Part One: The Learning Module
The course
This study will examine one unit of a course called Upper Intermediate IELTS Speaking. It is a non-credit course, the focus of which is to help students develop the skills they need to achieve the desired results on an IELTS (International English Language Testing System) speaking test. They will use the results of their IELTS test to apply for immigration or university entrance.
The Course is twelve weeks long and is comprised of a mix of synchronous and asynchronous learning activities. The course has a dual focus—firstly, students will become more familiar with the structure of the test and build speaking skills they need for the different parts of the test. The other focus is on building vocabulary, especially expanding their active vocabulary, so each unit is organized around one topic that is common on the test.
The class meets via Zoom for two sessions per week, each of which is 1.5 hours. Students need to spend some additional time each week completing asynchronous tasks.
Organization of the course:
Unit One: Health and Lifestyles
Unit Two: Family
Unit Three: Food and restaurants
Unit Four: Language and Communication
Unit Five: Art
Unit Six: Education
Unit Seven: Employment
Unit Eight: The Environment
Unit Nine: Cities and Architecture
Unit Ten: Travel and Places
Unit Eleven: Science and Technology
Unit Twelve: Advertising and the Media
The Module
This study will focus on Unit Five, which is organized around the topic of art.
Learning Objectives for Unit Five
- Students will gain a more detailed understanding of what they need to do in Part 2 of the IELTS speaking test.
- Students will review vocabulary related to art and expand their active vocabulary re art.
- Students will learn and practice strategies to improve fluency and extend / unpack ideas when speaking.
- Students will simulate the Part 2 task of the IELTS speaking test twice.
The Learning Activities
For a description of the learning activities, please click here.
(https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DTZ_pjfp-z06FhFM6W8-HdbLv9anNyoAwgxWE-xD0xE/edit?usp=sharing)
Technology
The technology used in this unit includes the Zoom videoconferencing platform, Flipgrid and Quizlet, all of which the students have used earlier in the course and therefore have some familiarity with.
Why these Activities
Candidates for the test need to be familiar with the topics that commonly come up on the IELTS speaking test and need to develop their active vocabulary related to these topics. They need to familiarize themselves with the structure of the test and must also develop strategies to help them enhance their performance on different parts of the test. I chose activities that would hopefully engage students and at the same time would review, build on and recycle topic-specific vocabulary so that students are more likely to be able to use this vocabulary if they need it on the speaking test. I included the topic of graffiti and street art since this seems to be an interesting focus even for those who aren't interested in more traditional forms of art.
Rationale for assessment
The objective of the course is for students to improve their performance on the speaking component of a standardized language test, the IELTS test. The focus of this module is the second part of the test, and their performance on this part of the test is what they’ll be assessed on. I’m going to use an assessment rubric that is adapted from the Public Band Descriptors, the public version of the assessment criteria used to evaluate candidates on the real test. The main objective of this assessment is to provide formative feedback to students so that they will know how they’re currently doing on this part of the test and to offer guidance on areas they could improve on / ways they might do so.
Part 2: S.E.C.T.I.O.N.S. Analysis
Which technology to use is an important question in an online course and I believe keeping it simple is a good general rule since each new technology introduced is likely to mean a learning curve for users. One problem with this is that it takes time and energy away from the content being taught, which should be the real focus of a course. Although I’ve specified which technology I might use for different learning activities, if I was working within a learning management system, and if similar tools were available in the LMS, I would use those instead to keep things as simple and streamlined as possible.
The Students
Relevant questions here include who will be using the technology, as well as whether it will be appropriate considering the students’ demographics, location, ability to access, accessibility.
Students in this course all have a first language other than English and range in age from 18 to 45. It is quite a diverse group, with some students being international students and others being professionals going through the immigration process. The majority of them are living in British Columbia, but there are two located in Mexico City. Some of the students have just finished their high school education in Canada. They have a variety of first languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Korean and Mandarin Chinese.
