Online and Blended Courses: Is the time right?

The Online/Blended Courses in question are a promising solution for students who need to accomodate exam preparation or language learning in their busy study or work schedule.
There are many examinations (especially Tests on English language) that are held online or on the computer. These include GMAT, TOEFL-iBT and CAT(recently added to the list). If we plan to launch Courses offering preparation for these exams, the Course must be put in a software similar to the one presented in the real exam. Simple formats would never appeal to the students who want to take the feel of the exam before they actually take it. Take for instance, the TOEFL-iBT exam, publishers like Princeton and Barron's have developed softwares akin to the real exams.
Can we as individual teachers or identities afford such expensive softwares (considering the copyright issues)or their development?

Harman,

I am glad you brought up the subject of blended online learning (BOL) where learning is conducted in synchronous and asynchronous environments. I have been developing and conducting workshops using BOL via WiZiQ for the real time synchronous modality and WikiEducator and Moodle for the asynchronous. An example of such a workshop is a 5 week Moodle for Teachers course that integrates Moodle, WikiEducator, and WiZiQ.  WikiEducator and Moodle are free.
I would be very happy to help teachers develop their BOL workshops.

As a teacher what type of course do you think learners look forward to most - a series of recorded classes with self tests OR live tutoring followed by interactive tests OR a mix of both?

What information helps students make up their mind about the quality of the course/ teacher?

Namrata,

You asked, "Can we as individual teachers or identities afford such expensive softwares (considering the copyright issues)or their development?"
In fact, we have been thinking a lot about this i.e. how teachers can afford such tools and software. If you look around and follow the e-learning industry, you will see that suddenly everyone wants to jump into it and especially mid-sized to large companies, like the ones you mentioned - and they have the resources to accomplish that. So, where does the individual teacher or a small training company go? Well, that is the responsibility we have taken at WiZiQ: we want to create a level playing field for teachers and small organizations who have to compete with the big guys out there. And Virtual Classroom is the first such tool and hopefully we will be able to provide all such software for free or for a small fee. So, hang in there, we are working hard at WiZiQ to build all these software that will help you beat the big guns - you just make sure you provide quality services to the students and leave the rest to us :)

Thank you Sir, for the efforts. It's really appreciable that wiziq is making such endeavours to facilitate the exchange of knowledge.
Quality inputs and innovative methods of teaching are the prerequisites to begin these courses and I assure the same from my side.

Hope the future holds better solutions for us...

I have tried offering the Recorded sessions to students. New students are not very willing to buy recorded sessions as they feel that they might have queries different to the ones put up and answered in the recorded session.
But, there are old students who willingly study from recorded sessions especially the ones covering theoretical concepts.

I suggest the Course should have recorded sessions on the theory (concepts which the teacher needs to introduce and explain initially) followed by Live interactive sessions on the Practical aspects and doubt clarification.

Namrata,

One thing I wish to mention on the topic of recorded classes; there are ample of lessons available as study packages in the market but hardly get any foothold. Here on WiZiQ primarily you have to concentrate on the live classes; as a by product the popularity gained through live classes will help in promoting your recorded classes progressively. Till then let's offer live educational services on a regular basis. As in the case of Physical world in education industry, the consistency in delivering your expertise/result mainly helps to get recognized; this is a slow but steady method. Patience pays. I appreciate your multiple online activities which will definitely help you to mark a place for you!

All the best!

My experiences with BOL workshops and blended learning is that students need to be active learners. They need to be involved in hands on activities. I always get my students engaged both in the f2f classroom and on WiZiQ. I would be happy to set up a class where we can share some of the techniques we use to engage our students.

Right Kalyan Sir, Live classes are the need of the hour.
And yes, Neillie Madam we really need to pool in the teaching methodology. This would actually help us bridge the cultural gap between the teachers and their online students located across the globe.

Vikram, answering your question I think students want live courses. When I say the students I mean, the ones who are serious about their learning. I think recorded and public sessions are good ways of letting students know you.
Personally I have had students contacted me after watching one of my recordings. It was not the content that draw the student, it was the teaching style.
I don´t mean that content is not important, but in the subject of learning a language, a student needs to feel he/she likes the teaching style.
So, I agree with Nellie, students need to get involved from the very beginning. And I think it would be great to set up a time and date for all of us to discuss about this and our experiences.

