Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 6; November 03

TEACHING ONLINE - fuller Participation and greater Autonomy

Ana Yagüe (ayague1@pie.xtec.es)
English Tutor and Multimedia Author at the UOC ( Open University)

In this article I will talk about my experiences as a teacher of English in the virtual classrooms of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). I will compare on-line teaching with chalk-face teaching situations and discuss their similarities and differences. I will also describe some of the challenges that on-line teachers face, as well as the opportunities that this kind of environment provides. Finally, I will give my opinion on the future of distance language learning.

English at the UOC ( Open University of Catalunya)

Unlike the other university students in Catalonia, all UOC students from the different degrees have to take 3 semesters of English, starting at an intermediate level.

As the UOC is a distance university, most of the students are adults and, in many cases, they have a family and a job, so the courses are a real challenge for them in terms of time and effort. But I must say that they are highly motivated and appreciate the interest taken in them. I have taught students in different degrees - Business Studies, Information Science and Tourism - and they all consider learning English important both for their professional and academic life.

When they start Anglès 1 (English start out), students have different levels of English, but most of them have something in common: the fact that they have not studied or practiced it for some time and a feeling that they have never really learnt it. In many cases, they have gone through a lot of grammar but they can't communicate efficiently. Thus, the main aim of the English courses at the UOC is to develop fluency and build confidence in the use of language.

The virtual classrooms

The UOC virtual classrooms have 4 different spaces: Planificació, Comunicació, Recursos and Avaluació (Planning, Communication, Resources, and Assessment). The classroom interaction takes place in the space called Comunicació – which in turn has 3 different message boards called: Noticeboard, Forum and Exercises.

The first space, Noticeboard, is used by the teacher to give instructions, post general notices, set up activities, give general feedback to the group, etc. So, we can roughly compare it to the blackboard in face-to-face teaching – it is the place where the teacher writes information for the whole group.

The second space, Forum, is the place where students post their messages to the teacher or to each other. They usually send their contributions to continuous assessment activities and also respond to other students' opinions. The participation of the teacher in this space is also very important, to keep the discussion going and to encourage participation

The third space, Exercises, is reserved for accuracy practice: error correction exercises, discussions on grammar points, gap-filling exercises, etc. The students can post questions about grammar, which are answered by the teacher or by other students.

The pedagogical approach

There is not a grammatical syllabus as such - the main activities are classroom discussions that provide opportunities to read and write in English. Usually, the discussion is based on a text, for example, a newspaper article that can be interesting and controversial. On the classroom website the students can find the text (either a link or a Word file) and also interactive exercises - vocabulary and reading comprehension - that the teacher has prepared. The idea is that these tasks help students to read the text and also provide them with resources for the contributions that they later send to the classroom Forum.

Topics and activities

The teacher decides on the topics and activities for each group. For example, last term with a group of Tourism students, we discussed current issues like immigration, future developments in the tourist industry and the environment. We also talked about lighter topics like ideal holidays, cinema or funny stories. I think it is important to achieve a balance between 'serious' topics –which are certainly relevant for university students – and more relaxed ones based on sharing experiences or talking about personal interests.

The Course Plan establishes that at least two of the continuous assessment activities have to be directly related to the degree studies of the group. I think that, in general, students appreciate that as an opportunity to learn language and expressions that can be useful for their professional life.

Giving instructions

One important problem in a distance-learning environment is the difficulty of getting information across. Usually, in chalk-face teaching you do a lot of repetition. For example, you give a handout with instructions and at the same time you comment on them and maybe write some of the most relevant information on the blackboard. At the same time, students also comment on the information, some of them ask questions and they all listen to your answers. In a virtual environment, when you start the course or set up an activity, your instructions are just one or more e-mail messages and inevitably there are misunderstandings – not least because everything is written in English!

So, it is advisable to do a lot of repetition and also have all the information nicely laid out in the classroom website so that students have different opportunities to understand what exactly they have to do. Also, different colours and font styles (bold, italics, etc.) can help to highlight important information and make your messages or instructions more pleasing to the eye.

Classroom interaction

Another challenge for the on-line teacher is that virtual classrooms are basically 'cold' environments. So your task is to create a warm atmosphere that fosters real communication. Obviously, if students just send their contributions and don't read what other students say, the quality of classroom interaction is very poor compared to what happens in chalk-face teaching. But there are ways to overcome this. In the ice-breaking activity at the start of the course I always ask students to introduce themselves and find at least two things in common with other classmates. I think this helps to create bonds among them and also starts a trend of reading and commenting on other students' messages.