The students are relatively young (18 to 45 years old) and all have experience using a range of technologies either as part of their work or for educational purposes. The technology chosen for this course can all be used on computers, tablets or mobile phones, so it should be accessible to the full range of students in the class. One consideration is internet access; the students will need adequate bandwidth to attend the synchronous Zoom sessions.
Ease of Use
Considerations here are how reliable and user-friendly the technology tools are. Flipgrid, Zoom and Quizlet are all mobile friendly, which offers greater flexibility for students. Most of them will already be familiar with Zoom as it has been used by many for social, educational and professional purposes during the past year because of the pandemic, but this technology is the most likely to cause problems with reliability in my experience--there may be occasional problems with participants having momentary problems with internet access, leading to frozen screens or even participants having to rejoin meetings. By week 5 of the course, all of the students are very comfortable with this technology. Quizlet is also very easy to use once students have received an invitation to join a class. The main challenge from my experience is this invitation process, which doesn’t always seem to work the first time. Flipgrid is also quite straightforward and video tutorials are available on YouTube or can be created by the instructor.
Cost
Factors to consider here include costs in terms of overhead, maintenance, and time. Educational institutions are likely to already have an institutional account for Zoom, so using this technology for a particular class would not add any additional cost. Flipgrid is offered as a free tool by Microsoft, and Quizlet is also a free tool. Some of the teaching materials used for this lesson were created by the instructor, which would require an investment of time, but some of them were found already created on the internet at no cost. No costs are anticipated in terms of maintenance.
Teaching Functions
Questions to consider here are how the tool contributes to assessment/feedback goals and whether it fits with the purpose of the assessment.
Flipgrid seems to be an appropriate tool for mu assessment goals.This tool allows for assessment of a task that mimics the test task they’ll need to do on an actual test in the future and makes it easy to provide formative feedback. It is a very flexible tool in that the assessment rubric can be embedded in it and feedback can be via video and / or written notes. An important note is that when using Flipgrid for assessment, I would use the 'Video Moderation' setting to prevent the rest of the class from seeing classmates' submissions or the subsequent feedback.
It's easy for students to record their response to the prompt they've been given, and they can opt to re-record their responses if they aren’t happy with their first attempt. They can also have the prompt on the screen as they record their response.
The instructor can set a time limit for videos, which is helpful for this assessment task--students' responses need to be exactly two minutes. When setting up the assessment task, the instructor can also provide a video explanation or modelling of what the students need to do.
Interaction
The selected technology tools should enable the right people to interact. The synchronous meetings on Zoom will allow for a lot of instructor-student and peer-to-peer interaction as well as student-content interaction. Quizlet provides for more of a focus on student-content interaction in that they will use this to focus on remembering topic-related vocabulary. Flipgrid is an excellent tool for enabling student-student interaction and has been used this way in previous units, but in this case the interaction will be instructor-student focused as it will be used for formative feedback.
Organizational Issues
I am not currently teaching as part of an organization, so I am not sure what kind of support I would have, but I have already used all of these technologies with few problems, and none that I could not solve on my own.
Networking
As they continue to work towards achieving their desired score on the speaking test, it will be important to students to refer back to the formative assessments that they’ve received. Using Flipgrid is a good way to enable this as students can go to myflipgrid.com, where they can view every video they’ve ever made using Flipgrid, including video they’ve submitted for feedback. This means that they would have permanent access to the formative feedback they received in this module.
Security and Privacy
For Flipgrid, students can join a grid by using a school email, but the instructor can instead enter student usernames into the grid so that students don’t need to use email. Usernames do not have to be the students’ full real names, which is a good way to protect privacy.
Zoom is used by many postsecondary institutions in British Columbia, so it’s likely to be acceptable for any institutions that I teach for, but of course any related policies will need to be adhered to. One concern regarding Zoom is the ability to record sessions; I would likely avoid doing this as it might raise more privacy concerns. Passwords need to be used when setting up Zoom meetings in order to prevent outsiders from joining meetings.
References
Bates, A. and Poole, G. (2003). Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education. Jossey-Bass / John Wiley and Son.
EnglishAustraliaTV. (2020, June 23). Formative feedback with Flipgrid. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/a2uP0jPa5Rk
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