@fabiana @nellie - You make great comments! Getting students involved.

Fabiana,

I suggest teachers get together and pool their ideas on best practices to engage learners in the WiZiQ workshops.

I am fairly new to teaching English but not to training and motivating young people. I so want to be a worthy member of your community especially as it pertains to the WIZIQ solution for ESL.

I would like to humbly submit that it is remarkable that of all the ideas presented in this posting I saw few if any references to letting the students tell us. They might not understand why they are frustrated or having difficulties but I think that they are the key to the solution.

Please don't misunderstand my motivation. Even the least of the teachers I have seen still have hearts of gold. I am honored to be allowed to have a voice herein. But, I am suspicious of academia types who prefer to walk in front of students rather than beside them.

Sorry this sounded rather aggressive. I prefer to speak plainly.

George,

I just completed my doctoral (yes academia) data collection and I must admit that instructors in higher education expressed the same idea you just did about listening to students/learners for the very reason you gave. Students are the solution to improving instruction and learning. All of the 23 instructors I interviewed use blended learning and they all mentioned being learners.

So, you are not alone in your thoughts.

Thank you for sharing your voice with the rest of us.

My personal opinion: the time is right for online and blended learning but the concept of "courses" is going through a transition.

@enkerli .... yes it is. Essentially, it is asking us to step back and see what is a course and then take it from there ...

@Alexandre, can you elaborate on the transition you mentioned?

Hi

TOEFL iBT is perhaps the only course which needs slightly complex software because some portions of it are what they call “integrated” with more than one skill being under test. Take the rest of the courses that have been mentioned, and one does not need to use any special software. In fact, for GMAT, the Official Guide can be used as the course material as long as an institution supplies each student, a genuinely bought original. It is a matter of time I suppose, when ETS also permits their official guide containing the software to be used as course material.

Even for TOEFL iBT, let us not be overly concerned by those so called softwares sold by the big names. Such software is required only in certain areas. After all, independent writing, speaking and reading sections do not need any special software. For Independent speaking questions, one can conduct classes through skype. For test practice, one can ask the student to buy a course book with the software.

But video - recorded coaching is an entirely different ball game from the online one-to one online coaching. I agree with you that no student will like the recorded coaching.
But let me assure that the same student will love skype based interactive, online live learning. A student wants to see his professor through the screen, his gestures and a professor wants to see his student and his body language and those stuffs are possible in online coaching in real time.

In all, let me reiterate that online coaching does not require sophisticated softwares but only sophisticated minds, whether individuals or institutions. That institutions are wanting in this arena, is a matter of another debate.

For Harman & my valuable friends @ WiZiQ...

Do you see a significant market expansion by encouraging/enabling audio download of pre-recorded lessons for mobile telephone users?

Audio downloads (mostly ring tones) is the single largest revenue grosser in mobile telephony business in India today. More people have mobile phones compared to net connectivity. Contextually, from a delivery perspective I'd like to think of this as a form of blended learning (why should blending be restricted only to content?)- my 2C worth.

Warm Regards

@Narendran, very good point and one that is often overlooked when considering standardized test preparation.

Hello, gladly "Blended Learning" includes all types of learning. The Audio download feature would be a valuable tool. iTunes University,
http://www.apple.com/education/mobile-learning/
is revealing some surprises

"Students have been handed another excuse to skip class from an unusual quarter. New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16624-itunes-university-better-than-the-real-thing.html

I believe this is where we see things going--that you can actually learn more, faster and (and far less expensively)better in a virtual environment than often, in a physical one. The 'Blended' element becomes more essential, because it is where the learning is manifest and practiced.

Regards,

Jan

Yes, we do have plans to enable WiZiQ platform access on mobile. It would be out sooner than you think :)

Sorry I haven't been coming back...
Changes in concept of a course: there's still room for longer term commitment, over a semester or such, but because there are more examples of short-term or even "one-session" teaching/tutoring, the notion of a course is considered in a broader context. A friend who builds online courses implemented a structure requiring a commitment of several weeks, instead of putting all the hours in through a weekend.
Apart from time, the status of the "teacher" is clearly changing. Not just out of our interest for constructivism.

Hello Alexandre, thank you for your commnet. I wonder if you would elaborate more on the role of the teacher and "our interest in constructivism."?
Thank you,
Jan

I think on-line teaching has three obstacles to over come (as some here have noted).

