English and French Language Resources

Ressources Langues et Linguistiques Anglaises et Françaises

Virtual Classroom - Phase 1 Report on the Virtual Classroom Trial (Oct - Dec 1996) Editor's note: The accompanying web site is no longer online. Roger Hudson has given his kind permission to print this report on the Virtual Classroom in Volterre-Fr. "This site [was] developed by English Language Systems to showcase our ELT materials and to create an interactive English language learning environment, or virtual classroom, accessible to students and teachers around the world." See also Internet Projects in Volterre-Fr for other resources. The Virtual Classroom CREATING THE ENVIRONMENT The aim of the Virtual Classroom project is to explore the possibility of using the Internet and World Wide Web to create an environment that will help stimulate purposeful communication between English language learners across the globe. In the real-world, language teaching is becoming increasingly concerned with giving students the ability to use their new language spontaneously to express themselves, their needs and desires. Within the classroom context, this process is greatly enhanced when the provision of new language skills occurs in a supportive environment that allows these new skills to develop though use and experimentation. In the Virtual Classroom we are attempting to replicate the shared and supportive environment of a real-world class. As a starting point, we felt that it was necessary for all the participants in the Virtual Classroom to be using the same course materials, since this would provide them with some common ground regardless of their geographic distance from each other. The published core materials are supplemented by extra activities obtained from the internet. These activities are designed to stimulate discussion (and e-mail exchanges) on a range of issues. CORE MATERIAL - "WORDS WILL TRAVEL" The core course material for the Virtual Classroom is Level 1 of "Words Will Travel", a video-based communicative English language teaching course we publish. This intermediate level course is currently used throughout Australia and in Japan, Indonesia and New Zealand. One of the main reasons for the great success of "Words Will Travel" in the classroom is the way the video drama creates for teachers and students the shared context necessary for purposeful and meaningful communication. In the Virtual Classroom we aimed to take this shared context beyond the walls of individual classrooms and out into cyberspace. CLASSES The Virtual Classroom trial was designed to build on the curriculum and normal teaching routine of participating classes. For this reason, we decided interchanges should be on a class to class (rather than an individual student to student) basis, with each class teacher acting as the mediator between the students in their real-world class and the activity in the Virtual Classroom. In order to ameliorate the problem of restricted individual student access to the Virtual Classroom, we offered to pass on e-mail addresses so that students could contact each other directly. We also included in the Virtual Classroom a variety of open-ended activities and joint activities to provide the stimulus and basis for direct exchanges between participating classes and students. We hoped that after establishing contact through work on shared activities, individual students in different classes would seek each other out to exchange ideas about core course activities at first and then general issues later. It was our aim to involve up to eight EFL and ESL classes from a number of different countries in the initial phase of the trial, starting in October 1996. During our search we contacted a number of teachers who were familiar with "Words Will Travel" and invited them to become involved. We also sent a request for participants through TESL-L. This generated more than a dozen positive responses. Unfortunately, the scheduled starting date for the trial did not fit in with the academic timetables of most of the institutions that expressed an interest in joining the first phase of the Virtual Classroom trial. There were also a few teachers who had not used "Words Will Travel" before and were reluctant to commit themselves to a trial using unfamiliar materials. We eventually started the trial on October 7 with nine classes from three different countries. DESIGN OF MATERIALS "Words Will Travel" provides an effective core for the Virtual Classroom. The video drama and course activities ensure that all participants, regardless of where they may be, come to the Virtual Classroom with a considerable amount of shared knowledge. Twenty-eight new activities were prepared for the Virtual Classroom, drawing on the context provided by the video drama and accompanying audio and print material. Broadly speaking, the Virtual Classroom activities fall into five categories. 1. Getting to Know You. The first activity in Unit 1, "Our Class", requires students in each of the participating classes to survey each other with the aim of preparing a profile of their class. In a later activity, "Holiday Destinations" students exchange information about the tourist attractions of the town or city in which they live. We included these activities so that participating classes would have easy access to information about each other. We hoped that this early exchange of information would help develop a collegiate environment in the Virtual Classroom. 