Summaries of presentations by
Vance Stevens, Amideast UAE/MLI Project
TESOL
Conference 2000, Vancouver
March
15-18 2000
Vance's website: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/4631/esl_home.htm
Email vstevens@emirates.net.ae
These handouts are accessible through http://www.netword.com/vance@tesol2000
Here is a rundown of my sessions at TESOL 2000,
Vancouver:
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Wed |
Mar 15 |
Discussion Session 1288: Facilitator - Vance Stevens |
07:30 to 8:15, Convention Center Room 8 |
Interactive web based language learning (basic) – See a summary - See the
PowerPoints |
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Wed |
Mar 15 |
Paper 5635: Presenter – Vance Stevens |
09:30 to 10:15 Convention Center Room 3 |
Developing a community in on-line language learning – See the paper - See the PowerPoints |
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Wed |
Mar 15 |
Discussion Session: Facilitator - Vance Stevens |
20:00 to 20:45, Pan Pacific Gazebo 1 |
Building rapport with students in online instruction - See a summary - See the
PowerPoints |
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Thu |
Mar 16 |
Focus group: I was an invited participant |
17:00 - 6:30 pm Room 13, Convention Centre |
Focus group on technology issues as they pertain to membership and retention issues |
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Fri |
Mar 17 |
Paper 5297: Presenter – Vance Stevens |
08:30 to 9:15 Convention Center Room 3 |
Designing for seamless CALL Integration and Access - See the paper - See the PowerPoints |
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Fri |
Mar 17 |
Invited session 108: Invited presenter – Vance Stevens |
15:00 to 15:20 |
Live chat session with students and teachers of Writing for Webheads - See the PowerPoints |
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17:00 - 6:30 pm |
Room 13, Convention Centre - focus group on technology issues as they pertain to membership and retention issues |
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Sat |
Mar 18 |
Discussion Session 1296: Facilitators - Vance
Stevens, Davee and Sandra Thomson |
7:30 to 8:15 CC Room 12 |
Developing a ‘sense of community' in online language
learning - See the PowerPoints – no summary yet |
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Interactive web based language learning (basic)
Discussion
Session:
Facilitator - Vance Stevens
Wed, Mar 15, 07:30 to 8:15, Convention Center, Room 8
I started the session by asking who was doing online instruction. This got a few hands, but when I went back and asked ok, those who had your hand up, what are you doing online, I got few responses (I attribute this to the early hour, start of conference). One of these participants brought up the question of what motivates students. She was using WebCT, an authoring system that many in the audience were using and wanted to discuss.
Trying to draw on the larger percentage of the audience I asked what those who had not yet experienced online learning wanted to gain from the discussion. One response was, what technologies were people using to deliver it.
An important issue that came up was the question of community building, how to establish rapport with the students, and how to get the students to interact with one another. As several of the participants were using WebCT, this brought us on to the topic of threaded discussions. One participant said that he had discovered that these were popular with his students and were used more in his WebCT course than straight email. Management of threaded discussions seemed to be problematic and time consuming. A couple of teachers take these and put them on a web page. Another has to get all the new topics and set them as replies to each other; he manually threads the discussion in other words, as students start new topics rather than thread.
Other technologies: I mentioned ICQ < http://www.mirabilis.com >, The Palace < http://www.thepalace.com >, ActiveWorlds < http://www.activeworlds.com >; HearMe < http://www.hearme.com >. Someone asked what’s ICQ and what’s an avatar? This led us into the topic of the role of buddy-list based applications such as ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, and AOL Instant Messenger in serving as a base for synchronous chat, and the fun students have with avatars in interactive synchronous learning spaces.
In reference to a current thread on one of the lists, I brought up the topic of failures, what causes online communities to fail; someone said her group had done a study on lurkers and said simply that their needs were not met.
It became clear as the discussion transpired that many different forms of online learning were taking place. One such dichotomy was online support to existing courses vs. totally online. One participant from BC was doing distance education with remote communities in BC and not doing well without satellite people in the field working face to face with the students, so another dichotomy is where there is a f2f component and where there isn’t.
One question was: is it effective? To this a participant cited a U. of Maryland finding that students online were outstripping f2f students to the extent that subsequent courses had to be improved to accommodate the more advanced learners; I cited my own positive results from questionnaires issued to students doing the totally online, no f2f, Writing for Webheads course.
Building rapport with students in online instruction
Discussion
Session:
Facilitator - Vance Stevens
Wed, Mar 15, 20:00 to 20:45, Pan Pacific Gazebo 1
This was an odd session. First of all I was informed that I was facilitating this session when I registered as a presenter at the conference. Prior to that I had not known that such a session was scheduled, let alone that I was to facilitate it. When I checked the program, I didn’t find it listed in my program book, but I was shown by TESOL counter staff where it was listed in a separate Addenda included in everyone’s conference bag. I didn’t actually verify myself that this was the case, nor did I look at the Addenda sheet at all my entire time at the conference; nor I suspect did many other conference attendees. However, I turned up for the event on the off chance that out of almost 10,000 attendees, some few would have by Wednesday evening noticed the Addenda and possibly even looked at it, and of those one or two might actually want to attend the session, as turned out to be the case.
On arrival at the venue, Pan Pacific Gazebo 1, I found that there were organization meetings going overtime in both PPG 1 and 2, loathe to disband. Furthermore, my session was listed on a sheet for PPG 1 but in fact posted at the door of PPG 2 (and the PPG 2 sheet was posted on the door of PPG 1). To make matters even more bizarre, the listing for my session had been scratched through and an annotation made that my session had been moved to earlier that day, 4:00 p.m. in another room. Meanwhile the group scheduled to meet in PPG 2, a discussion session of single mothers in ESL, had shown up in such numbers as to evict the organization session from PPG 1, but then they took over the room.
By then four people had turned up wishing to discuss building rapport with students in online instruction, so we raided the snacks laid out for the meeting just disbanded and took them upstairs to some couches where we encroached on a man patiently but disinterestedly awaiting his wife in one of the sessions being held in an adjacent room. Although he was in attendance at our session, he didn’t say anything (nor did he complain, all in all a rather benign chap). The real attendees included a Korean couple who were running a language school with an online component, a lady wishing to use online tools with the deaf, and a lady who made it clear that she was keen to have the discussion despite the snafus since she was in the position of having to organize an online course and wanted to learn as much as she could on this topic.
So I got my computer out and showed the slides from my presentation that morning, and then we talked about the situations of the others, in particular the Korean couple who seemed to be on track for a rather interesting program and I really must dig out their website.
Developing a ‘sense of community' in online language learning
Discussion
Session:
Facilitators - Vance Stevens, Davee Matlock and Sandra Thomson
Sat, Mar 18, 7:30 to 8:15
CC Room 12
From Sandra: Here's the discussion session summary Davee wrote up. It's fine if you want to post it or add anything to it. ( … I didn’t add anything; hate to tamper with perfection – Vance)
The discussion group started with participants sharing their connection to online teaching and community and what questions they had concerning the topic. The definition of community was discussed and how to build a community in a group of students. Some essential elements mentioned were trust, sharing, participation and support. Also helpful instructor e-mail techniques were discussed. These included offering students extra help, sharing some personal information, being interested in students individually and staying away from negative wording.
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