FLEAT VI

Effective teacher training aims at creating a community of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991), where participants feel comfortable sharing ideas with and learning from each other. Teachers can build community relatively easily in small classes. A massive open online course (MOOC) with 20,000 participants is more of a challenge. This session will demonstrate how an English language teacher training MOOC was structured and delivered.

From the outset we wanted to build a cMOOC, a connectivist MOOC (Downes, 2009), which we interpreted as an online course where participant interaction would be fundamental. Besides the cMOOCs roots in collaborative learning and constructivism, we saw participant interaction as the key to overcoming the challenges of the "massive" part of the course: the many different backgrounds, ages, prior teaching experiences, and kinds of training our anticipated audience would be bringing to the MOOC.

We will demonstrate how the course developers chose different elements in the Coursera platform, including videos, discussions, different kinds of quizzes, and peer grading. And, perhaps just as importantly, we discuss the changes we implemented to the second and third iterations as a result of instructor experience, user surveys, course evaluations, and Coursera analytics.

Finally, we will explain how these instructional elements were combined with informal communication options like contests to foster a sense of community and shared purpose. Results and implications for others with an interest in taking or creating a MOOC will also be offered. Participants will be invited to describe their experience with MOOCs, sharing what has worked and what could be improved.

Meeting students’ various learning needs should be the ultimate goal of every English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher all over the world. This is why most of EFL teachers strive to keep abreast of the new trends of knowledge in their fields of teaching. However, it sounds it is not the case in some contexts like Saudi Arabian tertiary context where EFL teachers are not motivated enough to pursue their professional development (PD) because of the many responsibilities they have. These responsibilities include, but not limited to, heavy teaching loads, academic supervision, administrative coordination, and planning and conducting their own researches. Accordingly, EFL tertiary teachers in Saudi context are left with no opportunities to undertake PD programmes inside the walls of their tertiary institutions. Therefore, this presentation reports on a proposed model of training EFL tertiary teachers at Taif University, Saudi Arabia. The proposed model is in the form of online community of practice. The model draws on the utilization of some Web 2.0 applications and programmes such as Facebook, twitter, and blogs. The teachers will be able to share their experiences, thoughts, ideas, and best practices in teaching English to students majored in English at Taif University. The teachers will also have access to and reflect on the materials posted in Facebook, twitter, and blogs. It is hoped this model will be of a considerable benefit to the PD of EFL teachers at the Department of foreign Languages in Taif University. Implications for theory and practice are provided accordingly.

Keywords: EFL, Saudi Arabia, tertiary context, online community of practice, professional development, teacher education

The education of a language professional, as well as any professional, takes place through his/her engagement in unfamiliar discursive communities, at the beginning, while transforms and consolidates new communicative repertoires, which are required for participation (MATÊNCIO, 2008; LAVE; WENGER, 1991). Moreover, to engage in language practices of a building community, the future professional (re) builds his/her identity as a member of a particular human social sphere. In fact, the learning of new digital language practices is followed by the learning of new ways of acting socially in the world (BRONCKART, 2008; CRISTOVÃO, 2010). Building on the above, we aim at investigating the participation of pre-service teachers from third and first years of an English Language undergraduate degree in an educational chat, and the reflection promoted (or not) by the use of this digital genre as a consequence of his/her process of identity building in a social community. This investigation is based on the assumption that the activity of situated reflection (CONTRERAS, 2002; ZEICHNER, 1994) can be one of the tools for educating teachers committed to their practices and capable of making decisions by assessing their professional contexts. Further, we bear our analysis on the assumption that the interaction promoted by the educational chat has its own characteristics based on the centrality of writing in that genre, as well as particular conditions of production in that digital media (GERALDINI, 2005; HILGERT, 2000). Furthermore, it promotes a joint learning with the involvement of both cognitive and affective aspects of the participants. The data analyzed are part of a joint research developed by researchers from two state universities. The results show that the use of educational chats can be adequate to situations in which pre-service teachers have their voices heard and break asymmetry patterns between teacher educators and pre-service teachers through the use of a digital tool for identity constitution.

This presentation reports on a 2014 professional development project targeting teacher-scholars in undergraduate liberal arts institutions. Funded by a grant for blended learning from the Associated Colleges of the South, this project had three principal goals: (1) to provide online and in-person professional development opportunities for current and future language educators at ACS institutions, (2) to promote cross-school collaboration among ACS faculty members, and (3) to assess the strengths and weaknesses of multi-site blended learning for faculty. The project consisted of four workshops delivered via multi-point videoconferencing with both online and face-to-face pre- and post-workshop activities. The presenters will outline the planning, implementation, and assessment of the workshops, including a discussion of the technologies used and their impact on the project’s success.

Topics for the workshops were chosen for their relevance to language educators at undergraduate liberal arts institutions. Participants are excellent language teachers who teach at all levels of instruction; their training and research interests are not language acquisition and pedagogy, however. Limited time and travel funding generally keep them from attending conferences that focus on language pedagogy, but they need to be aware of current trends and issues. Moreover, many of them, particularly those teaching less-commonly-taught languages, feel isolated on their own campuses. The interactivity of the workshops was intended to build professional communities across multiple institutions.

