Job Discussion Forums

[ShadowCat17]

Hi folks!

I'm teaching a beginner English course at a university in Brazil, and we're using the Cambridge Touchstone materials.

The course is set up so that the students have two 1-hour classes a week, and they're supposed to spend 4 hours a week (!!!) doing online exercises in Cambridge's online learning website.

Problem: I'm having a hard time motivating the students to invest this online time. It is absolutely necessary for the course - first of all, it's part of their grade, and second, the course is "accelerated" so if they don't do the online work, they WILL fall behind. This is especially essential at the beginner level.

I do speak Portuguese so I've explained all this to them in their native language... but so far only 1 out of 16 students has put in any online time (we're 3 weeks into the semester).

I'm thinking of taking the entire class to the computer lab next week and saying "class today will be an hour of doing the online exercises, so y'all can familiarize yourselves with the system and ask me any questions if you have trouble."

I'd love to hear ideas or suggestions from some more experienced teachers on this.

Thanks in advance!
Shayna

[Teacher in Rome]

First of all, my sympathies! I've seen it time and again on blended learning courses, where students attend the face-to-face lessons (or online class) but don't put in the hours doing the other work.

I think your idea of taking them into the lab to get them familiarised is great. It could be that they're not sure about how to do the exercises, or even need help with passwords / access / how to do the exercises etc. Sometimes students need a bit of hand-holding and giving them a start-up session should be part of their preparation to the course.

In the end, we built tasks around the online learning that meant the students had to go to the site and do the exercises before they could do the tasks. You could build marking / testing into this: i.e. only the students who had achieved a certain pass / accessed a particular % could do the tasks that counted towards their final mark. A lot of work for you, but it might help integrate the two better. (Obviously you'll need the tools that show you which students have done what. Programs such as Tell me More give you this - not sure about the Cambridge one.)

Good luck!

[nomad soul]

[ShadowCat17]

Teacher in Rome and nomad soul, you were COMPLETELY right!

I took them into the lab today and discovered that:

1) Differently from the sign-up process for teachers, the sign-up process for students actually involves 3 stages with 8-10 steps each... which is made worse by the fact that the website is all in English, not intuitive, and my students are absolute beginners.

2) Whereas a few of the guys in the class are of the "I'll just click around and figure things out" mentality, the majority of the women, particularly, are tentative and nervous about clicking the wrong thing or doing the wrong activity. They need very specific instructions and a lot of encouragement!

I think I may schedule several more computer sessions over the course of the semester...

Lesson learned

[Glenski]

I agree that you should have gotten them together to register with you, so that you know there are not problems in that respect.

Now that they are all registered, it is a matter of how motivated they feel. I'm in Japan and face uni students with very low motivation towards homework.

* If you can't track what each student does on that Cambridge software (and I suspect you can't), then you have your hands full.
* You probably can't take them into the computer room during the week to fulfill that 4-hour requirement (try to do once, though, and see what happens).
* Present some sort of update weekly -- no names, but a progress chart with each student's scores -- and talk about it for 2 minutes. Open the floor for questions in case they have problems understanding the site.
* Ask Cambridge for any advice???

[Teacher in Rome]

[sharter]

Blended learning......Kaplan should read this........depends on students actually giving a hoot.

Achilles' Heel or what?

[ShadowCat17]