Project-Based Foreign Language Teaching: Using Video in the Co-Construction of Marketing Students' Knowledge

Abstract

Within the scope of the ‘Stepping up to Global Challenges (SGC) 2: Learning English while Fighting the Outbreak of Covid-19’ project, several activities were developed with 1st year students of the Marketing degree course at the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, in Portugal. The project results from an international collaboration with higher education students from Radom, Poland, lasted for one academic semester and its main objective was to provide college students of Marketing with linguistic tools to improve their professional performance once in the job market. One of the activities requested was the making of a video. Each group of students selected a Portuguese/Polish/Turkish company and collected information about it. The topics covered were several, what products or services it markets, what its competitive advantage is, among other issues, but the focus was on the strategies they used to handle this pandemic we are all facing. Subsequently, each group produced a video with the information collected, images, testimonials from the managers of the selected companies, quotes, statements from current employees. The main conclusion of the study was that the use of project-based teaching methodology combined with new technologies makes learning more motivating and meaningful, and that this cooperation has broken boundaries.