Synthesis
Précis of my journey
Now that we are coming in to land, I look back at my flight path and Moodle proposal and am relieved to see that I have stayed pretty well on course. Perhaps I didn’t accomplish everything I had imagined, but overall it was a pretty successful journey, and I am pleased with where I have arrived. I accomplished my goal of creating a blended component for our EFL course and agree with my prediction that it would be a time consuming and costly exercise that should not be undertaken lightly.
However, I did make a few adjustments to my original plan. I did not replace the pencil and paper final tests with online versions as I felt there were security issues, but I did incorporate a practice test for repeated formative assessment prior to the final. I had also thought about getting better students to buddy up with weaker ones online, but finally felt that this was too ambitious for this first step and decided to have an online synchronous chat session chat everyday using my teaching assistant instead. I had wanted to incorporate blogging into the course, and I really enjoyed working with WordPress this semester. I think it is a great reflective space and the interface is very efficient. Nevertheless, I didn’t find the Moodle blog to be as good, and so opted to not include it.
Reflections on the eLearning toolkit experience
In the flight path I listed several skills I thought I would need and the Tool kit covered many of them. I think the eLearning toolkit experience is a great idea for self-motivated learners. Perhaps certain sections could be updated, but it is still a good way to learn autonomously. The way it runs parallel to the course, as a component that can be delved into at need, is very clever. I had aimed to complete all the tools available, but some of them took longer than expected, and then I got bogged down in technical issues in Moodle and there just wasn’t time to finish everyone.
The SECTIONS model
I really found the SECTIONS model designed by Bates and Poole (2003) to be useful and tried to keep their recommendations in my mind as I built my course. In relation to students, I tried to offer them access to alternative sources of information. Bates and Poole (2003, p. 86) note that there should be “opportunities for students to seek out new or different information” and that “there should be a range of learner activities available”. I added hyperlinks to external resources and I tried to vary my tasks and assessment criteria so that the course was varied and stimulating for all students.
Another key consideration in the Sections model is ease of use. Bates and Poole (2003, p. 87) note that “The use of technology is generally a means, not an end”. This is a pivotal consideration and one that caused me to adjust the design of some activities. The idea is to get students to use their English in communicative performance. It is important that the technology doesn’t become the learning experience.
In relation to costs, Bates and Poole (2003, p. 93) note that “the major cost through any technology-based teaching will be the time of the teacher” and that one of the three “primary factors that drive cost” is “the production of materials”. This is an important consideration when deciding whether to design didactic material from scratch or mash / link to material that is already available online. It quickly came apparent that I needed to consider the time taken to create learning tasks and the time taken for the students to complete them. There is a considerable difference in creating for example a Hotpotatoes exercise that takes hours to make, but can be answered in a couple of minutes and a Wiki or forum that is very quick to create but requires a lot of student participation to complete. As I was preparing my course I found an undreamed of wealth of material available online for EFL. Before I make more materials for this course I will investigate what I can reuse from the Web.
Finally, a major consideration for using technology is the interactivity that it can encourage. This is particularly valid for EFL, as without interaction, language learning becomes rather abstract. In a large mixed ability class, students don’t get much of a chance to interact constructively with the content, or with each other. I tried to include as many activities as possible for both group and individual interaction with content.
My next flight
In my first course, two and a half years ago, I was asked to critically evaluate technology. I was very taken by the writings of Postman. Technology is not neutral and its use in education has a mediating influence on what is learned. However, it is difficult not to be impressed when free online software allows students to quickly create multimedia presentations from scratch as we did when we told our stories. This power has huge implications for foreign language education.
I don’t see technology as an answer in itself, but as a stimulus to change. The new opportunities for collaboration and multimodal communication offered by web based technology have created an opportunity to reevaluate my educational philosophy and practice as a whole. My practice as a teacher, modeled on my experience as a student, was that of a teacher centered discourse based on the transmission of knowledge. Having had a really positive experience as a student taking center stage in my own learning, I am motivated to put my knowledge into practice, ensuring that all my classes become blended so as to create an environment where my footprint is reduced and those of my students’ grow.
My journey through this course and this degree program has been empowering. It is not only the knowledge about course design or the use of technology that I have acquired, but also the way I developed as a learner that has changed my perspective. Now that I am at the end of my time in the MET and I can catch my breath, I will take some time to enter the online discourse amongst educators and catch my next plane.
Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers