Online Teaching and Learning in TESL Professional Development Free

In the summer of 2004, our graduate division decided to join the global trend of classrooms in cyberspace. In just 4 months, we would be launching our first distance delivery MEd TESL course, the first of its kind in Canada. Distance delivery of course work is not a new idea. Correspondence courses, radio lectures to students in the Australian outback—or, closer to home, distance learning opportunities in rural and remote Alberta have been available as far back as the Depression era of the 1930s. Even when we consider distance delivery of course work in the field of TESL, we see packaged materials for professional development both at the graduate degree level and the certificate level (see for example Aston University, UK; CERTESL program, University of Saskatchewan). New technologies and computer applications, however, permit us to imagine the world as our classroom, and allow us to create a sense of community in an asynchronous environment. Many universities are rapidly expanding their programs into online environments. E-mail, Blackboard, and Vclass are a few examples of technology that provide both opportunity and challenges in working in the global classroom. The introduction of new technologies allows distance delivery to shift from being informative to being transformative (Kanuka, 2002a). Used thoughtfully, we have the potential to create communities of learners who can support one another in their professional development through participation in graduate level course work in an anytime/anywhere—asynchronous—environment (Palloff & Pratt, 1999).

This article outlines five steps in our work from conceptualizing to piloting a course at the graduate level in Designing ESL Curricula. Using what we learned from the pilot phase, we move to step six, the design and piloting of two additional distance courses (Materials Design in TESL and Methods in TESL) following the same organizational template and general learning approach. These steps include the exploratory phase, the course design phase, the shift to preparing for the distance delivery of the course, becoming an online teacher and, finally, monitoring and supporting our students’ activities as online learners and using information gleaned along the way to design and pilot the next two courses. There has been an enormous dynamism to this process: the transition from face-to-face to online delivery has occurred in only half a year’s time. We find ourselves as course designer (Hetty) and instructor (Carla) also in a learning situation where a supportive community of kindred spirits and mentors has made a difference to our sense of success in this new venture. We highlight the work of those who have been on our journey alongside us, and hope that sharing our early lessons learned can support our colleagues as they also make the shift to online course delivery for themselves.

It is one thing to be a good face-to-face instructor with a 30-year career in teaching to depend on. It is quite another to face the pressures of preparing to provide courses online … in one semester. The University of Calgary is firmly committed to becoming a global player in the delivery of distance programs at the graduate level. The expansion into this niche has been very rapid. Immediate concerns come to mind. What types of technology are available? How should an online course be structured? What types of learning tasks lend themselves to distance delivery with these technologies? And, most importantly, how do we create a sense of community with our learners in an asynchronous environment? These questions suggest concerns in the two key areas of technology and instructional design for distance delivery of course work.

The immediate work at hand included becoming familiar with the various technologies that can support distance delivery of courses. An array of options is available: Vclass, Elluminate, PowerPoint presentations, Blackboard (that replaces Web CT at the University of Calgary) to house the course itself, and e-mail capability, to name a few. Our university provides teaching and learning development opportunities, including the integration of technology through the Learning Commons. Secondly, at the faculty level, oneon-one mentoring between staff from the technology support unit and faculty who are preparing course work for distance delivery is available.

An internet Web search to note how other institutions have begun with their initiatives in online delivery was undertaken next. What do their course outlines look like? What textbooks and other reading materials do they require/ recommend? How do they structure week-toweek work and assignments? Do they set a final examination? How are these administered and proctored? Our faculty at the University of Calgary arranges partnering opportunities between those who are more experienced in instructional design and delivery for distance course work, and those who are just embarking on this journey. We took full advantage of professional development activities offered through the Learning Commons, and the mentoring by the technology staff and the partnering of experienced course designers at the faculty level to support our own endeavors in preparing our courses for distance delivery.

While many course designers also become the online instructor, in this case I knew that I would be turning the course over to a sessional instructor—Carla—a graduate of our MEd TESL program. Early on in this phase of the work, therefore, yet another partnering relationship began to develop: one that would mesh the work of course content and design with course delivery, taking into account the potential of technology.

The MEd TESL program at the University of Calgary is one that is organized around projects and is task driven. We believe in learning by doing, and that by engaging our students in the real work of the classroom, our students construct an emergent theory of what works—and why—for themselves. We model for our students learning approaches we hope they will, in turn, adopt in their own classrooms in the future. Stronger links can be made between the research and theory in the field of TESL and the practical work of project assignments. We value group work, collaboration, and the social construction of knowledge and skill development in ESL-EFL teaching and learning. In addition, the MEd TESL program at the University of Calgary has constructed a Web-based tool—www.learningby design.ucalgary.ca—that supports the work of curriculum design and development, and also serves as a repository for curriculum work (i.e., completed thematic units and their templates) to be shared with colleagues in the field. This tool is integral to the course, and becomes an additional dimension to the technology tools available for distance delivery of courses.

Shifting these projects into an online environment came naturally. The course is structured around six projects, supported by a series of enabling tasks and readings. An Internet search of appropriate online readings resulted in locating sufficient support to avoid having to either prepare print materials for purchase and postage to students far away, or the use of a single textbook. The use of established hyperlinks helps to guide the learners to the information they need from a variety of sources, while minimizing the possible information overload that can occur from learning in cyberspace (Jacobson, Maouri, Mishra, & Kolar, 1996).

Envisioning how the technology would permit collaborative effort through structured learning tasks among our students was a significant challenge. We were, however, able to easily integrate a hypertext environment into our task-driven approach. The projects required the students to access multiple sources preselected by the developer, synthesize this information, and reconstruct their meanings in the form of projects (King, 1996). This reconstruction and synthesis of information required learners to use higher-order intellectual skills (Roselli, 1991). The “Course at a Glance” is included in Appendix 1.

This phase was a critical point for collaboration among those doing the course design, the technical support staff who looked after migrating the course content from a series of Word documents into Blackboard (the distance delivery “shell”) and Carla, who would soon be taking over the course. The major concerns involved the look and feel of the course inside Blackboard and learning the administrator’s tools. Again, ongoing workshops were organized by the Learning Commons for instructors to learn more about Blackboard. These workshops posed another challenge. While the instructor was able to instruct the course “anytime, anywhere,” the workshops offered for distance delivery instructors were not. These workshops were held at very specific times and places, making it impossible for the anytime, anywhere instructor to participate. However, Carla, being comfortable with the content and technology in general, was able to navigate through the necessary software without much difficulty.

Carla reviewed the course outlines in the Word document format before they had to be encountered in Blackboard. This minimized the anxiety for her by reducing the new information needed to do the course to only one piece: the technology. Once the course was placed in the Blackboard shell, ready for distance delivery, the handoff from developer to instructor—Hetty to Carla—was done in person. A joint tour through the course provided the opportunity for Carla to clarify concerns and questions about the course itself with the developer and, likewise, provided the developer with the same opportunity to become comfortable with the instructor’s knowledge of the content and technology.

EDER 669.53 was officially launched in Blackboard and made available to our online learners on January 12, 2004. With some trepidation, we embarked on our venture of getting to know our learners. There were 10 students scattered world-wide: from Switzerland to Singapore, from northern Alberta to just a few blocks from campus.

We had taken care to build in an “ice breaker” activity—one in which our students would introduce themselves to each other and post pictures and notes about their teaching context, and any personal information they wanted to share with their classmates. Second, the tight scaffolding and structured task design permitted an easy entrée into the course itself. The online readings made it possible for students to begin assembling a binder of readings for themselves. We felt that students needed the immediate comfort of a clear road map for the course and that would allow them to engage right away in concrete, low-risk activities. This would further permit an easy beginning to their interactions with classmates far away. Further, it alleviated the instructor’s stress of wondering how to take the plunge into a classroom in space. There are benefits to being heard but not seen!

There are certain freedoms provided by the online learning environment that are not available in face-to-face learning communities. To state the obvious, the students and instructor are “out there” in space and cannot be seen. Assumptions based on outward appearances (age, ethnic background, obvious physical disabilities) are no longer an issue. As a young instructor, facing a class of veteran teachers, this anonymity is comforting. However, this same environment that erases physical barriers also erases nonverbal cues that provide emotional clues that enhance communication (Macduff, 1994). With this in mind, it is easy to see how conflict could arise in a text environment. Careful moderation would need to be a skill developed by the instructor to mediate this challenge.

Clearly defined discussion spaces were created before the course became available as a way to help moderate and track the discussions that would soon occur. These would become distinctive forums for learners to discuss and reflect on their learnings and subsequent projects. These forums would keep the discussions on task and on topic, with direct questions that could minimize possible conflict caused by miscommunication due to lack of non-verbal cues. These forums provide context where otherwise there would be none.

Once the course became available, monitoring and supporting our learners became the priority. As the instructor, I was online everyday, checking the discussion boards and answering direct e-mail questions. Giving input when asked (or needed), answering questions and sustaining the dialog on the discussion boards became important (Kanuka, 2002b; Kouritzin, 2002). After all, this was the classroom space. Inconsistency on my part could foster an unreliable learning environment in a place where many are uncomfortable on the best of days.

In monitoring this discussion, the most challenging issue is wait time. The idea of wait time is redefined! The instructor needs to develop the skill of being present, but not too soon. How long does an instructor wait to answer a question that could be answered by another learner? It may take a day or two for students to interact and respond to one another and to us. In developing a community of learners, an instructor cannot answer all the questions right away, or there is no opportunity for a collegiality to develop.

This community is beginning to shift from predominantly student-to-instructor interactions to student-to-student interactions. An ownership over the course has begun to develop among the learners, and leaders have emerged with various tasks that help the group function. There are those who pose openended questions that require answers from the group, those who are the first to get the discussion going with bold statements, those who surf and find supplemental readings, and those who provide support and encouragement to their fellow learners. As an instructor, it is difficult to let go of some of these roles that I had traditionally seen as my job, but the community is developing; I am only monitoring and contributing when no one else can—after an appropriate wait time, of course.

This wait time has added another dimension to the discussion. Responses tend to be reflective (Kanuka, 2002a). This is perhaps because of the permanency of their comments; anyone in our learning community can refer back to the postings whenever they need or want. Consequently, there are portions of the discussions that have been read over 20 times! This is more permanent than speaking in a face-to-face environment where comments can be forgotten or even changed in the next breath. Even as the instructor, I feel the pressure to “say it right.” I read and reread what my posting will be before it can be accessed by the rest of the class. I know it will be read over a number of times.

This highly reflective process makes it easy to see who has got it and who does not understand. There are few, if any, comments that are written off the cuff. The discussions are demonstrative of what the learners have come to know from the class so far. They are a synthesis of the new course knowledge with the old and have also been considerate of their fellow students’ postings. The comments on each others’ postings have been a valuable tool for ongoing assessment of the learners. In a number of the discussion boards, learners have been required to post their work and are asked to provide feedback to the authors. This means the discussion boards go beyond simply giving opinions on the readings; tangible products for peer feedback are posted (Kanuka, 2002a). These products require the learners to understand more than just the readings; they require the learner to understand how others have made sense of these readings.

As we know, teaching is contextual. Where teachers are teaching has a lot to do with what they know. Where they are is not inconsequential to the act of teaching itself (Johnson, 2002). This brings a dynamic quality to the cyber-classroom that is not experienced in a face-to-face environment. These learners, these teachers, will likely never meet. They are spread across the globe from Asia to Europe to North America. The contexts that these learners come from are vastly different. They are spread from teachers of English as a second language, to teachers of English as a foreign language, from adult colleges, to children’s classrooms. It is the ability to moderate the discussions that facilitates an inquiry approach. As teachers inquire together, they create a community. This community can overcome these differences in context and specializations (Hord, 1997). These geographically-disconnected learners have become connected through reflection and inquiry.

Another less-glamorous facet to becoming an online instructor has been developing the skill of technical trouble shooter. There are many technical questions that learners have with each project, whether it is how to access the readings or how to read the instructor’s electronic comments embedded in their work. This technical aspect has been a time-consuming part of the job. I have not only had to develop the skill of a moderator, but of a technical support help line as well. I have discovered that some projects are more technically challenging than others. These technical challenges have pushed some learners out of their comfort zone. Although there are more bells and whistles that could be used in the course, I hesitate to use them. We can only go as far as our students’ technical abilities will let us (Nunan, 2002). When the technical threshold of the projects increases, the level of discussion and reflections decrease; learning how to use the technology should only be incidental learning in this case, not the focus.

At the University of Calgary we are committed to expanding our distance course and program offerings, and subsequent to the curriculum course described here (EDER 669.53), we have launched two additional courses in TESL: ESL Materials Development (EDER 669.51) and Language Teaching Methods (EDER 559.50). Distance students tend to enroll in one course at a time, rather than in a suite of courses more common among those who are with us on campus in the face-to-face instruction. Our distance learners by and large are active classroom practitioners with fulltime jobs, and often busy families that take up most of their time. Two lessons emerge.

