Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

during and beyond the course. Indeed, the online input material remains available
to the trainee for a year following the end of the course.
The course was first piloted at IH London in April 2011 and in September 2011 the
course was available to other CELTA centres.
The blended model compared with the face-to-face model
The main course elements of the face-to-face CELTA programme (120 hours) are
as follows:
a. input sessions on teaching methodology
b. teaching practice (a total of six hours to at least two different levels) with feedback
from tutors
c. supervised lesson planning
d. four written assignments
e. observation of experienced teachers (six hours)
f. mid-course tutorials
g. a written record of all trainees’ work.
The new blended programme (also 120 hours) is distributed across web-based and
face-to-face elements as follows:
Online elements Face-to-face elements
• 30 interactive and multimedia online units on
teaching methodology and language analysis.
• Asynchronous collaborative online tasks
(in discussion forums).
• Video observations of experienced teachers
(three hours).
• Synchronous sessions using a live classroom.
• Four written assignments.
• Online portfolio of work.
• Additional key resources.
Either online or face-to-face
Mid-course tutorials
• Teaching practice and tutor feedback
(six hours).
• Supervised lesson planning.
• Observations of experienced teachers
(three hours).
The sequence of the 30 online units was chosen with these considerations:
■■ Offering ‘Focus on the Learner’ as the first unit emphasised for trainees the place
of the learner at the centre of the learning process.
■
■ It follows a ‘whole to part’ training model, in which trainees watch complete
lessons and then these are explored for the useful elements of effective teaching
they demonstrate, for instance classroom management issues and dealing with
meaning, form and pronunciation. An example of a ‘thread’ over several units is
that the trainees watch a teacher use an authentic news story about a five-year
old wandering into an unlocked bank. The trainees see the teacher first create
interest in the story, then exploit it to develop reading skills and finally to allow
learners to explore and experiment with language from the text.
The Cambridge CELTA course online | 113