Exploring Marginalised Communities with Online Student Portfolios Using Google Drive and TEDx Talks

Two university writing classes (N=49) in Japan completed three writing tasks that focused on marginalised communities utilising Google Drive and TEDxKyoto Talks as part of a writing portfolio assessment. Participants also completed a voluntary reflective survey. The reflective survey results indicated that students demonstrated an increased awareness of the communities discussed and a desire to undertake further similar exercises. Furthermore, the portfolio responses indicated that the students were capable of tackling complex topics effectively in the L2 writing classroom when combining TEDx Talks with Google Drive. This indicates that tasks which focus on issues of social importance utilising Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) inside the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing classroom can be both pedagogically and socially meaningful. [For the complete volume, "CALL for Widening Participation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2020 (28th, Online, August 20-21, 2020)," see ED610330.]