Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

What will the interactional patterns be?
Individual, pair and group work are all standard forms of communication in the faceto-face
mode of most courses, and they can also be found in the computer mode
too. Neumeier (2005) identifies 11 interactional patterns for the CALL mode, which
are grouped under three headings:
■■ interaction through computers/networks (synchronous/asynchronous)
e.g. student to student, teacher/tutor to student
■■ interaction with computers networks, e.g. student and teacher/tutor to computer
■■ interaction at computers/networks e.g. student and student in collaboration
at the computer.
It is easy for a blended learning course designer to underestimate the number of
interactional patterns that working with technology presents, and I will be the first
to acknowledge that in the Bosnia and Herzegovina blend I did. One of the mistakes
I made during the redesign process was to remove the need for students to share
computers and therefore work together by providing them with one computer each.
What I believed to be an improvement to the design removed the need for students
to work collaboratively, which to quote Beatty ‘is among the most useful ways in
which learners acquire language at the computer’ (2003: 99). Keedwell (Chapter 13)
also recognised a design flaw in relation to interaction patterns in his blend: ‘I had
initially visualised the course as a two-way dialogue between trainer and trainee and
neglected the critical element of peer interaction.’
Other authors recognised different interaction patterns in their design, with
Eydelman (Chapter 3) saying ‘…the design of this course allows for a variety of
interaction patterns from those initiated by the teacher to those initiated by the
student(s).’ However, it was the third interaction pattern ‘at the computer’ that
was most commonly referred to in the case studies with the key word being
‘collaboration’. With the exception of four authors the rest referred to collaboration
in their case studies in a number of different ways, such as:
■■ a key consideration in task design (White et al., Chapter 8)
■■ a way to encourage participation (Ingham, Chapter 15)
■■ a way to foster a socio-constructivist approach (Douglas and Paton, Chapter 10)
■■ a way for students to learn from each other and improve their answers (Ingham,
Chapter 15; Hirst and Godfrey, Chapter 9).
What will the learners and teachers/tutors roles be?
Within any learning environment teachers and learners alike adopt different roles
at different times, which the use of technology further affects. This leads Neumeier
(2005) to speculate that with the introduction of CALL the learners are exposed to
a wider variety of roles than if the course were simply face-to-face. For teachers/
tutors it also means differing roles between the modes, i.e. classroom teacher and
online tutor.
The change in roles was recognised in a number of the case studies, with Aborisade
(Chapter 2) summing it up by stating ‘We have learned that teacher roles are
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| Conclusion