Reflections on a Blended Course: Fall 2006

First Class:
Students could not log on to WebCT; I had to wait until the end of class to read carefully through the instructions again and see that they had to register with WebCT and then I had to add them through the Global Community link.

I made sure I had every body's e-mail before class and assured them that I would solve the problem the next day.

Meanwhile over at the Tech Mall the projector did not work. So we went over there to find the projector not working and the students not able to get on WebCT. Only those students could get on who were originally added about two weeks ago by the system administrator.

Fortunately in the original classroom the projector was working so I went back there, took the students through the site and gave them the assignments for the next week. Meanwhile I posted the assignments and our discussion on on-line learning and the languages they speak on WebCT.

The big difference to what I have done before in using Blackboard and WebCT is that I cannot rely on meeting the students again at the next class period and solving the problems. The community has to be set up in virtual space.

Also I am starting to realize how the syllabus has to be changed to accommodate the hybrid class. At the moment I have a calendar with a M/W session, although there is only a Monday session.

The only other technology glitch was that the chat program would not work from the classroom when i wanted to demonstrate that. But a student assured me that it did work in the Learning Resource Center. The audio file did download, fortunately, but I could not just save it. I have to look into this under the instructions for loading audio and video files.

Wednesday: The day normally that I would teach the class. It is interesting to see how many people have gotten on-line, about 11, with up to 29 hits. A couple of students have gotten on-line by e-mailing me and then following the procedure. Let's see the exact numbers: 11 students with 1, 4, 6, 9, 11, 2x17, 18, 23, 25, and 29 hits. One student with 23 hits (Melin Ozkay) is a student I e-mailed to explain how to get on-line after the class on Monday. Chaochi who was very diligently trying to get on at the computer lab without success has now been on-line there 29 times!

Friday: When I took Eniko's 550 Language Teaching Methodology class through our oral proficiency software, LARCStar, a former colleague from Miramar came up to me and told me about his experience as a student in the Linguistics Dept. He praised two teachers and criticized two, above all for their use of Blackboard. He said they reminded him of the old teachers who would write with chalk in one hand and erasing with the other. He said that use of technology meant a step backwards. Above all, he was concerned about how the material was organized, that instructors not just throw up the material without organizing it.

Meanwhile Marcia told me that in her daughter's on-line high school the material is highly organized, with guidelines as to which task to complete when and the use of narrated Powerpoint presentations.
Tuesday (10/24): It ended up that no one dropped the course who attended class; in addition a few people added the course so that enrollment is up to 23. The class went really well on Monday. Instead of being a stumbling block or a focus, technology was simply a facilitator of what we were doing in class. In fact. the hybrid course is itself a good migration from the way I have recently taught the course to a full-fledged on-line course. The last time I taught the course, I used WebCT and had the students do the on-line quizzes. Some submitted their writing assignments via WebCT and some did not. Now, WebCT is more a natural extension of the course. And it reality it makes more sense to set them up for the activities on WebCT than it does to spend this time in class with them, where the time cannot be used nearly as efficiently. So the session we have together once a week becomes a forum to focus on aspects of the different activities and troubleshoot any problems that have arisen. Already it seems less of teacher dominated class, and more modular, even though in my instruction I had them read out sentences and give me answers. But three people went over to the computer lab to create WebCT ID's and two others went over to registration to add the course. And rather than feeling compelled to do every exercises, I could pinpoint ones that clarified task types; finally there was a good deal of flexibility built in, by, for example, asking them to contribute vocabulary items and to discuss the submitted writing assignments.

Sunday: I would say it is going well with WebCT now. I just read the student writing, corrected them, uploaded it, commented on it and graded it, all with ease. I also noticed that the results from the first quiz rather than the best quiz were being used for the students' grade, so I just changed this setting in WebCT and had the system regrade the quizzes. Then I sent a note to all the students.

I got some great ideas from SWALLT about how to use Powerpoint , Camtasia and how to organize the on-line site. The new version of WebCT looks very attractive.

Saturday (11/11) The blended part of the course is going very smoothly now. Students readily write to me in the mail program there. The easiest part remains correcting the writing assignments. I wanted to give a midterm this coming Monday, but we did not quite finish the unit. Also, I was concerned about taking the entire class time for the midterm. So I have decided to make the midterm a take-home test. At first I was going to photocopy it, but last night decided to just post in as an assignment. There are two texts that the students need from the quiz book, so I will just scan these and put these on-line as well. I guess, if I really wanted to make it an assessment, I could make the test a true on-line test and place a time-limit on it. But I have kept it as a Word document that they can send it to me.

