Here - EnglishAgenda - British Council

Teaching methodologyThe blended design of this course was influenced by Garrison and Kanuka (2004) whosuggest that by thoughtfully integrating face-to-face and online experiences learnerscan benefit from more active and meaningful learning experiences. Independence andincreased control may also lead to development of critical thinking. The way learnersand tutor shared responsibility for wiki content, error noticing, correction, editing andmodifying text and the way they collaborated on activities was new to some studentsbut encouraged deeper thinking, as well as language and skill development. The useof wiki is supported by the pedagogy of social constructivism where understandingis achieved through dialogue and collaboration with others as the social environmentscaffolds learning (Beetham and Sharpe, 2007: 221).Being able to influence the content of a course is empowering to students andvalues their abilities. Even learners who did not directly add content could benefitvicariously from reading the contributions of others (Sutton, 2001).Wikis allow increased time for reflection and evaluation so writing on a wiki maycause 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 anycontribution. This sense of audience can be valuable as it may cause learners topay 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 processIn the classroom we had a networked interactive whiteboard but not individual pcsor laptops. The area has good broadband availability and most learners were familiarwith 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 inclass on a flip camera and had no time to play them back. I wanted to upload themto the internet so the learners could watch them to review dialogue, notice errorsand 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 mebut 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 dialoguecould be written alongside. The videos could be replayed and dialogues checked.In practice, most learners viewed their videos, two could not bear to hear themselvestalk and only one listened very carefully, self-corrected and rewrote her speech sothat it was greatly improved (see Figure 7).Using a wiki to enhance the learning experience on a business English course | 169