Our BAAL TEASIG Spotlight webinars focused on a particular aspect of applied linguistics and how it impacts upon language testing, evaluation and assessment.

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In the sixth BAAL TEASIG webinar, we discussed Open Science, its potential advantages and challenges, and its implications for language assessment, a field where commercial drive and competition are serious considerations.

 

Our aim with this webinar was to bring together different perspectives from academia, commercial testing organisations, and journals/publishers in an informal environment that fosters discussion and reflection on this topic. We webinar started with a talk by Dr Meng Liu of the Beijing University of Foreign Studies, who gave an overview of open science and its relationship with applied linguistics. This was followed by two short point of view pieces by two invited speakers, Professor Lynda Taylor of CRELLA, the University of Bedfordshire and Professor Paula Winke of Michigan State University, giving academic and commercial perspectives on the case for or against open science. There was then be a panel discussion with the audience where the debate for enhancing transparency and openness in language testing while addressing the potential challenges was discussed.

 

Attendees may be interested to know that the topic of this webinar followed on from the theme of the 56th BAAL conference on ‘Opening up applied linguistics’ held in York, August 2023.​​​​