I have to add something about now being able to take a video clip from a DVD and upload it. I finally was able to take a 15 second clip from Garfield that involves an ambiguity of the phrasal verb 'come on'. I was able to download the audio via Total Recorder a few months ago. Now, by using five programs, I was able to save the clip as an MPEG-1 file. The five programs were: DVDFab Decrypter (strip coding); DVD Shrink (compress); NTICD + DVD Maker 7 (burn DVD); FlaskMpeg (cut out a scene [avi]); tmpgenc [2.524] (further compress and save as MPEG 1 -4).

Sunday (11/12) I have to add something related to technology that is not directly related to the course. I have a 180-page pdf file for the ACTFL conference I am attending this week and wanted to put it on my ipod so that I can easily refer to it. I found a blog that tells the steps to follow and provides a link to a site that will automatically convert the .txt file to smaller files for Notes on the ipod. It took a few minutes and now I have the whole program easily accessible. The two addresses, which I have also put on delcious/kiralyfi are:

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/08/ipod-notes-reader-display-websites-pdf.html
http://www.ambience.sk/ipod-ebook-creator/ipod-book-notes-text-conversion.php

Sunday, Nov. 19: Sitting in the airport after the ACTFL conference. Something I learned this trip is how indispensable a laptop is now when traveling! In the hotel and here at the airport i have a wireless connection. At the hotel I was able to respond to messages from students in my course, correct their papers and send them back, and reset the time limit for a few students who said that they had not been able to complete the quizzes; here at the airport I was able to upload the ACTFL presentation to my WWW site, which I had promised a few people and, continue this kind of blog. And finally I will publish this again and send the address to Karen at the University of Texas. At the conference itself it is a lot more comfortable presenting with you own computer. And highest praised to Lenovo for the way this laptop held up! This collaborative writing tool from Google has gotten a lot more sophisticated it seems -- there are greater formatting possibilities and an excellent spell check. Finally it is easy to publish as a public document at the ed. I guess the address for this now is http://docs.google.com instead of Writely, though the writely address will still get you there.

Thanksgiving: The class on Monday was a struggle. A number of students had to finish the midterm either at the beginning or leaving at the halfway point. I also only had four hours of sleep after my plane was diverted to LA due to the fog in San Diego. Some students are still having difficulty knowing where to upload the assignments. A guided lesson plan is definitely a feature I will add next time. (By the way, the college is going to give me a stipend for developing the online material.) Still, now on Thanksgiving I see that I have about 15 of the midterms. I am actually happy that I decided to make it a take home. If we had had it in class I would have lost time that I absolutely needed to cover the material in the course book. What I have discovered is that it takes a minimum of going over the pre-vocabulary, vocabulary and reading comprehension questions to cover a unit. This way we will be able to get through at least Unit 12 and maybe 13 out of the 14. The final is based on 13 units. Also, the students have been exposed to the type of test they will have on the final, which will be a sit down, without it being as threatening. A last observation about the course at this point is that the writing assignments are going extremely well. The students are really opening up. I feel because it is not a writing course, I don't have to focus on grammar. I make the corrections on their papers, which brings out the flow of their thought even more. As a result, I believe, their writing is progressing very nicely, with far better development than I am used to at this level.

End of term. It was easy, very easy to manage the grading this time using WebCT. It is a feature that I would miss switching to another CMS. I heard a podcast this week at Language Learning Unleashed about Moodle in which the founder of Moodle participated. Features that sounded attractive were a jointly constructed glossary and the the fact that all activities could be organized in one topic area: writing assignments, quizzes, discuss forums, chats. The newest version of Moodle allows roles to be assigned throughout or in individual modules, decentralizing the CMS and making it truer to the principles of social constructionism. Coming in July is a link to other Moodle sites so that by clicking on a button one could interact with other language teachers, for example.

I definitely would set aside times for chats and include audio in the future. Also podcasting would be a feature to add. The joint glossary is another necessary feature that I have actually been looking for the last few years, even since I started teaching the reading course