OLBI is one of the co-founders of the Inter-American Network in Language Training, which came about following discussions during an IOHE conference at the University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Mexico on April 30, 2008.
Known by its Spanish acronym, RIFL, it operates under the IOHE and its College of the Americas (COLAM). Richard Clément, OLBI’s Director, is the founding chair of the network.
The network’s mandate is to promote modern-language learning, encourage student mobility, support exchanges between professors in modern-language school, and encourage the exchange of pedagogical models for language teaching and research findings in this field.
The network will also allow OLBI to develop concrete proposals for collaboration with several Latin American universities and their research teams.
The RIFL will contribute to internationalization by stimulating language mobility among students, professors and university leaders in order to provide for academic university education which fosters intercultural dialogue and promotes a better understanding of the diversity of cultural heritage in the Americas.
The areas of activity of the RIFL will include:
- Language Learning
- Training and Certification of Language Teachers
- Instruments to Test and Assess Language Skills
- Pedagogical Material for Language Learning
- Research
- Institutional Language Policies
The first meeting of participating universities has been held during the Conference of the Americas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 25 to 27, 2012. See the next issue of this bulletin for further details.
- RIFL Working Document (PDF)