Language Diversity Week

Main idea

Every year, AUAS spends a week celebrating multilingualism and multilingual students and staff by organising all kinds of activities in which people can learn about the advantages of multilingualism and the benefits of diversity.

Outline

In higher education in Flanders, the focus is often on Dutch language proficiency and multilingual students at Artevelde University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) often feel like they are the odd one out and as if their multilingualism puts them in a disadvantaged position.

On the 21st of February, UNESCO organizes the International Mother Language Day. This event inspired AUAS to shine a spotlight on the native languages of its students and staff to meet the students’ need for connection, visibility and recognition. Thus, the Office of Study and Career Guidance at AUAS has been organising the Language Diversity Week since 2017.

During this week, AUAS organizes multiple workshops and lectures. These are held by students or staff.

A couple of the activities for past Weeks of Multilingualism were:

• a workshop Somali for dummies,
• an introduction to Hindi,
• a reading session in sign language,
• a talk about the power of multilingualism,
• a lecture on multilingualism on the labour market.

There are also some sessions with the goal of connecting students, for instance by letting them write letters to each other in their native language or by organising a poetry competition.

Group size

The group size depends on the specific session. Some sessions are more popular than others. There can be about 20 to 80 attendees per session.

Target group

This initiative’s target group is students and staff from AUAS on the one hand and people outside of AUAS on the other hand. Half of the sessions are open to people from other institutions or organisations. More specifically, AUAS tries to reach its multilingual students and staff.

Goals

• To debunk persistent misunderstandings about multilingual and foreign-language students in higher education,
• to show multilingual students that they are not alone and to encourage them to connect,
• to show the advantages of multilingualism (e.g., on the labour market),
• to show Dutch native speakers what it might be like to be a foreign language student (e.g., by having them attend a lecture in a language they don’t understand),
• to shine a spotlight on AUAS’s diverse student body and staff,
• to make clear that while Dutch is the teaching language at AUAS, it’s not the standard in the diverse society we currently live in.

Target group

Students experiencing obstacles based on ethnic-cultural differences

Obstacles targetted:

• Cultural differences
• Migrant background obstacle
• Social obstacles

Students involvement

Students are not directly involved in the design of the Language Diversity Week. Multilingual students are involved in the delivery of some of the sessions.

Inspiration and evidence

The organisers of the Language Diversity Week are inspired by:

• input from language coaches and lecturers at AUAS,
• statistics on multilingualism at AUAS,
• statistics on Ghent’s diverse population,
• the work of linguist Piet van Avermaet on multilingualism in the context of education.

The Language Diversity Week is evidence based and practice based.

Success criteria

• The sessions are held by both students and staff. This puts the spotlight on AUAS’s diversity when it comes to its student body and its staff.
• This year’s Language Diversity Week has gained some media attention.
• The different sessions reach a diverse group of attendees. There’s something for everyone.
• This initiative is great for showing the advantages of multilingualism.
• Students can meet other students with the same background or who speak their native language.
• Persistent misunderstandings about multilingual and foreign-language students in higher education get debunked.

Points of attention

• There’s room for growth when it comes to reaching more foreign language students and multilingual students.
• Being more mindful of the different types of people (e.g., staff from different departments at AUAS) who are interested in this initiative and what their specific expectations and needs are.

Effectiveness

The subjective effectiveness is measured using the evaluation questionnaire. The results show that multilingual students feel less alone and feel more appreciated due to their multilingualism.

Do you feel you can effectively provide the support that students require?

We strongly agree.

Would you recommend this to other institutions?

strongly agree

Evaluation

All participants receive a questionnaire to evaluate the Language Diversity Week. Some of the questions that are asked are:

• What did you think about the session you attended?
• Do you have any ideas for the next edition?
• What did you learn this week?

Results

The results of the evaluation are very positive. This motivates AUAS to keep organising it year after year.

Communication

AUAS uses many strategies to find attendees for the Language Diversity Week:

• lecturers are provided with a slide about the Language Diversity Week that they can show in the beginning of their classes,
• there are backgrounds for MS Teams,
• there’s a trailer to encourage students to attend the sessions,
• there’s an infographic about multilingualism at AUAS which lecturers can show to their students,
• there’s a quiz about multilingualism for lecturers to give to their students,
• there’s a PowerPoint to inspire students to think about the subject with a video by a language coach at AUAS,
• there’s a poster with the entire programme,
• the initiative is mentioned on AUAS’s online platforms.

Group-oriented communication

The communication about this initiative targets everyone, but there is some group-oriented communication as well:

• AUAS finds multilingual students to give workshops and other sessions based on recommendations from language coaches or lecturers or by talking to the student council. There’s also a call for these students on the website, but this is less effective.
• When AUAS works with other organisations for specific sessions, these organisations also advertise these events to people outside of AUAS.
• Participants of the Language Buddy Project at AUAS which mention that they are multilingual, are sent a mail with an overview of the different sessions at the Language Diversity Week.

Timing

The Language Diversity Week takes place in the second semester in the week of UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day (21^st of February).

Resources

The biggest challenge is the organizational aspect: booking the locations, getting volunteers a courtesy gift, advertising the initiative, etc. This is a very time intensive process.

Extra information

• Dutch infographic on multilingualism at AUAS
• Teaser for students (vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation)
• Dutch Programme Poster 2023 (png)

Transferability

We think it is quite easily transferable to other contexts or groups.

The design of the initiative is based on Universal Design, because it’s for the benefit of the entire student population.

Context

In Ghent, around 50% of people between 18 and 24 years old have a migration background. At AUAS, there are more than 100 different languages spoken in the student population and around 1 out of 6 students is multilingual. This number increases yearly.