Sources of Frustration for E-Learners
According to research, e-learners are likely to be frustrated by
- technical difficulties
- communication breakdowns
Source: Hara., N (2000). Student Distress In a Web-Based Distance Education Course.
In: Course Design, E-Learning Design & Management, Instructional Design, Observations, Statistics · Tagged with: communication, distance learning, frustration, technical difficulties
Interactivity & The 5 Ts that Make it Fail
Ian Forsyth (Teaching & Learning Materials & The Internet, 3rd edition, p. 135) defines interactivity as
emulating the traditional classroom
He lists the 5 Ts that cause interactivity to fail on the Internet (pp. 19 -23)
time technology timid territoriality on topics training truss – an infrastructure requirement
In: Collaborative Learning, Course Design, E-Learning Design & Management, Educational Technology, groupwork, Instructional Design, interactive CD-ROMs, Learner Skills, Learning Language Teaching, Teacher Skills · Tagged with: 5 Ts, Ian Forsyth, interactivity
E-Courseware Design: Issues
Let me list some of the topical issues that keep emerging and need to be addressed asap.
- usability – what I mean here is all the extra clicks that either my students or I make, which takes time. Distributing courseware in space often results in learners’ having to spend more time online than they would otherwise have, and that should be avoided.
- feedback – it is not enough to provide feedback, it also has to be easy to locate your comments and respond to them, i.e. there is a need for greater interactivity in this respect
- note-taking – I’ve recently described an ideal e-notebook, now I have to put my ideas into practice
- archiving – this is an issue with longer courses, because your online learning space tends to get really crowded and something needs to be done with older materials: it is unwise to delete them, but it is very inconvenient to keep them up front, because they slow you down when you want to read the latest course news. Scrolling down to the most recently added worksheets and other materials also starts taking more time than you can possibly afford.
In: Course Design, E-Learning Design & Management, Educational Technology, Instructional Design, Observations, Teacher Skills · Tagged with: archiving, categorizing, feedback, interactivity, issues, materials, sorting, time, usability, worksheets
Web 2.0 Synonyms & Opposites
The opposite of hyperlinking is RSS aka really simple syndication.
Users find content on the web and hyperlink to it . The opposite is subscribing to syndicated content aka RSS feeds.
RSS readers are also known as aggregators.
Metadata or metatags
- are usually embedded in website code,
- are not visible to the eye,
- are added by website content managers,
- are arranged by taxonomies,
- are structured hierarchically, and
- are meant for search engines.
The opposite of a metatag is a regular tag.
Tags
- are words that authors such as bloggers select and attach to the content they create,
- are meant for humans,
- are arranged by folksonomies,
- are logical in the sense that they convey meaning about the content, and
- are often arranged into tag concept groups called tag clouds, which show how the terms relate to one another.
Hyperlinking & tagging can both be considered e-learning activities as they impact student learning, whereas RSS feeds are rather materials that can be part of an e-course.
In: Course Design, E-Learning Design & Management, Educational Technology, Instructional Design, language learning e-tivities, Web 2.0 Buzz Words · Tagged with: aggregators, hyperlinking, metatags, RSS feeds, RSS readers, tag clouds, tagging
How Long Should One Online Language Lesson Last?
To begin with, I am not aware of any reliable statistics. I can only draw on my personal experience and summarize a number of related Google search results.
It is obvious, I hope, that it is impossible to spend more than 3 clock hours talking without a break. I guess that’s the maximum. As for the minimum, an online lesson can be as long as a regular phone call, i.e. it can last for as little as 5 or 10 minutes. Personally, I like it when lessons are 2h15min long, with a short break or a longish filler activity when 2/3 of the time has elapsed. But I cannot justify my preference with reference to the literature, because there is nothing in the literature:( apart from some “circumstantial” evidence.
Let me elaborate on that. First and foremost, a language lesson like an aerobics workout should start with a warmer. Most warmers allow the student to practise making some small talk, discuss the latest news and learn a few related lexical items, ask questions about the last homework assignment and the like. It is an important element, though I can think of situations when you can opt out of it and “get down to business”. The usual recommendation is for a warmer to last between 3 and 10 minutes, the average being 5 (without homework questions!).
