Di’s E-learning Experience

Over the last couple of weeks I have been doing the online short course in Spanish as part of Assignment 3 for this subject.  At the same time I have been looking at some articles on virtual classrooms and their advantages.  It seems to me that the virtual class room lends its self the learning of languages.

I was interested to find that Second Life has recognised this and established a virtual language lab called Languagelab.com.  They are at present running this program for English language classes for free and asking for feedback.  There are future plans to run a similar program in Spanish.

I think that the development of virtual classrooms in an online virtual classroom is the next step in online language learning.  I am looking forward to when Second Life develops it’s Spanish site.  Learning a language in a virtual environment will give the learner a more realistic experience and a virtual immersion in the language.

Some interesting additional resources on this are:

Avatar English:  Language Classes in SL, http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/2007/09/28/avatar-english-language-classes-in-sl/

Norman Cole, The Virtual Language School for university students, http://www.uoc.edu/humfil/articles/eng/coe0303/coe0303.html

Micheal Erard, A boon to Second Life Language Schools, http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18510/

Howard Vicars, Language Teaching Gains Second Life:Virtual Worlds Offer New Methods to Teach Languages, http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/secondlife.php

In our lesson last Wednesday there was some interesting debate on the virtues of the virtual classroom and if it could successfully replace the traditional face-to-face learning environment.  Generally I think it was felt that e-learning was a new and innovative form of education, however for best results a learning program should include a combination of e-learning (in the virtual classroom) and face-to-face learning. 

I was interested to see the that the example of School of the Air was brought up as an example of a successful virtual class room, especially since I had recently posted a blog on School of the Air. I think we must agree that School of the Air presents a very successful example of a virtual classroom.  However, the administrators and teachers of School of the Air recognise that the virtual class room experience does not provide a fully balanced learning experience for its pupils.

Recognising this, they have introduced several initiatives to complement the virtual classroom.  These include:

• at least one face-to-face visit by teachers to all students per year
• each student spends one week a year at the School of the Air headquarters in a classroom with other students.
• Camps – where groups of students,parents and teachers meet for a weekend camp (at woolshed or shed on one of the properties). These camps include sports, games, music and other interactivity as well as feedback and information sessions for parents.
• group excursions are organised for students to places such as Canberra and the Snowy Mountains
• annual sports day where students all meet at a central place to compete in athletics and games
• at the end of the year there is  presentation day and christmas function

All these functions and activities are designed to complement the virtual class room and give the students a better balanced learning experience.

Some Interesting Resouces on School of the Air:

Canarvon School of the Air

http://www.carnarvonsota.wa.edu.au/Information/Information%20Booklet%202006.pdf

Evantheia Schibsted, “Bringing the outback in: Distance Learning Down Under”

http://www.edutopia.org/bring-outback

 Russell, G. “Virtual Schools, A critical view”.

http://www.idea-group-ref.com/downloads/excerpts/1591401542E.pdf

Crump, S. and Goodyear, P.”Interactive distance Learning in Australia: Replacing Radio with Satellite Technology for “School of the Air”.

http://www.newcastle.edu.au/campus/ourimbah/professorcrump/InteractiveDistanceeLearninginAustralia.pdf

After two weeks we were back in class today and moving onto our third and final module of the course which involves doing a short online course and reflecting on the experience. 

Our reading today was

Lessons from Cyberspace reading
Palloff, Rena & Pratt, Keith, 2001, Working with the Virtual Student in Lessons from Cyberspace, Jossey-Bass.

http://drr.lib.uts.edu.au/file/17282/013966_palloffworking.pdf

I must say I found this a very good article and very relevant to the issues we have been discussing in this course.  The article discusses the attributes of a successful learner in the e-learning environment and addresses the different styles of learners.

However the section I found most interesting was on ways to recognise signs when a student is struggling  and experiencing difficulties with the online course.

Some of these signs were: a change in their level of on-line participation, difficulty in actually getting started, gap in technical skills, outbursts of frustration or anger at the course.  In general,  it was agreed that the best the response to these signs was that the facilitator needed to address them quickly before the problems escalated and the online experience became a negative one.

We also discussed what were the appropriate actions for a instructor when they came across a student displays disruptive behaviour on-line.  Some members of the class had experienced this to a level when this behaviour had escalated in a very short time to a very serious issue. It was felt that it was much easier to deal with this behaviour in a face to face situation as you had the advantage of observing other signs of frustration such as body language etc. 

 Some suggestions to help avoid this situation were to make sure there was some face to face time with the students, set some ground rules at the commencement of the online course, to encourage a supportive class environment where students provide support and feedback and to make sure the instructor keep the lines of communication open.

In summary it was pointed out that online learning is just one form of education and should be used with other styles of learning to form a balanced program.