Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation
Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation
Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation
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Susta<strong>in</strong>ability<br />
<strong>Blended</strong> learn<strong>in</strong>g often means more <strong>in</strong>vestment <strong>in</strong> resources (e.g. f<strong>in</strong>ancial, human,<br />
technical) (Garrison <strong>and</strong> Kanuka, 2004; Littlejohn, 2004), which neither my students<br />
nor I had as it was a low-budget course <strong>and</strong> my learners were busy. Therefore,<br />
I created susta<strong>in</strong>able courseware with the follow<strong>in</strong>g features:<br />
■■ short record<strong>in</strong>gs, chunked material<br />
■■ reusable learn<strong>in</strong>g objects<br />
■■ easy to update, reorganise, reassemble or copy<br />
■■ limited number of easy-to-use tools<br />
■■ easy familiarisation with tools, tasks, <strong>and</strong> layout<br />
■■ RSS, tagg<strong>in</strong>g, search tool (see above for an explanation)<br />
■■ easy <strong>and</strong> flexible access to material.<br />
Further planned adaptations<br />
I considered add<strong>in</strong>g students as contributors to the blog so that they could cont<strong>in</strong>ue<br />
record<strong>in</strong>g themselves, upload the files to the blog <strong>and</strong> ask for peer feedback even<br />
after the course, but due to the short duration of the course this was not possible.<br />
Another idea was to develop a second module of the course for those taxi drivers<br />
who wanted to take it a bit further with their <strong>English</strong> language skills because they are<br />
also sometimes booked for private tours <strong>and</strong> then often serve as guides as well, or<br />
at least have to do more small talk. Connected to this was my idea to conduct short<br />
<strong>in</strong>terviews with tourists <strong>in</strong> Bursa about Bursa, <strong>and</strong> make audio or video record<strong>in</strong>gs<br />
which would then be posted on the blog. Ideally, they would be made by students<br />
(for example, when wait<strong>in</strong>g for passengers or on a tour dur<strong>in</strong>g breaks) <strong>and</strong> I could<br />
create tasks around them.<br />
Lessons learned <strong>and</strong> advice<br />
I believe the blended approach helped make this course a success. The short<br />
duration of the course <strong>and</strong> the few hours I had with these particular students with<br />
their needs as described above would not have been enough to give them sufficient<br />
help <strong>and</strong> practice <strong>in</strong> order to enable them to actually use the language at work.<br />
I believe the blended approach helped my students to develop their language<br />
skills <strong>in</strong> a shorter time <strong>and</strong> become more confident <strong>in</strong> us<strong>in</strong>g them <strong>in</strong> real-life situations<br />
as we can see from the comments they made about improv<strong>in</strong>g <strong>and</strong> us<strong>in</strong>g some of<br />
what they had learned with passengers, even while the course was still go<strong>in</strong>g on<br />
(see Introduction).<br />
Although all students had mobile phones, most of them were not smartphones.<br />
This meant the learners had to go to the blog, download the podcast episode,<br />
transfer it to their mobile phones <strong>and</strong> pr<strong>in</strong>t out the transcript. There was no way of<br />
do<strong>in</strong>g this automatically unless they only wanted to listen to the podcasts on their<br />
computer. The other alternative was to transfer the record<strong>in</strong>gs to the students’<br />
<strong>Blended</strong> learn<strong>in</strong>g: podcasts for taxi drivers | 137