LIM Language, Integration, Media

LIM: Language, Integration, Media

Today’s migration situation has brought opportunities and challenges to the Norwegian education system. LIM has addressed both through a focus on integration of students of upper secondary school age (VGs). Research shows that learning strategies that include both Norwegian and migrant students are important for successful integration. LIM has developed innovative and engaging learning opportunities for Norwegian and migrant students aimed at improving academic and integration outcomes. LIM has developed the following courses:

A Norwegian as a second language online course for adolescent migrants addressing their interests and specific language needs.

A social studies course, We are all migrants, encouraging critical thinking on migration, with variants for both migrant and upper secondary VGs students, including an online and face-to-face course pairing together upper secondary VGs and migrant students to produce digital stories.

The project worked closely with LIM’s local school partners to ensure that both teachers and students were closely involved in the course development. The project’s multidisciplinary team are from NTNU’s Departments of Language and Literature, Teacher Education, Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture and Education and Lifelong Learning.

The project was based at Department of Language and Literature and funded by the Norwegian Research Council (NFR) under the Research and Innovation in the Educational Sector (FINNUT) program (VAM) for the period 2017-2020).

Courses and learning resources

The course Norwegian for Youth

This is an online course created for young people with migrant background, in the age range 18 - 25. The course starts at beginner level A1, and continues with level B1. There are 18 chapters in the course, each with four sub chapters.

The course can be downloaded in PDF format, and several films and interactive exercises are developed for the course.

Language integration media. Illustration

We are all migrants is an interdisciplinary course about migration, where students from upper secondary schools and adult education work together. The students will get to know each other, draw maps, and create digital stories about migration.

The course is available here:

Wanderers is a computer game where students - in pairs or small groups - will solve puzzles based on the students' own backgrounds. The main purpose of the game is that students can get to know each other and each other's culture in a fun, low-threshold way.

Work packages

Integration is an overarching work package researching students' and teachers' views on integration. The work package has conducted focus group interviews and individual interviews with teachers, and with high-school age students with and without migrant backgrounds.

LearnNowYouth is a work package developing Norwegian as a second language online course for adolescent migrants, addressing their interests and specific language needs.

The work package has created an online course, a textbook, films and interactive excercizes.

Work package for LearnNowYouth

We Are All Migrants is a social studies course encouraging critical thinking on migration, with variants for both migrant and upper secondary VGS students.

By establishing common meeting places and stories, it is possible to see larger connections and achieving deeper learning. What values do we have in common? How can we create mutual respect between individuals?

We explore migration through the following lenses:

Migration as a local and global phenomenon
Journeys - in time, space and roles - might broaden our worlds, and might bring us closer
Meetings creates new perspective and mutual understandings, and can make us understand our own values better.

The students will share and explore each others' experiences, and develop terminology that is useful to understand the world and their own everyday lives.

Can digital technologies support integration and learning? What are the challenges and possibilities of utilizing ICT in intercultural learning?

These are some of the questions we explore in Work package 4: Digitac. There are several reasons for our focus on digital technology. First, digital skills is one of five basic skills in the Norwegian core curriculum, and can best be developed when integrated with other teaching. Second, ICT gives the possibilities for expressions in other forms than speech or writing, and might thus be a way of stimulating the joy of creating stories, as well as creating a sense of ownership. We have been inspired by game culture and fan culture, which displays impressive enthusiasm when it comes to creating and sharing knowledge using digial platforms. While we have no illusions that the creation of these affinity spaces can be easily replicated in institutional settings, such as classrooms, we do believe that we can learn from how they use technology to foster inclusion across cultures.

Digitac will conduct research and develop courses in multimodal storytelling as part of We are all migrants, and organized a game design workshop together with Falstadsenteret.

Our research questions are the following:

How can digital technology be used to enhance learning and integration in classroom activities?
How can digital technology enhance learning collaborations and create communities/foster inclusion across cultures?

Partners

The LIM project collaborates with the following international partners:

Dr. Claudia Schneider, Anglia Ruskin University
Dr. Yongcan Liu, University of Cambridge
Professor Madeleine Arnot, University of Cambridge

The LIM project collaborates with UNICEF Norway, and with local high schools and schools for adult education.

Publications (to be updated)

Kjelaas, Irmelin; Åsta, Øvregaard; Ommeren, Rikke van.
LearnNoWYouth – et webbasert norskkurs for ungdom. NORDAND; 2019-05-27 - 2019-05-29 NTNU

Kristensen, Guro Korsnes; Kjelaas, Irmelin; Ringrose, Priscilla.
"Mothering" and "othering": Being a teacher of Newly Arrived Adolescent Migrants. NERA 2019 Education in a Globalized World; 2019-03-05 - 2019-03-08

Ringrose, Priscilla; Skotnes, Christian Engen. “Dear Migrant: Assimilation, Segregation and Exceptionalism in Letters from Norwegian Adolescents to their Peers”, NERA 2019 Education in a Globalized World; 2019-03-05 - 2019-03-08 - Uppsala, Sweden

Ringrose, Priscilla. Do you believe in integration? NTNU rektor meeting, Trondheim, Norway. 20.10.2017

Ringrose, Priscilla. LIM - Aims and Challenges. Kilden meeting, Trondheim, Norway. 26.04.2018

Ringrose, Priscilla and Grut, Gunnar. LIM - Interventions in Integration. University of Caen
leadership, Trondheim, Norway. 23.05.2018.

Svendsen, Stine H. Bang. Indigenous land, colonization and migration in the classroom. University of Bergen, Center for Gender Studies, Native-immigrant-refugee symposium. 28.-29.08.2019

Svendsen, Stine H. Bang. and Eriksen, Kristin Gregers. Engaging the colonial baseline to make room for indigeneity. University of Tromsø, Indigeneity & Education Conference 26.-27.09.2019

Svendsen, Stine H. Bang. Language, Integration, Media. Pedagogikk i lærerutdanning , Selbu, Norway. 20.10.2017.

Svendsen, Stine H. Bang. «Are we all migrants? Reframing local knowledge to address diversity». Decolonial Entanglements, Trondheim, Norway. 12.09.2018.

Øygardslia, Kristine. The Wanderer: Game Design Strategies for Promoting Inclusion Through Play. DiGRA 2019: Social Justice Tactics in Today's LudoMix ; Kyoto, Japan. 2019-08-06 - 2019-08-06.

Øygardslia, Kristine; Shin, Juhyung; Lærke Weitze, Charlotte. The educational potential of visual novels: Principles for design. Replaying Japan 2019; Kyoto, Japan. 2019-08-09 - 2019-08-11.

Øygardslia, Kristine. LIM: Language, Integration, Media. Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan. 27.11.2018.

Øygardslia, Kristine. Innovasjon i prosjektet LIM. Innovasjon i offentlig sektor. 06.03.2019.

Øygardslia, Kristine. The Wanderer. IMTEL innovation day. 07.05.2019.

Contact information:

For more information about the project, please contact our project leader:
Priscilla Ringrose, Department of language and literature

For more information about each work package, please contact the work package leader:
Integration: Priscilla Ringrose, Department of Language and Literature
LearnNowYouth: Åsta Øvregaard, Department of Language and Literature
We Are All Migrants: Gunnar Grut, Department of Teacher Education
Digitac: Kristine Ask, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture

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