Active Language online staffroom

Some interesting chat between Simon, Dan, Ceri and Chris around this article.

Image from elearningindustry.com

Simon P: This looks interesting. I feel like we should be moving in this direction; helping students take their learning outside the classroom and being more engaged in their learning. I like what the article says about that learning being learner centred. I come back to the question of how to best do this. Any ideas would be warmly welcomed!

Ceri: Seems to me this is basically Obsidian selling its tech product and using trendy buzzwords to do it but I agree some nice concepts and ideas – a lot of which already goes on in Active classrooms. Might be an idea to pinpoint which areas can be developed further in/by AL – which areas you’d particularly like to grow and work from there?

Simon P: God love a trendy buzzword! (wink emoticon) And yep, it’s a sales pitch and these things can help us think. And yes it’s about taking what happens in our classrooms and extending them out to help students engage more. Dan and learner coaching is a key element. Chris is always good on the apparent reluctance of many of our learners to engage outside of the classroom.

What would we like to grow? Where and how could we engage? I’m not sure. I sure feel like it’s a discussion that we should be having for many reasons. What are the possibilities? What do others do (language schools, unis, other organisations, etc.)?

Hmm. How to move foward? Ironically it might best happen in a low tech meeting of interested parties kinda way…

Daniel B: Hi Si. I love the diagram – what IS that?! I agree with Ceri but would add that we need to take most commercial promotions of distance/e-/blended learning ‘models’ with a massive pinch of salt. Right now so many companies are muscling in on the action but very few of them are actually revealing what their learning programs look like or do, for fear that either the competition will steal ideas or the public will see the gloss for what it is. Generally, content is noticeably absent, replaced with ‘white papers’, confusing diagrams and digibabble, designed to impress. This one categorises distributed learning into three neat terms: blended, mobile and informal; these things are in reality almost impossible to tease apart so clearly. It’s a dubious-sounding claim that they have invented their own ‘learning model’. If we reduce these ideas down to simple ideas, ‘blended’ could involve a student accessing an exercise or quiz on the Internet, either on the teacher’s recommendation or independently; mobile could mean doing it on their phone, (but equally doing it on a piece of paper on the bus!), and informal just means doing something in English that isn’t ostensibly studying, such as chatting to a friend in a bar in English or reading a book. All of these are recommendable, because they all involve doing MORE ENGLISH than just classroom work and because they increase the range of English experience. But none of them are new, none of them need a company to provide the experience, they are all common sense, and, crucially, they all require additional commitment from the learner. Chris is right to identify this as a key issue, possibly the key one. The question is: how can teachers encourage students to do more outside the classroom? My bet is not on Obsidian or any glossy package but with a change in focus in the classroom that looks out to the leaners’ language lives, and hey! why not? A little coaching twist ;o)

Simon P: Yep, absolutely, Dan, I keep coming back to learner coaching and I totally believe in it. I also feel that as we move forward students and parents (and trainees, for that matter) expect us to be giving them more onliney, digitally type stuff.

Daniel B: I hear you, the pressure’s on! But what hope does an individual school, or a large multinational, for that matter, have in attempting to provide something more than is already here on the net? The power is not in materials or products but in us as learners and teachers. Make the students’ out-of-class and online lives a priority in the classroom; get dialogues going with learners about responsibility, interests, motivation, time management, practice ideas; discuss what’s stopping them for doing more; train students to critically evaluate what’s on offer and separate out the wheat from the chaff (whatever chaff is). I see the great websites and links that your teachers post here, which indicate that you’re already doing a lot of these things at Active (smile emoticon)

Ceri: totally 100% agree Dan (smile emoticon)

Simon P: Yep, you’re bang on, Dan. Loads of good stuff going on. Student motivation is the tricky thing! You can lead a horse to water… but that’s another story! Thanks, Dan and Ceri. Xx

Chris H: Interesting discussion!

