare them to talk about these topics in the language specific courses of their profile studies.