Job Discussion Forums

thelmadatter · Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 7:27 pm Post subject: self access centers

does your school have a self access language learning center.. by whatever name? This is a facility where students go to work on assignments... either constructed themselves, with help from an advisor or assigned by a teacher. Im looking them up via Google but find nothing for Latin America, mainland China or Africa and almost none for the US. Mostly SE Asia, Japan and Europe.

Hod · Joined: 28 Apr 2003 Posts: 1613 Location: Home

Most BCs have an excellent self access centre exclusively for those teachers whose idea of a lesson plan is turning the PCs on in time. Normally fully booked, though.

merlin · Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 12:24 am Post subject:

Self-access centers are good ideas but are light-years ahead of what most directors can imagine. Here are the big problems for the average private school setup:
1 - you need to set up an expensive security system like libraries have or risk having all your materials slowly get stolen of "borrowed without permission" or for that matter, teachers who feel entitled to the resources when they leave.
2 - What materials do you use? Bookmapping and creating pathways require HUGE investments of time. This is in addition to the cost of the materials themselves.
3 - Students won't want to pay as much money for teaching themselves, however much more efficient it is. They will want to pay less, making it more difficult to get the money back from points 1 and 2.

On the other hand, look at a classroom - the teacher gets 10-15 students who pay for their own materials and all the teacher has to do is charismatically follow the book (often a bootleg photocopied teachers' book) At most he uses 2-3 other books for supplementary materials. He may make materials, but since they are his he can take them with them when he leaves the school and all the school paid for was toner and paper.

thelmadatter · Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:58 am Post subject: naysayers

I love the optimism here! Laughing

I started the self access center here at Tec Toluca and its going pretty well. Merlin, what you are describing is the "strong" version of learner autonomy... where students direct most of their own learning and seems to be the "ideal" as far as many researchers are concerned. However, I have found about 60+ SALC (self access learning centers) online, mostly concentrated in Asia and Europe, that vary a lot in how they are administered and how much autonomy is expected of students.

Basically, a SALC works if it is implemented well in to the curriculum as a whole. Its certainly a WHOLE lot better than the traditional language lab.

I have to wonder how much of your objections are due to what "students" think or what you all think.

Be that as it may, my original question was geared toward finding more examples of SALCs ... not argue their merit.

merlin · Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:42 pm Post subject:

thelmadatter · Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 1:23 pm Post subject: 60

Those are 60 that happen to have web sites... I have about 15 or so more mentioned in the journal articles I have been reading. There may be more. The issue for me isnt numbers but what works.

Merlin, I agree with you that too often technology in general is implemented without thought, wasting a whole lot of money in the process. That is why I am doing this research - to see what actually has been done in the real world, what works and what doesnt. Too often academic papers get detached from the realities you mention. What I have done at my school has worked pretty well so far, but there's always improvement to be made.

What I am noticing off the bat is that almost all the centers I have found are associated with universities. Im sure that is not a coincidence and may be for the reasons you state.