Another way to encourage classroom interaction is to use tasks specifically designed for this aim. I have run contests where they have to send a joke or a funny story that happened to them and then have a vote to choose the best one. We have awarded Oscars and shown one another holiday pictures. And, of course, you can adapt the traditional guessing games where they have to decide which place or character is being described. The only limit when designing these tasks is your imagination and we mustn't forget that Internet offers us many possibilities to set up activities like information searches.

An information search –sometimes called a web quest- is an activity which students have to complete by visiting different web pages to find the necessary information. With the Tourism group I did an activity where they had to visit different websites offering special interest holidays, which included activities like climbing, walking, language learning, working in archaeological sites, sailing, etc. Then they had to choose one and write to the group saying why that holiday was interesting for them. Of course, these searches involve a lot of reading and going through a lot of information, which can be very useful, especially when it is connected with the degree studies.

Group work

We have tried out groupwork, where students have to do tasks in teams and then share them with the rest of the class. This is something we have to do more work on , since it is not as easy to organise as in face-to-face teaching, and first we have to make students see that it is worth the effort.

The Open University provides virtual spaces for working in groups, which makes things much easier, since there is a common space which only the members of the group can access. But, of course, the teacher has access to the different spaces and can see what is happening in each group.

However, while in a conventional environment students just sit together and discuss what they are going to do, in a virtual environment this has to be done by means of email messages, which makes the process –especially the initial steps – slower and more complicated.

In our teaching situation, the main problem is time: each continuous assessment activity is usually developed over 10 days, which is not enough to set up groups, get them to do the task and share the final products. So, we are thinking of having fewer activities so that some of them could be done in groups. I am sure that the value created by students interacting in small groups will justify the time and organizational efforts that the process requires.

Grammar accuracy

So, how do we deal with accuracy? This is a point that students often complain about, since they would like to see every word they write corrected. Obviously, this is impossible when we are teaching large groups, and it doesn't fit in with the general aims of the course either. Most of the feedback that the students receive in this kind of course is general, posted in the different classroom spaces, although we also send individual messages to students about specific problems. Also, after the two Tests, students receive individual messages from the teacher commenting on their results.

As I mentioned before, in the classroom space called 'Exercises' we focus on grammar. As part of continuous assessment, we do some error correction activities, based on the students' mistakes in the previous activities. Students have a Grammar Reference in the virtual classroom, which can help them to carry out these tasks.

But mostly, the grammar exercises that we send are interactive, made with educational software like Hot Potatoes. We also give students links to Internet sites where specific language points are practised. All this reduces the need for correction and therefore, the teacher's task in this space is basically to clarify doubts or answer questions.

Opportunities for communication

One advantage of this kind of virtual environment is that all students have to participate - if they don't send a message they are not there - while in face-to-face situations sometimes it is difficult to get all the students to participate in discussions.

All teachers know how difficult it is for some students to talk in front of the group – especially in a foreign language. I think that in a virtual classroom the level of participation is much higher and people are more willing to express their opinions and feelings.

Learner autonomy is an important feature of this learning environment. Students are given many choices: when to enter the classroom, whose messages they are going to read, when they are going to participate themselves – choices that do not usually exist in other situations for obvious reasons. All this makes the learning process more learner-centred and gives the teacher the role of group facilitator.

In the same way, teacher talking time does not take as much space as in other environments, since students have unlimited time to express themselves and read what their classmates think. This adds quality to the interaction, because topics can be discussed in depth and opinions read carefully, whereas in a face-to-face situation written contributions are usually read by the teacher but not by other students.

The amount of information that is usually exchanged throughout one of these courses allows the participants to really know a lot about each other by the end of the term. All in all, I must say that the level of communication that can be achieved in a virtual classroom is more satisfactory than you might imagine.

Future developments

Of course, all the above refers to a virtual classroom where communication takes place in writing. What is the next step in online language learning? Obviously, the big challenge is to develop oral skills and it seems that we are very close to that.

At the moment, I am taking part in an Open University project to design and produce interactive materials for the Escola Virtual d'Idiomes per a Universitaris (EVIU) (Virtual Language school for Univesity students), which include listening and speaking sections. I have already used them with some groups of students and I think that the oral component allows a much richer approach to language learning and teaching.

In the classrooms of the EVIU, the messages that the students and the teacher send to the different spaces can be either email or voice mail so that students' oral production can be assessed, as well as their writing. Activities like oral chats in real time are already part of the EVIU courses.

I am sure that the technical developments in the next few years – widespread use of webcams, voice recognition devices, pedagogical use of Flash presentations, etc - will add interesting new features to what is already being done.

Conclusion

To sum up, I must say I am very optimistic about the future of online language learning, because the virtual environment allows the learners a high degree of autonomy and, at the same time, provides great opportunities for communication.