This is a blended course, English for Architecture and Urban Planning at Universidad Simon Bolivar. It is intended for the practice of the 4 skills of the language and the introduction of architectural and urban planning content. The whole course follows a task-content-based approach to language teaching, based on the tenets of the social constructivist theory of learning. Each unit has been designed as a Learning Object. During the course students will be analyzing the content and discourse of different architectural and urban planning online magazines to finally create their own which will be presented online to an international audience.

The participants in this course will be able to design an online magazine about architecture or urban planning using the English structures and vocabulary needed for the different pieces of discourse (oral and written) to be included in the e-zine.

Click here for the timetable with the distribution of the content by week

This blended course has been designed to give certain autonomy and flexibility to the students. Moodle will be used as the asynchronous center for communication, and it will be complemented with a wiki. The multimedia lab will be our meeting place, especially for students who do not have easy access to computers. However, students are not forced to be in the lab, they can do the activities from other places, and not necessarily at the same time the lab session is taking place. They only need to complete the activities assigned for each week (see Weekly Activities). Using tailored made exercises and others found on the web, students, individually, and at their own pace, will practice the aspects of the language they need to work on. Students will also participate in group work, and these activities can be done at any time the groups decide to meet; in the case of the chat, previous invitation and agreement with the teacher. Some activities will combine f2f and online elements, these activities will require students presence in the classroom. With the different activities students will develop and practice vocabulary related to the content while they read authentic texts and listen and view authentic videos. Students will also be involved in peer and self-assessment of the work done.

The evaluation follows the principles of Alternative Evaluation. There will be teacher correction of class assignments as well as self and peer-correction. Rubrics and checklists will be generated to assess the different tasks. See Assessment section for details

For the online resources used in the course, see the References section.