Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

c. Feedback from AMFA administration in post-course informal discussion was very
positive and identified tangible improvement in staff skills in terms of clarity and
comprehensiveness of presentations and reports.
d. I was delighted to be invited to several (unclassified) presentations by trainees
after course completion, which substantiated AMFA comments – presenters
were clearly taking a much more structured and economical approach.
e. The agreement with AMFA went a considerable way to cementing relationships
with the British Council in Armenia. Later AMFA proposed similar training for
officials from Nagorno-Karabakh (an independent republic recognised by no
country except Armenia) – although (for various complex political reasons) this
did not happen, it would have been a useful way to engage with the country
while respecting diplomatic protocol.
Challenges
■■ Local development of a local course by a materials designer working alone has
advantages – but course design would no doubt have benefited from one or
more second opinion. It is probably impossible to predict every need of every
trainee: the email format allowed for some flexible troubleshooting, however, and
I also acted as consultant to trainees on job-related report writing during and
after the course. This provided insights which were fed back later into course
design, including requests for support from participants for developing skills at
elementary hedging. Their questions included advice, for example, on how to
qualify predictions for the future in situations which were uncertain or how to
present findings when the results of fact-finding had been rather disappointing.
■■ Designing and delivering blended learning locally also has the potential to swamp
an individual online provider. The specific context meant that I engaged with two
batches of 20 trainees – quite manageable, but a different matter had an entire
government department asked for training.
■■ One design flaw in the online course was that I had initially visualised the course
as a two-way dialogue between trainer and trainee and neglected the critical
element of peer interaction. In the early stages of the course, participants missed
out on the vital aspects of information exchange and knowledge construction
(Salmon, 2000: 5). During the course, I and the trainees found ways to remedy
this but online mechanisms (however simple) for peer support, evaluation and
discussion needed to have been built into the course from the start.
■■ The greatest challenge lay in replicating the success of the course with other
organisations. Unlike AMFA, these proved to be resistant to the idea of blended
learning (and in some cases resistant to the idea of providing any training for
their staff). The situation has doubtless changed in Armenia since then.
Some principles for course design
1. The choice of how to ‘fill the gap’ often lies on a continuum between large,
standardised ‘global products’ and something locally/individually produced for
a small, highly specific, mobile audience. Both forms have their advantages and
disadvantages.
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