During the final week of October, UCLouvain hosted more than twenty participants for the on-site component of the Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) course Mixed Methods in Applied Linguistics Research. The programme, coordinated by UCLouvain, the University of Oslo and the University of Vienna, aimed to provide a deep theoretical foundation and immediate hands-on training in applying mixed-methods research design to real-world language phenomena.
Learning by doing: the week at a glance
Over five intense days, participants had the chance to develop their collaborative small-scale projects on the range of topics explored during workshops. Those covered research areas such as linguistic landscapes, classroom interaction, and emotions in language learning. In one of these workshops, dedicated to MMR in Linguistic Landscapes Research, students focused on how to investigate the visibility and perception of languages in public spaces. After a theoretical component, they documented public signage in Louvain-la-Neuve, analyzed language choices, and conducted interviews to understand what languages reveal about community identity in urban environments.
Professor Ute Smit shared her perspective on the importance of combining qualitative and quantitative methods:
For Master’s students in linguistics and applied linguistics, it is important to understand why we consider the issues we are researching so diversified and multi-layered. We want them to acknowledge this complexity in how we approach these issues, while also introducing a methodology that is systematic and doable - not asking students to do the impossible, but offering them a toolkit for how to go about it. This is what we are trying to do in this course.
Professor Ute Smit
The week concluded with an exciting “Show and Tell” session, where each team presented their project in small groups, allowing everyone to receive helpful and constructive peer feedback.
Beyond the classroom
Of course, the on-site BIP week was not only about homework and data analysis. Beyond the formal sessions, participants also built meaningful connections in more informal settings. Coffee breaks, lunch tables and the welcome dinner provided opportunities to network, share perspectives and develop strong social bonds with students from partner universities - an important step towards future academic collaboration. In line with the values of alliance, multilingualism was a natural part of these these intercultural interactions. The conversations naturally shifted between English and French, Norwegian and German – sometimes within the same exchange.
For Maurine Vanbellingen, a student at UCLouvain, the multilingual experience was deeply enriching : “C’est génial de pouvoir échanger soit en anglais, soit en allemand avec les étudiants, et aussi dans d’autres langues, parce qu’il y a des étudiants qui viennent d’encore d’autres pays, comme c’est le cas ici à l’UCLouvain, où l’on accueille des étudiants de partout ailleurs. C’est vraiment une expérience humaine.” [Eng.:“It’s great to be able to interact with students in English or German, and also in other languages, because there are students coming from many different countries, just as is the case here at UCLouvain, where students from all over the world are welcomed. It truly is a human experience.”]
Louvain-la-Neuve: a shared space for connection and exchange
When asked how being in the campus town of Louvain-la-Neuve contributes to the richness of the course, the organizers unanimously recognized it as a big advantage for such a focused one-week course. Professor Ferrán Suñer, academic lead of the course at UCLouvain, mentioned that as a compact university city, Louvain-la-Neuve allows participants to remain fully immersed in the academic environment throughout the week. Unlike in larger cities, where students may spread out and lose contact, the human-sized campus creates an environment for spontaneous encounters and discussions beyond the classroom. This makes the overall experience more engaging and enjoyable.
Outcomes and reflections
As many students commented during the week, the course proved to be a truly transformative experience. Participants gained not just solid theoretical knowledge, but also hands-on research practice, new academic connections, and inspiration for future interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration. Ultimately, this intensive format left everyone with a clear takeaway: mixing methods is the key to keeping language research innovative, dynamic and inclusive.
