|
Susan Manning, Ed.D.
Faculty Member
Waubonsee
Community College
Adjunct Faculty Member/Instructional Designer
Illinois Online Network
Susan Manning teaches English as a Second Language for Waubonsee Community
College. Serving a mostly immigrant population, she teaches academic writing
skills to intermediate and advanced students in an intensive program designed
to prepare students for college courses. She also developed and teaches an
online English as a Second Language course which utilizes all communication
skills (speaking, listening, reading, writing). Online, Susan has learned
to effectively use course tools, to seek and/or create interactive and engaging
means of presenting content and assessing learning, and to integrate media
such as audio and video.
Susan's educational background includes degrees from Truman State University
(communications), Bowling Green State University (college student personnel)
and Ball State University (adult and community education and higher education
administration). Of course, none of that prepared her for the world of online
learning. Susan's real expertise comes from her involvement with ION's Making
the Virtual Classroom a Reality (MVCR) series. In addition to earning the Master
Online Teacher certificate, Susan teaches for that program.
In the spring of 2003, advanced students in Waubonsee Community College's intensive
English as a second language program were taught writing skills using a web-enhanced
environment. The class was taught half the time in a computer lab and half
the time in a traditional classroom. However, students had access to their
WebCT site anytime, any place. Students sent their writing assignments as email
attachments and received comments digitally. In addition to digitally marked
text, students received auditory comments on their writing through voice technology
offered by Wimba. Finally, students were challenged to access web-based resources
and links within the course to supplement text materials and to customize the
learning support each student needed. This paper describes the intended pedagogy
of web-enhancing the writing class, the methods and challenges, and the outcomes
of the experience.
Web-enhanced, WebCT, writing, voice
technology
Waubonsee Community College offers an intensive English as a second language
curriculum for non-native students to acquire skills they need to succeed
in college level courses. Most of these students are adults who work full-time
and have families. Students enroll in 16 hours of credit classes in writing,
grammar, listening/speaking and reading. Four hours a week is devoted to
writing. At the advanced level, students learn to write essays and longer
works suitable for college courses.
Having taught the course previously, I observed several challenges in
teaching these students in a traditional classroom setting. First, students
were overwhelmed by the amount of revising and rewriting necessary to polish
their ideas into coherent, well-organized essays free of major grammatical
and structural errors. Faced with having to rewrite a piece, students haphazardly
made revisions and corrections and often failed to clean up simple mechanical
problems in their writing. Furthermore, without auditory explanations of
my comments and corrections, students failed to understand why a particular
passage or phrase was incorrect or not understandable to a native reader.
(It is common for second language learners to have unbalanced language
skills; they may listen and comprehend well but cannot express themselves
in writing.) However, class time rarely allowed for me to spend adequate
time explaining all my comments and corrections to individual students.
Finally, deciphering problematic handwriting proved frustrating for me.
I didn't know if spelling was correct because I often couldn't read the
handwriting.
My proposed solution was to enhance the class through a WebCT component.
I asked that the class be reassigned to a computer lab for half of our
seat time, and I built a course shell with the following tools:
- Email for sending and receiving works
- Resource links for more help with common mechanical problems and information
on writing
- Voice feedback to allow for an auditory discussion of comments and
corrections
By offering a web-enhanced class, I hoped students would
- Revise and rewrite their essays with less resistance and effort as
they acquired word processing skills
- Investigate resources already available online and eventually learn
independently to search for help and access sites that could improve
their writing
- Use their listening skills to process feedback and comments that would
be useful in revising their writing
Additionally, I believed the electronic environment would aid me in reading
their writing (not having to deal with handwriting issues) and would extend
the time limitations between Wednesday and Monday classes for students
who wanted to work on writing and revising during the weekend.
In order to meet the objectives, I designed a simple WebCT shell for
the course with links for internal email, voice technology, and resources.
Internal Email
The email system within WebCT was used for sending and receiving essays as
attachments. The advantage of this was that papers were digitally stored
and time stamped. If a student forgot his diskette but had sent me a copy
previously, I could forward the essay back to him without wasting time in
class. Furthermore, if it had been several class periods without evidence
of revisions, I could graphically show a student when she last sent me a
copy.
As I received essays, I added comments and corrections through changes
in font color, special codes I used for repeated errors (e.g. CS for comma
splice), and highlighted text in which I added my thoughts and comments
about the organization of the essay or additional questions I had. Once
my comments were added, I sent the essay back to the student.
The only difficulty with the email system was that students sometimes
forgot to save and send their work as rtf (rich text format) files. For
students who did not use MS Word at home, they were unable to open their
documents and work on them outside class.
Voice Technology
It is difficult to mark a paper electronically and give the detailed feedback
in text only. Therefore, I used Wimba, an asynchronous voice technology tool,
to give students additional auditory support. As I returned their essays
digitally, I also left comments for each student in the Voice Feedback area
of the course. The students could listen to my comments as they viewed their
documents onscreen. I was able to say things like, "Look at the topic
sentence in your third paragraph. Do you see something missing?" By
adding the voice support, students got a deeper understanding of my notations
and were challenged to think about revisions without automatically getting
corrections.
Wimba works much like any text-based asynchronous discussion tool. Messages
are threaded graphically so users can see to whom a reply is directed.
Each message is time stamped and can be sent in voice or text. The voice
technology works much like a simple tape recorder with play/pause/stop/record
buttons. A user hits play and listens to the message. If she wants to reply,
she hits "reply" and begins a recording sequence. Wimba immediately
streams messages in a highly compressed format. These messages are stored
so that anyone can access them (and listen to them) at a later time.
