Thursday, October 23rd, 2025
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Location: Arts Multimedia Language Facility
Language(s) of Delivery: English

Creating an Academic Integrity Module for Language Learners that Accounts for Artificial Intelligence

This informal presentation will share the process and criteria for creating an academic integrity module that addresses the needs of language learners in a university setting. Integrating aspects of universal design for learning (UDL) and addressing the realities students encounter in different types of courses, the module specifically targets the 6 values of academic integrity according to the International Center for Academic Integrity and the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) to support autonomous language learning.

Presenters: Roisin Dewart & Emily Rosales, UQAM

Tuesday, November 25th, 2025
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Location: Arts Multimedia Language Facility
Language(s) of Delivery: French

Utiliser des grands modèles de langage ouverts avec Ollama et OpenWebUI

Cet atelier offre une introduction pratique à Ollama et à OpenWebUI, deux outils permettant d’interagir avec des modèles de langage tout en assurant la confidentialité des échanges (aucun partage de données avec des tiers). Les participant·es apprendront à installer ces logiciels sur leur ordinateur personnel et découvriront les fonctionnalités de l’interface OpenWebUI. Nous explorerons ensemble les paramètres avancés, notamment l’ajustement de la « température » du LLM et l’utilisation du message système. Nous verrons comment ces réglages affectent le comportement du modèle de langage en discutant d’un exemple concret.

Présentateur: Pascal Brissette, McGill

Thursday, January 22, 2025
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Location: Arts Multimedia Language Facility
Language(s) of Delivery: French

Comprendre le design d'Invite (prompt ingineering) et créer un assistant correcteur

L’atelier portera sur le design d’invite (prompt engineering), une technique qui permet d’affiner le comportement des modèles de langage et d'augmenter leur efficacité dans des tâches spécifiques. Les participant·es apprendront à rédiger des messages système selon les meilleures pratiques afin de transformer un LLM généraliste en assistant spécialisé. Nous allons également expliquer le concept d’« agent » et observer le comportement d'un tel outil dans le contexte de la correction linguistique, l’explication des erreurs et le renvoi à des sources officielles.

Les personnes qui ont suivi l’atelier « Utiliser des grands modèles de langage ouverts avec Ollama et OpenWebUI » pourront tirer profit des modèles ouverts et sécurisés pour créer les assistants. Celles et ceux qui n’ont pas pu y assister pourront utiliser l’interface commerciale LeChat, développée par la société française Mistral. 

Présentateur: Pascal Brissette, McGill

Tuesday, February 15th, 2022
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM

Location: AMLF Lab3
Language(s) of Delivery: French & English

Aucune connaissance préalable de la programmation n’est requise. L’ordinateur utilisé n’a pas besoin d’être récent ni particulièrement performant.

Providing written corrective feedback in real time: the case for collaborative writing

In this event, the speakers, Gabriel Michaud, Assistant Professor at UDEM, and Kevin Papin, Assistant Professor at UQAM, will present the results of their study, which aimed to explore the possibility of providing synchronous written corrective feedback while students were engaged in collaborative writing tasks.

They will highlight types of feedback that were preferred by teachers and students, student’s reactions to the feedback and discussions that ensued, and the perceptions of both teachers and students regarding the benefits and limitations of this new practice. Implications for the language classroom will also be discussed.

Presenters: Gabriel Michaud and Kevin Papin, UQAM

Tuesday, October 20th, 2022
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

Location: AMLF Lab3
Language(s) of Delivery: English

Engaging Students in the Assessment of Participation: A Pilot Project in Language Courses

When it comes to participation, instructors often wonder whether students understand what is expected of them and how in-class students’ performance can be assessed judiciously. In this presentation, Dr. Alejandra Barriales-Bouche and Dr. Sun-Young Kim will describe a pilot project on participation in German and Spanish language classes from Winter 2022 that was guided by the following questions: How can we assess in-class participation fairly? Based on the idea that students’ involvement in shaping their learning experience deepens their motivation, how can we engage students in assessing their own participation?

The presenters will show the following in their presentation:

1. how they communicated their expectations on participation to students through descriptors rather than rubrics,
2. which steps they took to engage students by incorporating self-assessment assignments in their courses,
3. what the students’ perspective and feedback was according to a survey run at the end of the project.

The presentation will conclude with reflections on the lessons learned and a discussion with participants.

Presenters: Dr. Alejandra Barriales-Bouche and Dr. Sun-Young Kim, McGill

Thursday, October 26th, 2023
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Location: Online
Language(s) of Delivery: English

Teaching linguistics through language construction: A project-based approach

This presentation details how introductory linguistics courses can increase student engagement and learning through a project-based approach, whereby the students first study the subfields of linguistics with a view to complete the main project of the course, namely to construct a novel language. I provide information from a semester-long course with specific project-based activities teachers could utilize in their classes. I also thoroughly examine the constructed language projects based on 33 student submissions in an introductory linguistics course in the US. The analysis indicates a high level of engagement and creativity by the students in creating a distinct orthography, phonetic, morphological, and syntactic rules and semantic properties for their constructed languages. The results from a 20-item questionnaire and student exit interviews indicate that the project-based approach adopted in the completion of their constructed languages proved effective in (a) improving student motivation and engagement; (b) helping students apply the knowledge of the material to carry out linguistic analysis; (c) enhancing students’ language learning skills; (d) encouraging them to study additional foreign languages; and finally (e) promoting linguistic diversity. Hence, as an innovative and effective method still in its infancy, project-based learning should be more widely implemented in linguistics instruction.

Presenter: Dr. Yılmaz Koylu, HKUST

Thursday, April 18th, 2024
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Location: Online
Language(s) of Delivery: English

Raising Genre Awareness in Second Language Learners: A Transferrable Skill

Want to introduce more authentic materials to your language classroom but not sure where to start? In this event, the speaker, Oguzhan Tekin, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, at the University of Toronto, will discuss using real-world texts to raise genre awareness among university students, helping them craft better texts while maintaining their authorial agency. After introducing the concept of genre awareness and its implications for (second) language classrooms from the perspective of writing studies and composition, he will provide a hands-on activity for the participants to easily implement in their classrooms. Implications for teachers and learners of languages other than English will also be discussed.

Presenter: Dr. Oguzhan Tekin, UofT