A Community of Practice for Interpreting: the missing link

Time flies. Sometimes it goes so fast that there is no space to stop and reflect, and celebrate too! Well today, I want to stop and share our collective experience of the #trainingoftrainers for #Interpretingstudies at London Metropolitan University , a short course that took place during the last week of June 2023 (20 hours over 5 days). So what's new? It was the first time I ran the course in a hybrid mode 😊. - Four of us were onsite Silvia Scivales ACIL (UK based), Ebaa Alwash (UK based) and Asuman Yıldırım (Based in Turkey). I was on site too. - Seven colleagues were online @RoksolanaPovoroznyuk and Oleksandra Litvinyak (Based in Ukraine), Irina Sanders (UK based), María Luz Salas Roca (Based in Peru), Lucienne Peace (UK/Malta based), Emma Jane Brown (based in Spain) and Ondrej Klabal (based in the Czech Republic). The first question I have asked myself is: is the hybrid experience better for participants compared to the online experience? It certainly offers an inc...

(Photo:  tinyurl.com/fvop5buq) When I’ll look back at life under COVID-19 in a few years time, I will remember two contrasting experiences. On the one hand, a life on “pause” with restrictions of all kinds that all started in the same way: “you cannot…”. And on the other hand, the “fast forward” experience in teaching and learning that required imagination, agility, resilience and a deep sense of care. With access to vaccination, “life after COVID” is in sight. What will teaching and learning look and feel like? Will we fall back into our old habits and take refuge in the traditional face to face interaction? Will we celebrate the flexibility of online learning? Will we take shortcuts and do a bit of both to “make everyone happy”? To tell you the truth, when I speak to colleagues and students, we all share a common experience at present: we are exhausted, trying to survive one day at a time! However, I feel teachers have never felt so committed to delivering the best possible exper...