The rest of the lesson is usually comprised of activities. Again, most activities are composites, i.e. they are made up of several parts or stages.
Stage 1 is known as lead-in. It introduces the topic or activity and usually takes between 2 and 15 minutes in an onsite lesson. It is impossible to give a more precise estimate, because you have to consider the number of the students present, their level, motivation and familiarity with the topic.
Stage 2 is really a meta-stage, but it must never be ignored, because it has a direct impact on how successful the activity itself will be. You tell your students what they have to do or set the task during this stage. You may have to demonstrate, model, elicit sample answers and so forth to make sure your students understand what they have to do and how. Timewise, this stage lasts between 1 and 5 minutes on average, and depends on the complexity and focus of the activity.
Stage 3 is frequently labelled run in lesson plans. It is the activity per se. During stage 3 your students usually do the task, and your role is to monitor. In 1-to-1 lessons the teacher usually forms a pair with her student and does a double load of work, i.e. does the task and monitors simultaneously. Whether 1-to-1 instruction is the best way of teaching speaking is a controversial issue. I for one have my reservations, but outlining them is beyond the scope of this post, so I’ll leave it at that. This stage can last between 5 and 90 minutes.
Stage 4 is another meta-stage that is often labelled close in lesson plans. The teacher tells the students that their time is up and rounds up the activity. Sometimes it is necessary to stop the activity before it has come to a logical conclusion, before everything has been done or all the questions have been discussed. You have to tell your students whether they will finish the activity later in a subsequent class or for homework, or whether that’s it and no more work is necessary. Whatever you decide, you have to make sure that the students are not frustrated and can see the pros of your choice. Of course, it is great when you are very good at timing and can estimate how long an activity will take to the minute. I have to admit it that I still have to work on that:( and it is not uncommon for me to underestimate – I never overestimate – the time necessary to complete a task, as a result of which I occasionally have to do without some or all of the follow-up activities. Closing the activity and telling students whatever next usually takes 0.5-5 minutes.
Stage 5 is usually the time when you provide different types of feedback. Providing activity feedback such as the correct answers normally takes 1-3 minutes. Providing delayed feedback to do with the mistakes that you jotted down while your students were doing the activity might take up to a quarter of an hour.
Stage 6 is any follow-up activity or task that is based on the main activity. In other words, it is a new activity that might take as long as stages 1-5 combined or as little as 3-5 minutes. What makes it a stage as opposed to a standalone activity is its dependence on the outcomes and language practised during the main activity. It is not unusual for an activity to be followed by more than one follow-up task.
Now let me do some simple maths.
If a lesson is comprised of a shortish warmer and a short activity with a tiny little follow-up task, it should take you a minimum of
greetings 1 min
warmer – 3 mins
lead-in – 2 mins
set task – 1 min
run – 5 mins
close – 1 min
feedback – 2 mins
follow-up – 3 mins (set – run – close)
feedback – 1 min
leave-taking – 1 min
GRAND TOTAL: 20 mins
As can be seen from the estimate above, it is possible to have an even shorter lesson – 10-11 mins – if you decide to do without politeness conventions (i.e. if you choose to say neither hello nor goodbye and start doing the main activity immediately), warmers (it is possible if the student is fairly advanced and has plenty of speaking practice outside class, which usually means that he doesn’t really need to “warm up” making small talk) and follow-up tasks. But would such a lesson be as efficient? I am not sure.
Another consideration is that stage 3 of most enjoyable speaking activities takes between 15 and 40 mins on average (most fun speaking games take at least half an hour to play because there are usually several rounds, and some communicative games last for an hour and a half), and the higher the student’s level is, the longer the activity tends to take. You should also allow for some thinking time. Not all speaking activities are heated discussions by nature. Nor are they tongue twisters – it is neither your nor your students’ objective to speak as fast as you can all the time, but it never hurts to introduce time limits.
What I’d like to make clear now is that the framework described above pertains to different kinds of language learning activity, not only collaborative speaking tasks. Students may have to not only speak, but also listen, write, read and do hybrid tasks in class either alone or in pairs or small groups. The nature of the task set as well as all the student variables have to be considered when estimating the time the lesson you plan might take.