The presenters will use excerpts from recordings of the videoconferences and examples of the project’s online documents, discussions, and participant evaluations to discuss whether the project met its goals. There was a positive response to the topics chosen, but scheduling of the videoconferences, particularly across time zones, limited participation. Face-to-face discussion was lively, but faculty participation in the online discussions was limited. Modifications to address these and other issues will be made in any continuation of the project.

This paper will discuss how e-Portfolios are used as a tool for professional development and reflective practice for pre-service EFL teachers at a university in northern Japan. The presenter and his colleagues designed a pre-service teacher-learning program that combines practical experience with the course-work students undergo in four English teaching methodology classes over two years. In each teaching methodology class, students have a practice lesson at a local school. They are asked to write about a critical incident (CI) that occurred in this lesson and summarize it on their e-Portfolio. A CI is defined as an event or accumulation of events that changed teachers’ personal concepts about learning or teaching a foreign language. Farrell (2009) argues that teacher education programs need to provide case studies to pre-service teachers of the challenges, conflicts, and problems they may face. CIs are one way to do this: they can serve as a means for student teachers to follow their own development in our program as well as a means for other students to understand the issues they could face as teachers. E-Portfolios, like traditional portfolios, are a way of showing a collection of work to demonstrate one’s development. However, in order for the e-Portfolios to be assessable to a wider audience, they must present a holographic portrait of a teacher’s development. That is, in one screen shot it must show the nature of student teachers’ growth as well as factors that sparked it. This paper will discuss how the e-portfolios have been designed to give this holographic view and how the CI technique can be used on all students’ e-Portfolios to reveal the nature of their learning to improve future program implementation. It is hoped that the audience will leave this presentation with ideas for e-Portfolio design and ways of utilizing e-Portfolios.

In recent years, Mexican Educational Policy has included a strong English Language Teaching Program which has as purpose to offer English language instruction to all children at an elementary educational level, starting with pre-school. As a result, the demand for English language teachers or for Elementary School teachers with English language teaching competencies, has increased exponentially, which has in turn, increased the need for quality teacher development programs which can meet the program’s challenges.

The Specialization in English Language Learning and Teaching (EEAILE) of the National Pedagogical University is an online in-service teacher development option designed to provide teachers nationwide in Mexico with knowledge, skills, attitudes and strategies to ensure effective results in students’ language skills. Our focus is on transmitting solid reflective and critical thinking skills while at the same time providing concepts related to language, methods, language acquisition, skills, intercultural communication and assessment, as well as opportunities for strengthening teachers’ own language skills.

In our Specialization, the online component does not only serve as a means of knowledge transmission, but also as an end in itself, providing course takers with tools for enhancing the online and b-learning aspects of their own classrooms, as well as strengthening teacher networking and international online communication.

Our presentation will delve into the following components: students’ digital skills, teacher skills, networking and international communication. After a presentation of the online educational framework we work with, we will offer a brief explanation of our program and goals followed by information on the results derived from data extracted from participants’ products such as wikis, assignments and projects that show the extent to which digital skills are integrated into teaching practices, and how these have an impact on teachers’ and students’ interaction with English language.

This session focuses on a dual-track agile professional development model that established a community of practice for faculty members teaching with advanced technologies and active learning strategies in new learning ecosystems. This program was developed to prepare the faculty for teaching in digital-age flexible learning spaces that were launched on campus. In 2014-15, a total of 28 faculty members participated in two cohorts of a special professional development project.  In cohort 1, faculty participated in summer workshops and transformed ("flipped") one lesson or module in their current traditional course.  In cohort 2, faculty participants completed summer training and transformed ("flipped") an entire course.  The participants that were selected to participate in these newly special professional development projects attended full-day workshops in which they explored a variety of collaborative technologies along with technology-enabled active learning methods. The participants became a community of practice and received support from professionals and peers for their course-redesign which was focused on the development of hybrid course modules or entire hybrid courses. In accordance to the FLIP principle (www.flippedlearning.org), these courses were taught in flexible learning spaces that are designed to integrate mobile and collaborative technologies while promoting a learning culture that intentionally shifts from a teacher-centered to a student-centered approach. In addition, students have access to online content in preparation for and following their active learning sessions that are designed to promote deep learning. The role of the instructor changed to that of a facilitator who designed the learning experience, provide formative feedback and just-in-time instruction. This student-centered active learning environment proved to provide both significant enhancements for learning and student engagement as well as specific challenges in implementation. This session will explore both the advantages and challenges of the flipped learning approach and will discuss the lessons to be learned from the faculty community approach to student-oriented, active learning environment. The presenters will detail specific support, training topics, methodologies, experiences, and evaluation information.  This session will be collaborative and interactive where presenters and attendees discuss ideas, challenges, and best practices. The presenters will share preliminary data from this project and provide access to resources. Although developed for higher education, this faculty development model is also applicable to K-12.