Flipping Lectures: Analysing Student Workload in EMI Contexts

The widespread, rapid adoption of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in Higher Education has entailed changing the language of instruction with no explicit changes to curricular design. Students have faced of the added challenges of learning and performing in a second or foreign language with no time allowances to work on their language skills. Most instructors have put into place remedial measures, often through re-designing modules as flipped or blended instruction, which allows expanding attention to content and language beyond face-to-face sessions. However, academic content already requires a substantial amount of independent study time for students. This paper outlines a framework to situate the workload of students under several blended learning modes quantitatively, and it offers the outcomes of a study carried out on first-year students of Economics at the University of Oviedo. Results show a clear disparity between curricular expectations and student performance, with an impact on academic achievement for less linguistically able students. The research method is translatable to other English for Specific Purposes (ESP) contexts and will be of interest to those carrying out evidence-based research in ICT-enhanced content and language learning.