Awakening Identity: Using Exploratory, Student-Led Tasks to Build Motivation and Engagement in Postsecondary EAL Learning

This session presents a practical and adaptable approach to open education that places students’ identities, experiences, and cultural knowledge at the centre of learning. Building on classroom cases from both K–12 and postsecondary contexts in China and Canada, the session explores how identity-based, exploratory tasks can support motivation, engagement, and adaptation among multilingual learners in higher education.

The session introduces a three-part task design that has evolved across different educational settings:
(1) Identity Building, where students explore personal histories and form a sense of self within the learning space;
(2) Identity Embedding, where they take leadership roles in knowledge sharing, micro-presentations, and collaborative meaning-making; and
(3) Identity Rebuilding, where they reinterpret their experiences and begin to see themselves as capable contributors in an academic community.