2013 NECTFL - BOLDD Workshop
Thursday 3/7/13
2:00 - 5:00 pm
Loyola Media Center

• Online language learning for basic FLE is a emerging, volatile field. Members of the BOLDD Collaboratory cover the basics of design, development, and delivery of beginning online language courses/programs and target important questions including:
Important first considerations
Course/program design issues (your reality quotient)
Development: examples of courses, media, materials, platforms, & technologies
Teacher training
Student selection and preparation
Assessment (formative, summative, programmatic)

Brought to you by BOLDD : Basic
Online Language Design and Delivery
Collaboratory
Today's Guides:
Gretchen Jones, UMUC
Kathryn Murphy-Judy, VCU via distance:
Ed Dixon, University of Pennsylvania

• Please introduce yourselves !

Introductory remarks (+ discussion)
ADDIE & caveats
A nalyze
D esign: ACTFL Standards & your reality
D evelop --> BOLDD & other examples
I mplement: preparing teachers and learners
E valuate: current online programs, tools, languages for the best fit for your institution, language program, & you.
Real world examples.

Why is online language learning important to us?
Some factoids:
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Over 90% of HEI offer Internet courses ( JOLT 2011 )
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"More public colleges than private for-profits —74.9 percent versus 60.5 percent —say it’s part of their long-term plans." CHE , 2010
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At CCs in 2010 , "Campuses reported a 22 percent increase for distance education enrollments" which is "substantially higher" than overall national post-secondary rates.
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Rate of growth in online learning and 6.6% in FL enrollments (MLA 2010)
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CALL explosion in online T&L: BOLDD Collaboratory , CARLA Ning ,
NFLC survey, COERLL online materials (see: CHE 11/2011 )
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MOOCs

Where do you see online language learning in relation to your school in five years? Ten years?

(VCU CTE)

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Who will be learners at your institution? How many?
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What will be the goal of your online course/program?
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Who at your school is ready for online learning
(administration, faculty, students, community)?
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What are the resources, support structures and constraints?
Pair
Share

Are there problematic rationales and/or misconceptions behind offering an online languages ?
Save money?
Provide ‘other’ languages?
Compensate for not having a teacher (or enough teachers)?
Offer flexible learning times, places, modes of delivery?
Student demand? Parent demand? Community demand?

More faulty preconceptions about online learning...
o it may be (mis)construed as an 'easy' cashcow that allows educating without real faculty; o ads show learners learning online while asleep or while working, raising a family, and/or partying full time.

CC Gary Dennes
(... are these counterproductive images of online learning?)

... a good, standards based, communicative online course will likely cost more initially and over time (to keep up with evolving best practices and technologies).
... there are many languages, but there still need to be ‘live’ teachers and real communication.
... there still need to be live teachers....
... although time and space is flexible, learning objectives must be met and progress made: learning in bed, asleep, is not possible even if one is a hard-working, full time professional trying to earn a degree.
... we can and should optimize digital media, constructivist and active learning, and social media interactions with peers and native interlocutors.

We’ll address some of these misconceptions--our and theirs-when we talk how to prepare learners.

Is your institution and are you ready to offer online courses?
Is the technology backbone robust enough to deliver online materials?
Where will the students and the teachers be?
• If on-campus, is the infrastructure robust and ubiquitous enough?
• If off-campus, do students & teachers have the technology infrastructure and the skills?

Location: within your language program, in a separate online education sector, elsewhere?
Type: creditbearing, a certificate, a ‘badge’, a pre-requisite
(for developmental/remedial)?
Numbers: how many learners are you talking about?
Timing: synchronous, asynchronous or both? During the regular year/semester; in an autonomous, self-paced environment; developmental or remedial; other?
Platform(s): your LMS, social media, a blend, an available online package?

• What do we know about good language learning?
• What are the ACTFL Standards and how do they apply?
• Which aspects of entirely online delivery might hinder language learning; which might promote it?

Security to take risks
Differentiated learning modalities
Sense of community
Scaffolding
Timely feedback
Curiosity & motivation
Authentic interactions with the cultures/languages/people
Constructivist/active learning
Do you think any of these are necessarily NOT available in the online environment?

Online basic language teaching & learning may pose special challenges: o the loss of certain channels of meaningful input may complicate/increase the ‘foreignness’ of the new language for the novice learner; o learners may also be novices in learning strategies and effective practices for language acquisition; o pre-programmed, highly structured delivery mechanisms could lack the agility to differentiate for individual learning needs; o technical/technological issues may arise for the institution/host, teachers, and students (FYI: digital natives are NOT always e-proficient).

