Here - EnglishAgenda - British Council

performance with grammatical structures and vocabulary (overall, 56 of the 280 totalactivities are check activities).Listening, grammar and vocabulary check activities are scored directly into thesoftware database, and both the course user and the instructor can access progressreports, graded as Competent, Satisfactory or Not Satisfactory. For the speakingcheck activities, the learner can listen to recordings of their own performance andcan repeat activities before submitting them if they are not satisfied with their firstattempt. Once the audio files have been submitted, they are stored in the softwaredatabase ready for assessment.The check activities form the basis of the interaction with the instructor, whoserole includes monitoring the learner’s general progress in the course, evaluatingthe learner’s speaking performance and delivering the structured face-to-face(tutorial) course components. It is recommended that tutorials take place at theend of each unit, or at least twice during the course, in order to provide formativefeedback that enables the learner to target areas of need. The frequency of thetutorials is determined by the resources available in the training organisation. AsOliver et al. (2006: 506) note, ‘in most settings, there can be unlimited scope fortechnology-mediated communication but far more restrictive amounts of face-to-facecommunication’. The decision to restrict the face-to-face component of the courseto one-on-one tutorials was based on the difficulty of timetabling classes that alllearners could attend, given the scheduling constraints of the aviation industry.The course is written in Flash, which is considered the most readily accessible onlinetool for multimedia development, and is also ideal for the presentation of realisticanimations and plausible aviation training material, in particular flight and radar orcontrol tower simulations. Flash provides effective compression of large files andenables the audio file management process through a remote database, both ofwhich are critical for efficient online delivery. It is also recognised as the softwarelanguage that can deliver the widest cross-platform compatibility, whereas rivallanguages may not perform equally well in different operating systems or browsers.Although some more recently developed online hardware products (e.g. iPads) do notsupport Flash, software applications are now available to overcome this limitation.Teaching methodologyThe course was designed for independent, self-paced study partly because ofthe time and scheduling constraints experienced by those working in the aviationindustry. However, an additional strength of the online delivery is that it simulates thecontext in which pilots and air traffic controllers use English in the workplace, namelycommunicating via radio telephony. The course utilises situations in which learnersmust build on the standardised phraseology required for routine flight operations andextend their use of general English to deal with non-routine and emergency events.This replicates the real world environment, where pilots and controllers are separatedfrom their interlocutors and must rely on verbal communication aided by the visualinformation typical of their workstation; for example, charts, radar or cockpit displaysand views from the cockpit or control tower.A blended learning course for the aviation industry | 143