In: Instructional Design, language learning e-tivities, Learning Language Teaching, Observations, Statistics, Teacher Skills · Tagged with: duration, EFL lesson structure, lesson planning, lesson stages, online lessons, warmers
An Ideal E-Notebook
‘Spent the day contemplating Clarke’s e-note-taking advice.
Isn’t it amazing? They’ve got it all online but for proper note-taking tools. I mean Moodle doesn’t have such a module or activity as a notebook. Nor does Blackboard Vista. Well, they do have blogs and notes sections, but they’re so-o badly designed that I do not want to comment.
What would one want to take notes for? According to Clarke (p. 25), there are 4 major reasons
to record the contents of a lecture, seminar or other learning activity so that you can later use the notes to help you revise (1.1) or aid your efforts in completing assignments (1.2)
to help you concentrate during a lecture. Undertaking an activity such as talking-notes during listening can assist you to focus on the content (2), while simply listening is often less effective.
to assist you to understand the content of the learning activity (3), since note-taking encourages you to analyse what you are hearing.
to convert the content of the learning activity into your own words. (4)
Ways of taking notes are also worth listing. You could write (Clarke, p. 26):
- a comprehensive record of the content
- an outline of the key points
- a chart or a spidergram of the content
- the references to other documents, sources and websites
Now where do we go from here? As it is necessary to take notes, we need a tool for that. If there is no such ready-made tool, we need to explore the affordances of the tools at our disposal for one of them might well serve the purpose.
Let’s see. I am using this blog to take notes and keep my thought organized. I should say it is efficient. But I do not need anyone to correct any mistakes I might have made. I would appreciate that, but that’s about it.
When it comes to language learning, the situation is more complex, because notebooks are frequently handed in for correction, and that means that blogs are not likely to make ideal e-notebooks unless both the teacher ans the student have equal access rights (A). Another thing is that you would not normally want to make your e-notebook publicly accessible if you were to hand it in for correction. There is a greater need for privacy (B). In addition, e-notebook entries need to be editable 24/7 (C) and should allow you to embed media (D) as well as add comments (E). In terms of recording vocabulary, being able to insert a table (F) is critical. The quality of notes depends on memory-boosting techniques that you use, such as tagging (G), categorizing (H) and sorting (I) in addition to visuals. It is great to be able to sort your notes by alphabet, by date, by keyword or phrase, and some other criteria. Lastly, it never hurts to have a searchable (J) e-notebook.
Blogs tend to lack the sorting feature, but they allow you you to tag and categorize content. Adding graphs and charts can also be a problem. I for one really like all sorts of spidergrams and flow-charts – they help me think. There is no technology out there that would allow that – none I would know of, at least. The Moodle Glossary Module is a great notebook alternative, but it does not have a drawing toolbar, either. A possible workaround would be to combine regular and web-based note-taking: whatever it is that’s easier to do the regular way such as drawing mindmaps can be done the usual way. Later, you can scan and upload the respective pages for future reference attributing them to the right category and tagging them as you see fit.
At present I use both web-based and regular tools to take notes:
- this blog (I might need one more to blog in another language)
- a private forum where I am all alone and happy and where I post all sorts of paragraphs and hyperlinks I encounter on the web – it functions as a kind of in-tray
- I use the Moodle notes feature to make post-it notes – it is rather convenient, for I know which note goes with which course
- I also have a size B5 160-sheet notebook where I scribble this and that when I am in an onsite lesson or teaching online
- I also make use of traditional bright yellow post-it notes
That’s rather disorganized, eh? 🙂
In: Course Design, Instructional Design, language learning e-tivities, Learner Skills, Observations, Teacher Skills, Using Blogs in EFL, Using Wikis in EFL · Tagged with: affordances, categorizing, Clarke, e-learning skills, note-taking, sorting, tagging
E-Learning & Note-Taking
Alan Clarke (E-Learning Skills, 2004, p. 26) made my day today when I read this
E-learning does not provide an event at which you are required to take notes. All the content is presented in a form you could save as a file or print out. It would seem that you can capture everything. However, the danger is that, since you can save everything, there is no need to read the material or make any particular effort to understand the content. This can lead you into a false sense of security that you have a comprehensive record of everything and there is no need for you to do anything further.