1. We, as individuals, can not offer credit or a legitimate degree.
2. The Internet is free.
3. The modality of learning on line remains foreign.

I don’t think there is much we can do about the first issue. We might start collecting stories and facts and put them into a news release that we could send to papers, and append to any offers of help we might make. If this came from WIZIQ, it might lend an aura of professionalism and substance to these proposals.

If we cannot crack the first issue, then we have to find an alternate source of funding. If we don’t, all we will be able to offer for tuition are short-term test taking courses like insurance exams where the goal is already established. I’m putting a novel on-line at http://www.Peelok.blogspot.com using Ad Sense. Not perfect, I know, but we’ve got to do something because the Internet is free.

We still have the image of ham radio operators hunkered down in the attic with their headsets. The first minutes of most classes are wasted in introductions. Maybe WIZIQ could have a video ad playing for the first few minutes while introductions are being done?

Finally, learning is a subversive activity. We have a revolutionary educational tool here but when I read through these comments (as germane as they are) I don’t hear anything fresh or exciting. We need to be branded like the Internet for Dummies books.

Hi Forrest, thank you for your comments. You bring up some excellent points. It is rare to hear someone acknowledge that learning is fundamentally subversive. Remember Socrates! But it leads to your point about accreditation. For the most part education is a socializing function or a process that perpetuates the status quo; this inhibits creativity and innovation--precisely the skills we need to facilitate in our youth more than ever. Indeed, institutions can be defined as structures abhorrent to change. On line learning is often just the same old thing dressed in a new technology. So herein lies the challenge. But I would be very surprised if many educators use constructivism in their pedagogy--let alone post constructivism--and so, these things are very new and coupled with the immersive internet (of which a web 2.0 site like WiziQ is) are disruptive technologies. The nature of accrediting is changing, moving towards a more certificate based model, even in the established collegiate institutions. UoP, Open U, wikiU, etc are new prototypes for this change and have yet to find a voice in the accreditation struggle. But it is coming. My sense is that employers are looking for proof of competency, many times something a degree does not provide. I am working with comprehensive ePortfolios for my students to demonstrate their competencies. The proof is in the doing, not the degree--Bill Gates remains the paradigm for this. He was a college drop out. There will be an opportunity for brave institutions to buck the established path and provide accreditation for these new edupunks, and the tide is rising as the archaic nature of carbon based education slowly succumbs to peak oil scenarios. What do you think?
Regards,
Jan

The number of different teaching methods is staggering, with no apparent leader in the current market. In conventional language schools and in online classes students spend most of their time in futile attempts to comprehend English grammar and memorize new words and phrases. This approach is inefficient because the modern ESL learners have new objectives and characteristics: they want to learn ESL fast using new methodology and various modern technologies.

John Fotheringham in his presentation gives a hard-hitting look at why most language learners fail despite years of effort: http://l2mastery.com/featured-articles/language-learning-presentation#IDComment32920419

Adults who need to learn English nowadays have different characteristics from English learners 10 years ago. Most of today's students can appropriately be labeled as "Digital Learners"; their learning habits have dramatically changed. Digital learners are well defined in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEFKfXiCbLw

Here is the problem: ESL teachers naturally teach their students by the same methods they were taught in traditional teaching institutions, although Digital Learners necessitate a new approach to learning ESL. According to AJ Hoge, the author of the Effortless English course, only 3% of English learners may change their learning habits and become successful. The vast majority of English learners are stuck within obsolete learning methods. What makes the situation even worse is the fact that the number of English teachers who would agree to change their teaching methods and help learners to move to non-traditional methods is also low.

To resolve the situation we need a visionary organization like WIZIQ that will unite and motivate ESL teachers to empower themselves by creating new ESL learning/teaching technology and help learners in acquiring new efficient learning habits.

Unfortunately the majority of adult learners consider themselves as language-incapable; their innate ability to learn a language was turned off by applying a wrong method for years.

The new method of learning ESL will restore the innate ability to learn a language. Probably we should start by explaining to our learners that "pessimistic belief that is reinforced by failure after failure using traditional methods" is not valid anymore. The new method of learning ESL should make every adult a language prodigy.

My contribution to and vision of new method of learning ESL is described here: http://hubpages.com/hub/ESL-educators-unite