Pearson

I found this interesting presentation by Pearson, for more info!

Reflection 4: DESCRIPTION OF PLANNED INTERVENTION

Reflection 4:  DESCRIPTION OF PLANNED INTERVENTION

As I have already described the intervention, I am focussing on the feedback I received, as well as the challenges I still experience. 

Lessons learnt from feedback:

Lesson 1: Which tool to use:

A valuable comment I received on the choice of tool to use, was that the best approach might be eclectic, and would mean applying several tools, so that students could choose which one to use. The ideal would still be to use sms, but due to the costs involved that will not be used. At this stage the Face book option and Blackboard are still the best choices. The Google docs survey is still daunting, but will be finalized this week to distribute to the group via e mail during the next two weeks. I am not sure what the response would be like.

Lesson 2: Tasks to give via Face book:

The question on which tasks I will give them to do via Facebook opened up many more possibilities for me. I think there is an opportunity to involve students this way, by giving them specific tasks. However, after their initial interest in signing up, they have not added anything on Face Book. I will give them specific questions and then see how they respond.

Lesson 3: Incentive for students

An important comment was to consider a certificate or grades as incentive for the students. I will definitely discuss this with Pearson to find out if they have a standardized certificate or template I could use, or else will design one under the Fundani logo. This is a great idea! I am trying to finalise a specific grade with the lecturers. The one lecturer will definitely give students a participation mark for attendance, but I have to get the support from the other lecturer or HOD. That will definitely help. The Pearson support team also needs to show me how to determine the progress of the students on the system, which I still battle with.

More challenges:

Challenge 1: Cape Town campus

It seems the Cape Town campus students are not on board yet, as none of them have signed up on Face Book except the Cape Town lecturer. I will attend their class this week to market the Face book page personally and try to determine why they have not signed up yet. I told the Bellville students that their Cape Town classmates will join, and it is a bit of an anticlimax that nothing has been happening yet.

Challenge 2: Connecting with the lecturers

As I am a support staff member, I have to rely on the goodwill of the lecturers to connect with the students. I have found the one lecturer on Bellville very helpful. She attends all the sessions and is really supportive. However, I battle to connect with the other lecturer, and our meeting scheduled for today has just been postponed. I realize again this would have been so much easier with my own students…. I have put the Discussion on Blackboard but no responses yet. If I could get buy in from the lecturers, it could be a graded discussion, which will encourage students to participate. Hopefully the meeting will happen asap and I will take it up there again.

Challenge 3: Limited time

I still see the students only 45 minutes per week. With all the long weekends we missed a lot of contact time. The exams and holidays ahead, are really hindering the success of the project, as the students, although they are encouraged to continue on their own, might not be motivated or might not have Internet access.   

Challenge 4: The Pearson system

The system of Pearson is still challenging and I feel I have not been briefed enough beforehand by Pearson on how to handle it. However, they are now very supportive and I am meeting one of their managers on Thursday, who will show my colleagues and myself how to manage the system more effectively.

Challenge 5: Research

I would like to finalise our research plans on he project and sent an abstract to SAALT, which has just been accepted. My one colleague at Bellville and myself will present on this at the SAALT conference and will try to finish a full-length paper to be published on the progress.  I will also contact the Pearson Research team in London for support.

Challenge 6: Collaboration UP

I am meeting with colleagues at the University of Pretoria on Friday to share ideas and experiences with them. They bought the system and have rolled it out with almost 2000 students. I think I will be able to learn a lot from them.

Conclusion

Still a work in progress and some days I wonder about the effectiveness of the tool. At least when I see the students in the computer lab, I am able to check on their progress and they seem to enjoy it. Will it really make a difference to their Academic language skills? Will these new practiced skills be retained or will it be a short-term effect? Maybe longitudinal studies need to be done. Of the 50 students enrolled in Bellville only about 30 attend the sessions regularly. I am worried that I have already lost the other students. I really need more support from the lecturers to ensure student participation.  So, will this be effective and successful…? Only time will tell.

Reflection 3: ESTABLISHED PRACTICE and AFFORDANCES

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Reflection 3:  ESTABLISHED PRACTICE and AFFORDANCES

In my first blog, I discussed the context of  the 1^st year Chemistry students, who are participating in an on-line Computer assisted language learning programme called “ Myfoundationslab”, developed by Pearson Publishers. Currently we are piloting this programme on the Bellville and Cape Town campuses with 50 students per campus.  The students attend weekly sessions where they work through reading and writing activities on the MyFoundationsLab programme of Pearson.

The challenge: The first challenge I encountered was to register all students on the system. This is now sorted out. From there, the next challenge was to keep all students involved, motivated and engaged.  I have used the in-house lms (Blackboard) to communicate with the students but have found their responses not very engaged.

