Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV)
Dr. Mar Gutiérrez Colón Universitat Rovira i Virgili
Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) is the leading university of the StratApp Eramus+ KA2 project awarded by EU and it is mainly involved in coordinating all the tasks carried out by the project partners. It also focuses on the pedagogical design of the app and on the types of texts, activities, and materials that will be integrated into the app. URV will also be involved in the creation of a downloadable guide for users and creation of new materials, i.e. support material for the future creation of new materials by teachers, developments or everyone who wants to use the app.
URV is a public university, created in 1991 by the Parliament of Catalonia from the already existing university faculties and schools. In this way, the Tarragona University of the 16th century was restored. From the very first day, its aim was to place knowledge at the service of society so as to contribute to the social and economic development of its environment. URV is structured in 12 faculties and schools, which offer more than 100 programmes of study (undergraduate degrees, master degrees, and doctorates) in a broad variety of knowledge areas for over 15,000 students.
A wide range of undergraduate degrees have been implemented, designed to meet the formative needs and aspirations of the local people, and consolidated an offer of postgraduate courses that are in line with the activity of the research groups and the maximum national, state and international outreach. Thus, URV has 40 undergraduate degree courses, 50 master’s degrees, out of which 20 are interuniversity, and 23 doctoral programmes, 8 of which have received the award of excellence.
Despite the context of recession, more knowledge has been transferred than ever before, and the amount of innovation and entrepreneurship promoted by the URV Foundation has also increased. Particular mention should be made of the Campus of International Excellence Southern Catalonia (CEICS), promoted by URV, which represents the strategic union of different organisations and structures involved in teaching, research, knowledge transfer and the productive sector in southern Catalonia. Its aims are to become an international benchmark in knowledge and competitiveness within the areas of chemistry and energy, nutrition and health, tourism, enology, heritage, and culture. It also seeks to become the heart of an authentic region of knowledge that can play a key role in the future growth of the region and its production network.
L@TE: Education & Technology Laboratory
Laboratori d’Aplicacions Telemàtiques a l’Educació (L@te) has its origin in a research group about Distributed Hypermedia which came up from the Department of Pedagogy in 1994. It was funded by ICE (Institut de Ciències de l’Educació) of Universitat Rovira i Virgili. The main trait about this research group was its interdisciplinarity, as it was formed by both computer science and educational sciences professionals. As the time went on, this fact has become our main characteristic and our best added value. From this perspective, the design and development processes of the projects, has become very rich as facing to technological topics from a technical-pedagogical perspective means a challenge from both the work methodology and the same development process of all our projects.
IP of the Project
Dr. Mar Gutiérrez Colón holds a Degree in English and German Philology (1995) and Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition (2002). She has been a lecturer at Department of English and German Studies from 1996 at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) in Tarragona, Spain, and has coordinated the URV Masters programme in Foreign Language Teaching. She has led research projects in the field of applied linguistics and computer-assisted language learning and mobile-assisted language learning and has published key articles in these fields. She has delivered papers in various parts of the world, such as Japan, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Costa Rica, as well as in Spain. In 2013 she was awarded the URV’s Council's Award for the Teaching Quality. She has supervised 7 doctoral theses and she is currently coordinating an Erasmus + KA2 project awarded by EU on language learning and the use of mobile devices. She has been involved in language-learning policy since 2014, most directly as a co-author of textbooks of English at secondary level in Catalonia and also in the teaching of courses on language acquisition. She is currently the Vice-Rector for Internationalisation at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona (Spain).
Mar Guitierrez Colon on ResearchGate
Anca Frumuselu
Dr. Anca Daniela Frumuselu is an Assistant English Professor at Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona (Spain). She holds a Bachelor Degree in English and Romanian Language and Literature from University of West, Timisoara, Romania (2008); a Master Degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona, Spain (2010) and an International Double Doctorate in English Language, Literature and Culture from Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona, Spain and in Educational Sciences from University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium (2015). She has been working as an Assistant English Professor at Rovira i Virgili University since 2011, lecturing and designing courses for undergraduate and master level. Her research interests include the study of English foreign language skills through the use of new technologies in EFL classroom, e-learning, m-learning and audiovisual translation in second/foreign language learning. She has attended several international conferences, workshops and teaching training courses in the last years and she has published articles on the implication of captioned and subtitled audiovisual materials upon colloquial language learning in EFL settings.
Anca Frumuselu on ResearchGate
Ester Torres
Ester Torres-Simón holds a B.A. in Translation and Interpreting (Spanish-English-Japanese) from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies from Universitat Rovira i Virgili. She was a lecturer at Chonbuk National University (Jeonju), the University of Yonsei (Seoul) and Universidad Europea del Atlántico (Santander). She is part of the Intercultural Studies Group, and Estudos de Tradução e Recepção, and participates in the Indirectrans Network. She currently teaches at Universitat Rovira i Virgili and collaborates with the Open University of Catalonia. She also works as a freelance Korean-Spanish translator.