A. Clarke has spotted and described the problem very well. Novice e-learners frequently have a lot of misconceptions as regards what they should or should not do, and note-taking or rather their belief that saving files equals note-taking is a topical one. You have to take notes whatever your mode of study, you just have more tools at your disposal when you choose to take notes on the computer.
What you actually need to do is read the content and then analyse it. Word processors allow you to annotate electronic text that you have saved or highlight the key phrases using the bold, italic or highlight functions.
Hehe:) I guess my blog is an e-note-book in that sense. In addition to the formatting tools that Clarke suggests, I also use quotation marks and embed media when I deem that necessary.
In: Learner Skills, Learning Styles, Using Blogs in EFL · Tagged with: e-learning skills, note-taking
Storytelling for Dummies
Fun lovers are sure to appreciate this exemplary story
In: Digital Storytelling, Learning Language Teaching · Tagged with: writing skills
Learning Tools & Technologies: Implementation Issues
Whenever I come across a book on web-based learning tools and technologies that seems remotely relevant to my current objectives, it talks about tools and technologies that are either as old as the hills and ever so often do not exist any more, or have been replaced by or evolved to to be something completely different. And that makes the whole experience rather painful, because it is certainly HOW rather than WHY that gives me a headache.
In: E-Learning Design & Management, Observations · Tagged with: implementation
Techniques to Increase Memory & Stimulate Deep Cognitive Processes
According to MacLachlan (1986) сited by E. L. Criswell (1989, pp 36-39) the following instructional techniques can help the teacher teach and the student learn:
Explaining the benefits of the lesson to the student before or at the beginning of the lesson. Memory is increased when the student is paying attention.
That’s logical though sometimes easier said than done. The authors do not really elaborate on the types of benefits I should emphasize. Drawing on my personal experience, you can motivate students by referring not only to real direct benefits, but also to fake or imaginary ones, especially if you know about your student’s priorities or beliefs to do with what works and what doesn’t in terms of learning, as well as what is good and what is bad in terms of teaching techniques. In summary, I couldn’t agree more that it is important to motivate students, but there is more to motivation than outlining benefits.
Using the pre-question technique – it is associated with DOUBLE (!) the learning over materials without pre-questions. Presenting partial information as opposed to presenting everything at once. This stimulates curiosity, which triggers deep cognitive processes.
That’s it! I have always wondered why I do not really like it when some of my students have a copy of the teachers’ book. And I do mean the latter – consulting the answer key is different. Some TBs tend to contain information that only the most self-disciplined learners benefit from, e.g. sample hidden agendas for both students when pairwork is concerned. The thing is that some learners do not really do the tasks, they read the answers first and screw it all up. It is frequently essential for foreign language students not to know what exactly it is each of them is to say or ask for the task to help them practise what is intended – reading all about the task may result in it being pointless to do it. There are tasks that you can benefit from if and only if you do them exactly as intended, step-by-step. I am flabbergasted, honestly – if the statistic is true, and emphasis on components and procedure does make so much difference, then no wonder intended learning outcomes are ever so often so disappointing. You can’t really do anything to prevent the learner from looking the answers up or reading on without making an effort to do the task by herself when she stumbles upon something while doing her homework, for instance. It is 99% about learners’ taking or not taking responsibility for their own learning.
Connecting new information thematically to information learned previously, using chronologically ordered narratives to the extent possible. Asking students to draw inferences involving intermediate steps before the entire scenario is presented. The mind tends to neglect component parts when the total picture is presented.
I’d rather say that it is cause and effect that you have to emphasize. Helping learners see patterns and analogies as well as categorize new input is no less if not more important. Deliberately drawing students’ attention to detail to let them verbalize what is the same and what is different along with asking them to speculate and hypothesize is a must-have teaching technique to take on board.
Keeping information flow high to avoid boredom. Boredom is fostered by use of overly familiar words such as cliches and superordinate category nouns (the word car is more apt to bore than Rolls-Royce).
‘Familiarity breeds contempt’, they say:) Now I know why I am a big fan of exhaustive lists and specific examples.
Providing a mnemonic or a visual aid for information that is difficult to integrate with the narrative. Vivid pictures increase memory.
In other words, research has confirmed that ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’.
In: Instructional Design, Learning Language Teaching, Statistics, Teacher Skills · Tagged with: Criswell, MacLachLan