Basing T&L on the ACTFL Standards 5C’s; guiding learning within appropriate proficiency (ACTFL/CEFR) levels and toward the next level; & using active, communicative, differentiated strategies.
Recognizing and compensating for any lost face-toface communicational channels by maximizing the affordances of the e-learning venue.
Creating community, engagement, risk-taking (all the while exercising safe-hex!) with the help of the online environment.

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UMUC: one of the nation’s largest and most diverse
• UPenn: Special students & special circumstances and moving toward Coursera
• VCU: a basic French program
• Other examples

Other online programs, tools, languages: selecting the best fit for your program
Programs
Tools
What’s available in which languages
Selecting based on your program

Spanish: UMich Sp103 , SpanishMOOC.com
French: CMU OLI , UTx
German: Hauptstrasse 117
LCTL and Critical languages: CCTV Chinese ,
Dutch (see MERLOT ), CMU OLI Arabic, BYU
HS & http://www.madinaharabic.com/
Commercial: Rosetta Stone , TellMeMore , Live
Mocha , LingQ , DuoLingo
Megasites: Learn a Language Online
(C4ALPT)

Vista Higher Learning Web SAM
Pearson MyLanguageLabs
An increasing number of mobile apps Babbel , Busuu
MERLOT.org for peer reviewed materials
BBC, France 24/7, Deutsche Welle, & googling!

• Teaching online is a learned skill with new behaviors & attitudes that include but are not limited to: realizing that teaching online is not 'simply' translating traditional methods onto the online environment learning to allow students room to grow, make errors, but being available to them for input, correction...
learning to build community applying the same standards & outcomes, i.e. content knowledge, skill acquisition and proficiency growth keeping up with new technologies and working around the deficiencies of the ‘old’ ones

Instructor/facilitator profiles and habits
Illinois Online Network
Penn State online offers a profiler !
SUNY, too, offers a personal review of readiness/style
Good habits:
CALICO/ACTFL/NECTFL (!)/IALLT(MALLT/NEALLT) /CARLA/NFLTC/LARC/COERLL
Workshops
Marlene Johnshoy's Ning
Joining or creating a collective, like BOLDD .

• BOLDD Collaboratory
• Spanish MOOC lurkers: http://ltmooc.com
/

• Student success rates in online learning:
• CHE 5/2011 " only 50 per cent—as opposed to 70-to-75 percent for comparable face-to-face classes" successfully complete their courses.
Over 20% more students withdraw from online courses than from f2f at community colleges where e-learning is ubiquitous and accelerating.
Couple regular online learning success/failure rates to the complication of onlined-ness + novice low/mid/high reading, writing, listening and speaking proficiency levels + the lack of visual/sensory cueing active in the f2f environment+ student attitude/(bad)habits of
'doing' online work 'whenever'=recipe for disaster.
MOOCS have even less successful completion (14%)

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Qualities & habits of the successful online learner in general:
• Autonomous, a.k.a., self-directed
• Collaborative and willing to buddy-up with other online learners in your class
• Motivated
• Computer literate and excited to acquire more and better computer skills
• Able to use email, an internet browser, online programs
• Able to read and write online (good typing skills help a lot)
• Curious and eager to learn new things
• Focused and task-oriented
• Independent but also willing to ask for help before it's too late!!

• Can Do statements

• A High Leverage Teaching Practice is anticipating learner errors. How can this HLTP be worked into the online course development and delivery?

o
How can online learning address differentiated instruction?

• How can the online venue address technical know-how, troubleshooting, system outages?

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•
E-Learn Magazine
Ed Dixon
•
• Interview : http://www.igiglobal.com/newsroom/archive/interview-edward-dixonfirst-hand/1484/
Article : http://www.igiglobal.com/newsroom/archive/trading-textbooks-
•
• facebook-social-media/1483/
COERLL Carl Blythe’s Blog: Open up
The 7 principles (online) Chickering-Gramson

• Formative
• Summative of student FL performance & progress (lesson-unit-course-program), proficiency gains, 21st century skills & autonomous learning
• Teacher performance
• Online course (program)

Gretchen Jones gretchen.jones@umuc.edu
Kathryn Murphy-Judy kmurphyj@me.com
Ed Dixon edixon@sas.upenn.edu