Impact case study database

WebCorp Live: With the ability to search in multiple languages, WebCorp Live has augmented language teaching and translation in 190 countries (see Fig 1, S01). Regarding translation, WebCorp Live has been integrated into the search interface at Proz.com, the world’s largest community of translators, and recommended as a terminology checking tool by numerous online translation guides and language support groups, including the Terminology Coordination Unit of the European Parliament, which coordinates over 1200 translators [S01]. The fact that WebCorp Live lets translators check the acceptability of their wording not in static dictionaries but against real texts on the web facilitates translation into the second language of the translator, a practice traditionally fraught with danger and thus frowned upon. Feedback from a professional translator [S02] notes this advantage and adds

since I recommended WebCorp to my colleague [...] he’s lost without it. WebCorp is now a totally indispensable tool for his work and I’d second that. Since I started to use it in 2016, it is absolutely necessary for quality and productivity reasons.

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Fig 1 WebCorp Live user locations and monthly page views during REF cycle (Google Analytics)

In teaching, usage records [S01] show that WebCorp Live has been integrated into courses worldwide covering Linguistics, English for Academic Purposes, Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and Translation at universities including Sheffield, Nottingham, Essex, Soochow (China), Macquarie (Australia), Washington, Warsaw, Nantes, and the Open University. WebCorp Live facilitates data-driven learning in the language classroom, allowing students to become active researchers, finding and evaluating examples of words and phrases on the web. Gatto [S03] highlights WebCorp Live’s value to TEFL students:

its user-friendliness and ease of access have made it a valuable resource from the start. […] using the web as a ready-made corpus through WebCorp can immediately improve students’ language awareness, and […] result in an extremely rewarding learning experience that students can easily reproduce outside the classroom.

WebCorp Learn: Expanding on this approach to data-driven language learning, we have further developed the WebCorpLSE technology during this REF cycle with the launch of WebCorp Learn, a tool optimised for interactive English language learning. WebCorp Learn has been integrated into courses at German secondary schools through a collaboration with the Teaching Solutions (TS) language consultancy. According to TS, this collaboration allowed them to “diversify our service and broaden our customer base” and enhanced English language learning in schools,** helping teachers “ *realise the language learning goals set out by the government” for the use of digital language reference tools [S04]. In addition to providing the technology, we created teaching materials (videos and exercises) based on our corpus linguistic research. This enabled TS to deliver seminars and workshops to 20 schools and 50 individual teachers in 2020. WebCorp Learn provided teachers with experience of linguistic tools, examples of real language use, and skills in data-driven learning, in turn enabling them to introduce their students to new methods and technologies. Such technologies were previously “not used by teachers due to lack of knowledge, access, and ease of use”, meaning that WebCorp Learn exposed students to linguistic theories and analysis techniques previously “almost never done in Year 10” [S04]. Our software provided a new way of teaching vocabulary and improved “the delivery and discussion of […] societal and media issues that [...] are the focus of German secondary school English cultural education” [S04]. One teacher noted that WebCorp Learn “ bridges the gap between school and university” [S04]. At a time when more teaching is happening online than ever before, there are considerable benefits for students and teachers in using WebCorp Learn:

The pre-formulated exercises and clear instructions are key benefits, as is the fact the software runs equally well on all systems ([…] mobile phones are often the only device that many students have access to at home). [S04]

eMargin: Between August 2013 and December 2020, 12,629 people registered to use eMargin, uploading and annotating over 7000 texts [S05]. The wide applicability of the tool across disciplines at universities, colleges and schools worldwide is evident in the names of the 2558 groups created by users during this period, e.g. ‘Goldsmiths: Sociology – Marxism’, ‘University of California, Santa Barbara: Spanish and Portuguese’, ‘Shandong Normal University: Chinese as a Second Language’, ‘River Valley High School [Singapore]: English Literature – Year 4’, ‘Tolleson Union High School [US]: Science – Anatomy & Physiology’, ‘Bury College [UK]: Health and Social Care Level 3’. In addition, eMargin provides solutions for streamlined Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) integration. Over 20 institutions have taken advantage of this by embedding eMargin in their VLEs, including Roehampton, Edge Hill, Minnesota, and Goethe University Frankfurt. A particularly prolific user of this feature has been Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where staff across all faculties have created over 1000 eMargin groups.