Intended outcomes: I wanted to find a way to communicate more easily with the students, as I do not see them on a regular basis and wanted to determine which strategy would be most effective, e.g. smses, face book groups, twitter or blogs.

Features of practice previously in use:

Previously I found it challenging to communicate with students that I see them only 45 minutes per week. As I work in a support position to the Chemistry lecturer and not as their full time lecturer, I do not have free access to the students or any control as lecturer. Therefore ‘buy in’ by the students and motivation is very important.

Affordances / benefits of the technology:  

Communication with the students:

As pointed out by Bower  (2008) simultaneous consideration of task affordance requirements and affordance availabilities is needed. It is therefore very important to determine if the available technology coincides with the affordance requirements of the students. Firstly the option of sms-ing students has been explored. Unfortunately Blackboard does not have this facility and there are thus costs involved.

Secondly students were asked which technology they would prefer to use to communicate with the lecturer. It was clear that Face book was the most popular one, although some students preferred Blackboard. I have decided to use Face book as a way to communicate with them, as well as the Discussion tool on Blackboard. I have posted Announcements on Face book and Blackboard and will have to see how the students respond. So far, students have started to respond, but only about 20 students joined the Face book group, and only about 5 posted anything.

The introduction of Face book is based on the ideas of Levy (2009), who points out that the introduction of multimedia, mobile technologies and the Internet, have led to new forms of communication, writing, and social networking. He identified several initiatives which were developed in each of the areas of language teaching, namely grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, listening, speaking and even culture. These are all part of the objectives I want to achieve in this project.

Implementing the Pearson programme

Implementing the Pearson programme coincides with the ideas on blended learning by Collis and Moonen (2001) who described blended learning as "a hybrid of traditional face-to-face and online learning so that instruction occurs both in the classroom and online, and where the online component becomes a natural extension of traditional classroom learning”. The students work on the Pearson programme for 45 minutes during lecture time and are then encouraged to continue working in their own time, as the programme is available to all the students at all hours, provided they have Internet access.

Akkoyunlu & Soylu (2008) feel that blended learning helps to cross the gap between the lecturer and student because the use of computers only can be very remote. However, I found the computer access gave me more access to the students as I have such limited contact time with them anyway. Blended learning in my case facilitate communication and gives opportunity for reflection by the students, which I hope will be the eventual outcome as this creates opportunities  for communication as suggested by Garrison & Kanuka (2004).

I will only be able to reflect much later on the opinion of Barrett and Sharma (2007), who point out that technology in language teaching is expensive, based on an outdated, stimulus-response approach and might not cater for all types of learning styles and students. He further argues that computer based language learning might prohibits fluency. Barrett and Sharma further point out that encourages plagiarism and could expose learners to unsuitable materials. In this case it is not true as each student gets his or her own passages through the system itself. According to them, online testing may favour some learners and disadvantage others. This will be determined after the programme has been completed, which is only in September 2013.

The question remains whether the Pearson tool is the most appropriate tool to develop academic literacy amongst 1^st year chemistry students. As pointed out by Kittle (2009) students seem more involved in their own teaching and learning if lecturers create opportunities for multimodality, which could be an important reason for using the Pearson programme. At the end of this study, it has to be clear whether, as pointed out by Levy (2009) the effectiveness of the tool enhanced the users’ understanding and application of content matter, more so than the tool itself. As mentioned in my previous blog, if not it can become an exercise in futility and much lecturing time can be wasted.

Bibliography

Akkoyunlu, B., & Soylu, M. Y. (2008). A study of student’s perceptions in a blended learning environment based on different learning styles. Educational Technology & Society, 11 (1), 183-193.

Barrett, B and Sharma, P (2007) Blended Learning – using technology inside and beyond the language classroom. London: Macmillan

Bower, M. 2008. Affordance analysis – matching learning tasks with learning technologies. Educational Media International. Vol. 45, No. 1, March 2008, 3–15

http://www.informaworld.com

Czerniewicz, L  and Brown, C. 2012.  The habitus of digital “strangers” in higher education. British Journal of Educational Technology (2012)

Collis, B. and Moonen, J. 2001. Flexible learning in a digital world experiences and expectations. London: Kogan Page Limited.

Garrison, D. R. and Kanuka, H. 2004. Blended learning: uncovering its transformative potential in higher education. Internet and Higher Education, 7: 95–105.

Kittle, P. 2009. Student Engagement and Modality. (In) Herrington, A, Hodgson K and Moran C (eds). Teaching the New writing. New York: Teachers College Press.

Levy, M. 2009. Technologies in Use for Second Language Learning. The Modern Language Journal. 93:769-782

Marsh, D. 2012. Blended learning creating learning opportunities for language learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.