I read your comment about me, Simon, as “Chris is always moaning about bloody students not doing enough outside of class”. Haha! Not far off (smile emoticon)
I think when it comes to student motivation, a big hurdle to get over is that of their expectations. For instance, a lot of our students probably still expect that paying their money and coming along twice a week (or less if there happens to be Carnaval, Semana Santa, some good waves…) is doing enough.
So actually drumming into them that it really isn’t enough (which is possibly not the greatest business strategy) may be necessary before they see that they have to seek out other learning opportunities.
I may be being unfair on Ss here, but I also think that sometimes when we tell them about websites, links and other ways of exploring learning outside the classroom, what they’re hoping for is a short cut. An app that makes learning English quicker and easier. Which is where all these glossy packages Dan mentions come in- to satisfy that need. Whereas what we are hoping is that they’ll work harder, spend more time on this language learning thing, get some serious sweating done. So again, helping them to understand this and maybe question their expectations about the learning process must be an important first step, before we start bombarding them with funky new technology, TED talks (shudder) and the rest.

Simon P: Damn right, Chris! (But I wanna short cut, oh go on, please, a pill to pop, I’ll pay anything!!!)

Ceri: I think we need to raise our expectations of them too – create opportunities and expect them to take them – sometimes they surprise us and rise to our expectations (not always admittedly)

Which then led on to a tangent of the Pencil Metaphor and #PencilChat

Simon P: It’s also interesting to think how we as teachers engage with tech. Which are you? Which am I? I think I’m probably a hanger on, a ferrule and also perhaps a bit woody. Hmm, interesting… (wink emoticon)

Chris H: I think I’m increasingly a hanger on, sadly.
A thought- in terms of getting Ss more engaged with the autonomous learning thing, which I guess is what all this is about when we strip away the fancy words, would it help to have it in the syllabus. I know that kinda goes against the autonomous part, but maybe as a way of training… so we could have a column in the sylabus, making it look all official, and maybe for the first term it would be quite prescriptive. Like “watch this video related to this theme in the unit, and check out this page to help with the second conditional”. And as the terms go by, it could incorporate more free choice, obviously with our guidance.
Perhaps a wee statement with some cooked up numbers would help e.g. “Studies show (!) that successful learners combine X number of classroom hours with at least Y number of hours of autonomous study”.
I just wondered whether putting it on the syllabus would give it that extra weight, while maybe it sometimes feels like just something the teacher fancies doing this week. Especially if, like me, you’re not terribly consistent. oops!

Simon P: Great stuff. I’m pretty sure there is a dedicated space for self study. I like the idea of adding more guidance though as well as giving space for individual stuff. That could work really well, we could further promote it through the blogs and social media.
We need to bear in mind that students join at any point in the year so they’ll need support through the year. I like it. Thanks. (smile emoticon)

Daniel B: I think you’re right Chris, getting students thinking more about independent learning needs incorporating systematically. For many classes, ‘syllabus’ = course book, and while there are studies that claim course books do not encourage autonomy, I believe there’s no reason you can’t weave in to your courses activities that promote autonomy. Also, many books have features that actively promote autonomy – you can read about them here!

Ceri: a simple way to start is to keep a class “log” where students write in at the beginning of class anything they’ve done in English between lessons – and this can be anything, listen to a song, watch a TV series with subtitles, play a game, read a reader (doesn’t all need to be tech), helped a lost tourist etc – the idea being that the log is passed around the class and everyone can see what everyone else is doing – then every now and then stop and comment on it, get students to share resources if they’re using them (studies seem to show that suggestions from peers are taken up more than suggestions from teachers). I tried it for a very short time with a SFN group before it moved on in the rota – it kinda worked

Fiona: Good chat! I’ve just finished doing a 30 day trial with English Central with my adult students. Quite interesting to see the degree of enthusuasm and involvement (or Not) of individuals and listen to their feedback. Some of them really went for it….something convenient that they can do on their phone in between other things rather than having to sit at a laptop. Still….I reckon the thing that hasn’t been perfected yet with all this techie razzmatazz (that was a predictive text word!), is how to meet the student’s desire for human feedback and motivation. English Central has made a good bash at it but at the end of the day, it’s a program. You’re right…there needs to be dialogue in the class too. Validation, motivation etc.