Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

Teaching methodology
The blended design of this course was influenced by Garrison and Kanuka (2004) who
suggest that by thoughtfully integrating face-to-face and online experiences learners
can benefit from more active and meaningful learning experiences. Independence and
increased control may also lead to development of critical thinking. The way learners
and tutor shared responsibility for wiki content, error noticing, correction, editing and
modifying text and the way they collaborated on activities was new to some students
but encouraged deeper thinking, as well as language and skill development. The use
of wiki is supported by the pedagogy of social constructivism where understanding
is achieved through dialogue and collaboration with others as the social environment
scaffolds learning (Beetham and Sharpe, 2007: 221).
Being able to influence the content of a course is empowering to students and
values their abilities. Even learners who did not directly add content could benefit
vicariously from reading the contributions of others (Sutton, 2001).
Wikis allow increased time for reflection and evaluation so writing on a wiki may
cause less anxiety and pressure than is felt when producing in class. However,
that anxiety may occur due to the realisation that the whole class will read any
contribution. This sense of audience can be valuable as it may cause learners to
pay more attention to the accuracy of their language production (Kuteeva, 2011)
but there must be a supportive atmosphere or participants will not contribute.
Contextual considerations that influenced the design process
In the classroom we had a networked interactive whiteboard but not individual pcs
or laptops. The area has good broadband availability and most learners were familiar
with Facebook and email and had home access to personal laptops or pcs.
An initial reason for creating a wiki was because we had created interview videos in
class on a flip camera and had no time to play them back. I wanted to upload them
to the internet so the learners could watch them to review dialogue, notice errors
and self and peer correct. I was unable to upload the videos to the college Moodle,
possibly because the files were too big. The IT support team would have helped me
but they are based at a different campus.
I found that it was simple to upload the videos to the free video hosting site Vimeo
(Youtube would have worked too) and then create a wiki for no cost on ‘PBWorks’.
Then I could embed the videos on a ‘video page’ where comments and dialogue
could be written alongside. The videos could be replayed and dialogues checked.
In practice, most learners viewed their videos, two could not bear to hear themselves
talk and only one listened very carefully, self-corrected and rewrote her speech so
that it was greatly improved (see Figure 7).
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