INTERGRATING NEARPOD INTO ONLINE TEACHING OF INTERPRETING

Abstract

Online teaching needs a solid performing platform. Many universities have made their own uniques platform to cater to their style of online teaching. However, in creating or using a self-developed online teaching platform, there will always be aspects not covered by the system. This lack of coverage might be caused by two aspects, namely the limitation of the system, or the teaching varieties of the subjects. The latter is the focus of this research. As a subject that demands human interaction and skill practice, interpreting requires a lot from the online platform it is going to be taught on. For that reason, integration of other online tools is needed. One of the online tools available is Nearpod. This research is aimed to examine the feasibility of integrating Nearpod in the online teaching of interpreting, specifically, community interpreting. Why community interpreting? Smirnov (1997), Garber (2000), and Hale (2007) have pointed out that when compared to conference interpreting, community interpreting is more significant because, unlike in the conference interpreting settings, without community interpreter, communication between the parties involved would not have been established. Community interpreting itself can be loosely defined as an interpreting activities conducted in the most private, intimate and daily setting of every individuals (Hale, 2007). As for the reason for choosing Nearpod as the online tools to be integrated into the course, it is because, from my experience of using it, it has features that enable a semi-formal education with games and fun activities that I hope will enhance and motivate the students learning and change their learning behavior. To achieve the objective, several questions need to be answered. The first is in term of the integration itself. There should be a specific focus of what aspects of teaching needs to be integrated. In this research, it has been decided that the assessment will be the main focus of the integration. This aspect is chosen because a proper assessment is needed to provide constructive feedbacks aimed at the development of the students skill in interpreting. Based on a previous study by Jansem (2021), this research is a type of a feasibility study aimed to examine the practicality and the possibility of and the concerns about online teaching of community interpreting as reflected by the students and practitioners in the field. The data will be collected using semi-structured interviews and post-interviews on the students' and the practitioners' reflections, especially in its relation with assessent which makes use of Nearpod. By finding out the most appropriate method to integrate the assessment of interpreting using Nearpod, I expect the students performance in conducting and practicing community interpreting to be improved, enhanced, and further motivated