First, we have learned that we need to be respectful of our students’ time to even a higher degree than in face-to-face contexts. They expect their learning to be efficient, wellmanaged, organized, and convenient. They do not have the time to hunt and gather learning resources and readings on their own; nor to get lost in project expectations that are not clearly defined. We have tightened up project work even more by way of creating checklists and rubrics. We are mindful of pacing and staying on top of what the students are doing day by day; week by week. The work load is significant and ongoing communication and engagement with our students is critical to their success in the course. While a 25-75% dropout rate is reported in the field (Prendergast, 2003), in the three courses we have offered to date, just one student has withdrawn and there have been no failures.

Second, integration of concepts relevant to the field of TESL occurs in horizontal fashion when students take, for example, materials development, language teaching methods, and second language learning in concert. Vertical integration is more difficult and time consuming to achieve as a consequence of students’ taking one course at a time. While our program does not technically have prerequisites for our courses, we now recognize that curriculum design is an integrative endeavor that assumes the ability to draw on foundational learning from materials, methods, and second language learning theory. We advise our distance students, therefore, to delay the Curriculum course until sometime after taking one or two courses that would provide a smoother entrée into the world of curriculum design.

Since the winter term of 2004, and the pilot phase of Designing ESL Curricula, we have offered Materials Development twice, and by the fall of 2005 when the Curriculum course is scheduled again, the Methods course will have run twice as well. We note that students are returning, and we anticipate a full class for the Curriculum class in September. Feedback from our online students tells us that they enjoy the project-driven approach, the tight structure and scaffolded supports for the enabling tasks, and the convenience of the hyperlinked readings—features we have maintained in our subsequent course design and development. The look and feel of the Materials Development and Language Teaching Methods is thus familiar for our returning students. This seems to provide an immediate comfort and reassurance, and allows the students to move directly and smoothly into their course work. And, we are getting to know our students much better as individuals, even though we are unlikely to ever meet them face to face.

E-learning is convenient. With modern technology tools available, there are ways of bridging time and distance to work with students all over the world. E-learning gives our students flexibility and choice. Some students like a blend of face to face and distance; others like only one or the other.

E-learning is not a panacea, and it is not a replacement for great face-to-face instruction. However, there are some benefits to the medium, as we have discovered: the reflective process, the lack of physical barriers, the community of learners that can develop, and the use of the hypertext environment. And, the quality of the students’ learning matches what we have noted in the face-to-face version of the same course. No doubt, as we all become more familiar with learning technologies in the future, e-learning will increasingly complement face-to-face instruction as we work toward blended instruction, and it will continue to work as stand alone/distance delivery of courses and programs.

This project was made possible through professional development opportunities made available to us, partnering, mentoring, and collaboration. The course designer held expertise in the content; the instructor has a comfort level with the Internet and other technology applications that the designer did not. The technological hurdles were scaled with support both at the level of the university’s Learning Commons workshops and the faculty’s technical support unit. Help with instructional design considerations was facilitated through mentoring by more experienced faculty members.

A consideration for the future will be to examine the multiple leaps we require our learners to make. In the Curriculum course, both instructor and learners were from a Western culture. The technology was relatively familiar, as was the process of inquiry that was used to engage learners with the course content structured around the projects. In addition, in the curriculum course, all of the learners were native speakers (NS) of English. The only new leap for the learners to make was the content. However, in the future, we foresee that many of our learners in TESL courses will be from non-Western educational backgrounds, and increasingly they will be nonnative speakers (NNS) of English. China, for example, represents an enormous potential market for our distance courses, as that country seeks to provide professional development opportunities for their teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL). They may be unfamiliar with the inquiry process we utilize, they may not have access or be familiar with Blackboard and other learning technologies, and their level of English language proficiency (ELP) may be below threshold for the types of engagements required of them (although international students must meet a minimum Test of English as a Foreign Language requirement for entry into our graduate programs, their ELP typically continues to develop as a consequence of their involvement in the immersion setting that face-to-face instruction demands). There may be, then, several leaps our learners need to make.

In the Language Teaching Methods course (September, 2004), we enrolled our first international student from China, although actually, she had arrived in Calgary primarily to be involved in face-to-face instruction. An unexpected bonus of our online courses has been the possibility of accelerating our students’ completion of their program through both delivery options. Her success and enthusiasm for distance learning is cause for optimism that we can bridge the gaps and support our international students in the leaps they must make.