I created a voice "board" on a simple web page for the class.
For each of my students, I started a discussion thread with a voice message
indicating that all voice communication with that student would take place
under his or her name. They entered the voice board through a link in WebCT.
Because Wimba is not real-time, students were able to access my voice
support and comments at home when it was convenient for them. The only
additional peripheral equipment they needed was speakers and a soundcard.
If a student wanted to talk back to me, he also needed a microphone. There
were no software costs for the students. Once a voice board is accessed
(assuming java is enabled) and the student accepts the scripting, the software
is automatically installed on that computer.
Resources
In my traditional classes, I routinely supplemented the text with resources
from the Internet. For this web-enhanced class, I organized the links by
theme and presented them in one location. For example, some links dealt specifically
with punctuation problems where others addressed broader themes such as organizational
strategies for different types of essays. On a weekly basis, I highlighted
one particular link that might be helpful for students to view. Several times,
these highlighted links came as a result of repeated problems I saw in their
writing; I could target the problems I needed to address.
Access
When I first decided to pursue the web-enhanced class, I questioned whether
the administration could find room in an open computer lab for my class and
whether the students would have access to the Internet at home. The administration
was very cooperative in designating the space I needed. To my surprise, eleven
of the twelve students had Internet access at home. The twelfth student could
finish work while on campus (these students were on campus four days a week)
or during class time. Access did not present a significant challenge.
Orientation
Teaching the students to use the technology was my first priority. I spent
a full class session orienting students to the web-enhanced environment and
compiled a detailed users manual for the class. This manual included ample
screen shots and simple directions to walk through each procedure. While
some students continued to need additional support on procedures, they always
asked questions while we were in the lab so it was easy for me to answer
them and give support. I continued to send a lot of practice messages during
the early weeks, asking students to practice skills in sending and receiving
documents or accessing resource links.
Attitudes
Because this class was designed for non-native speakers who might want to continue
in traditional college classes, most students quickly saw the value in using
the computer for their assignments. They knew word processed assignments
would be expected in regular classes. However, for a few students, the attitudinal
roadblock was daunting; their pessimism and lack of enthusiasm was measurable.
The resistance turned to acceptance after they were instructed to make major
changes in the first writing; the ease of cut/copy/paste made major organizational
changes much easier than erasing and rewriting.
Spell Check
The issue of spell check and grammar check haunted the class. Frankly, I think
spell check can be helpful as long as it does not automatically correct the
word. Grammar check is less reliable, although students have to carefully
think about why a sentence may have been identified as problematic. In both
cases, I gave a presentation on the pro's and con's of both features with
many examples of where it helped or hindered. In the end, I let the students
decide individually.
Forcing the Issue
A final challenge I will mention is that I had to force the issue on accessing
web resources between classes. This follows one of the general principles
of online learning; that students become more independent and self-directed.
The students might have liked the convenience of working from home, but that
did not translate into having them independently to seek out good resources
for the kinds of problems they encountered. When a good link became available
and addressed a problem someone was having, I had to specifically direct
the students to access it. I forced the issue by adding assignments and activities
that required reading whatever web resource was featured.
One of my initial objectives in designing the web-enhanced environment
was to have students revise and rewrite their essays with less resistance
and effort as they acquired word processing skills. At the end of the term,
I was pleased with how far the students had come in learning to use technology
to aid in writing. The students became "fluent" in their ability
to write and revise using a computer. Furthermore, the web-enhanced environment
gave them additional technology skills and exposed them to a major shift
in learning online.
I also wanted students to investigate resources already available online
and eventually learn independently to search for help and access sites
that could improve their writing. To the extent that students used the
web-enhanced environment outside class time, I found the more dedicated
students routinely checked the messages, made revisions and came to class
better prepared. In fact, they usually completed their assignments before
the deadline. Those who struggled with many outside commitments (jobs,
families and other classes) did not access the web-enhanced site other
than during class.
Finally, I hoped students would use their listening skills to process
feedback and comments that would be useful in revising their writing. I
saw clear evidence that Wimba enabled the students to practice listening
and to receive more substantial feedback from me. It did not make my job
easier in making fewer text corrections, but was a more natural way for
me to "talk through" the writing instead of only providing marks
on a paper.
The web-enhanced environment allowed me to challenge my students through
technology and to support their learning in ways I could not or did not
have time for in a traditional classroom setting. I could send and receive
messages during times when students were not in class with me. I was able
to mark their papers and provide auditory comments to support their understanding,
again at an asynchronous pace that met my needs as the instructor and theirs
as busy adult learners. Final anonymous surveys revealed that the students
liked having access to course materials and the voice technology, and greatly
appreciated the technology emphasis in the class.
The success of this first web-enhanced class has generated additional
ideas for the future. In the future, I will add a public discussion area
for peer review and will ask students to share their writing more frequently.
I will continue to assist students in finding resources that document some
of their writing and will coordinate this with the reading/vocabulary instructor.
Currently, students are required to read so many authentic articles per
term, and some of these may be web based and relate to the topics they
are writing about. When assignments form the nucleus for speaking (some
writing becomes text for speeches in speaking/listening) I can use Wimba
to have students practice pronunciation. These changes will also be implemented
for intermediate level students as they, too, will have a web-enhanced
environment in the future.
Back to Top
|