Users tell us [S06] that they typically adopt a blended-learning approach, where eMargin facilitates a seamless transition between face-to-face seminars and collaborative activities outside the classroom. For instance, a teacher from Saint-Sernin High School, France reports that textual annotations made by students in eMargin before each lesson have allowed them to “[a]nticipate class activities and collective in-depth analysis of texts” [S06]. Furthermore, students and teachers worldwide found eMargin’s blended-learning approach invaluable when face-to-face seminars became impossible during the COVID-19 pandemic. There were 1850 new user registrations between March and December 2020 [S05] with feedback received during that period including:

I use eMargin with my university Classics students: whenever they have to read longer texts without seminars, they can ask their questions here. In the current situation (covid-19) it is again proving an ideal tool for teaching at a distance. Thank you for this tool!

(Assistant Professor, University of Groningen) [S06]

It’s been invaluable in lockdown as an electronic version of texts with the ability to recap and have a copy of the text even if they missed large periods of teaching during the lockdown. [...] We also used it recently as a department to annotate poetry together as a form of CPD [...] We were able to do this remotely as social distancing in a department of 20 is difficult! (English teacher, The Streetly Academy, Sutton Coldfield) [S06]

In addition, a lecturer at Goethe University Frankfurt told us that, after her course was forced to move online due to COVID-19, she noticed that all students were taking an active part in discussions of core texts via eMargin, even those who were usually quiet in the classroom [S06].

eMargin was designed as a teaching tool but has been extended to areas of collaborative textual annotation and interpretation. An example comes from the Belgian and Alicantian chapters of the Spanish political party Podemos [S07]. Podemos was founded in 2014 and immediately employed a democratic process in the development of its manifesto. The party uploaded all sections of the draft document to eMargin for party members to discuss. Over 2100 people accessed the texts, with 584 commenting [S05]. Combining so many views would usually be extremely complex but, using eMargin, Podemos was able to fully engage political party members in the construction of a manifesto. The party continues to grow and now has over 500,000 members (Feb 2021). In the November 2019 Spanish general election, Podemos secured 12.84% of the vote and a place in the coalition government.

OurSurveySays (OSS): OSS is an application of our WebCorpLSE research in the form of a management tool for open-text survey analysis and insight. It distils our corpus linguistic knowledge and techniques into a web-based visualisation package for use by non-specialists, including marketing strategists, academic planners, and course directors. We designed OSS in 2016 after being asked by BCU’s Planning and Performance Department to assist in analysing responses to the text-based questions in the National Student Survey (NSS). Since then, OSS has become a key tool in informing policy interventions and identifying priority areas for investment at five UK HEIs, as demonstrated by user feedback [S08]. For example, the system identified lack of available computers as a significant issue for BCU students in 2016 and provided evidence of which courses were suffering most. Following targeted investment, the proportion of negative comments about computer access halved in 2017, decreased again in 2018 and 2019, and remained low in 2020. The BCU Policy & Strategy Manager notes that OSS has changed the institutional response to NSS, allowing “ teams to make tactical interventions at a local level to improve the academic experience of students on their programme. It was previously impossible to get this level of insight into student feedback due to the prohibitive amount of time […] taken” [S08] .

Since 2019, Cardiff, Leeds, Edinburgh Napier and Glasgow Caledonian Universities have taken part in a free OSS beta-testing initiative. Leeds used OSS to analyse several thousand comments by respondents to applicant surveys, having trialled but not continued with other qualitative analysis tools in the past [S08]. Analysts at Glasgow Caledonian tested OSS extensively before sharing it with academic leads across Schools, whose feedback noted that the software is tailored exactly to their needs without being overly complicated, unlike anything they had used before [S08]. Following a trial in 2019, Cardiff adopted OSS for all its qualitative NSS analysis in 2020, leading to the creation of actionable Student Experience Enhancement Plans for each of its Schools. Such analysis would previously have taken two weeks but could be done in under ten minutes with OSS and then shared easily with colleagues drawing up the enhancement plans. For example, academics in one School were able to gain insight into a previously unexplained issue, finding weaknesses in support provided to those students not taking industry placements to be the root cause and employing new initiatives to combat the issue at a localised level. The Student Engagement Officer at Cardiff describes OSS as “ ground-breaking” and adds

On a university level, the question is always “so what” when we analyse data; at the moment, we are stuck with a lot of data and I use OSS to share the insights and the “so what” with key stakeholders. [S08]

The Head of Market & Student Intelligence at Edinburgh Napier echoes these comments, reporting that OSS

allows us to support multiple departments with the timely provision of data – ensuring they can feed it into their plans […] days after we receive the information rather than waiting longer while we go through a fuller data analysis process. [S08]

OSS thus meets a clear management need, where other tools and methods are lacking, and is ensuring that the student voice is heard clearly across multiple institutions nationally.