2. Extension of core class work Many of the activities in the Virtual Classroom extend the existing core classroom activities. For example, the video drama in "Words Will Travel" is set in a small country hotel called Treetops, which is owned and operated by June Wilson. From the video and print material students know that eight years earlier June Wilson's father and husband went fishing together in a small boat but did not return. Neither the boat nor bodies were ever found. Students speculate in their real-world class about what might have happened to the men. They then post their opinion(s) in the Virtual Classroom and respond to the postings of other classes. The answer to the riddle of what happened to the men can only be found in the Virtual Classroom. In an 'information gap' activity two classes are matched and each is sent a different cloze passage of the story, "What the Seabirds Saw". The information missing in one cloze passage can be found in the other. In order to complete the cloze each class needs to formulate questions to ask their partner classe. Classes send their questions and answers directly to each other by e-mail. Since classes were likely to be engaged in this activity at different times, we were unable to post any of the exchanges between pairs of classes lest we compromise the activity for those coming later. "What the Seabirds Saw" proved to be one of the most popular activities in the trial. 3. "What's Your Opinion" Each unit contains an activity entitled "What's Your Opinion". The object of these activities is to explore the potential of the Virtual Classroom as a forum for free exchange of student opinions. Rather than setting specific tasks, each of these activities offers several controversial statements relating to the unit being studied. Teachers are asked to encourage their students to discuss the statements, post the opinions of the class and compare them with the opinions of other classes. The aim is to encourage students to create "threads". After making their initial contribution, they can monitor and make further contributions as the "threads" of discussion evolve. During these activities we asked teachers to take a back-seat role. 4. Exploration of cross-cultural issues Many of the activities in the Virtual Classroom allow for cross-cultural comparisons on a range of issues, including the use of titles and nick-names, giving advice and compliments, crime and punishment, and even food and cooking. In Unit 4 the activity "Are They Polite?", for example, allows students to compare what constitutes polite and impolite behaviour in different societies. After undertaking a series of activities in the core material concerned with levels of politeness in an English-speaking country, students look again at several scenes in the video and decide whether they think the behaviour of particular characters would be considered polite or impolite in their own countries. Their decisions and the reasons for them are posted in the "Virtual Classroom", where they can also read and compare postings from other classes. 5. "Any Questions" Finally, there is an opportunity for students to raise any questions and problems they may have encountered in the unit they have just completed with other participants in the Virtual Classroom. The aim of these activities is to encourage students to use each other as a resource, so we suggest that students try to answer the questions raised by their virtual-classmates wherever possible. LESSONS LEARNT SO FAR ACCESS AND ACTIVITY When selecting classes to participate in the initial phase of the trial we did not think it important for students to have individual access to the internet, since contributions to the Virtual Classroom were to be made on a class basis by teachers. Seven of the nine participating teachers reported great benefits from using the Virtual Classroom, particularly as a means of stimulating discussion on a range of cross-cultural issues. There was also considerable initial interest from students. However, the lack of direct student access to the Virtual Classroom saw this interest soon begin to wane. It is now clear that without direct student access (even if only on an occasional basis) the Virtual Classroom is likely to be seen by many students as just another source of material to be photocopied and handed out in class. Initially we felt that activity in the Virtual Classroom would be largely self-generating, allowing us to automate the process of making postings. We now realise that, if the Virtual Classroom is to be a dynamic learning environment, we will need to take a more pro-active role, stimulating and moderating postings where necessary. MATERIAL Building the Virtual Classroom around course materials that all participating classes were required to use worked very well and generated the shared context we were after. Furthermore, "Words Will Travel", with its video drama, proved to be very successful in this regard. However, in relation to the Virtual Classroom activities themselves, a number of important issues emerged. 1. As already indicated, direct student involvement is essential and so there need to be activities that will help foster this. In general, internet communication is about spontaneity, "This is what I want to say, and this is how I am saying it. Respond!" 2. The early activities should provide students with both the net skills and language skills to allow them to learn quickly how to communicate effectively within this environment. We should not be unduly concerned if some of the more formal language skills are initially skipped over or mis-used, since they can be returned to later. 3. Given that the 'street' language of the net is evolving rapidly and becoming widely accepted, a balance will need to found between the use of 'net-speak' and the educational objective of improving the ability of students to communicate in everyday English. 4. The design of both the Virtual Classroom and the activities contained within it needs to more accurately reflect what is happening in the general environment of cyberspace. In particular, they should make far greater use of hypertext and the World Wide Web. 5. Greater use of shared projects utilising the web would enhance student learning and interest in the project. VIRTUAL CLASSROOM - PHASE 2 We will be making a number of significant changes to the project before we start the next phase of the trial at the end of March 1997. ACCESS We plan to continue running the trial on a class, rather than individual student basis. However, during the next phase we will require students in participating classes to have greater access to the internet. All participating classes will have to have general access to at least one computer with net access. There will also be greater facility for participating students with net access to communicate directly with each other. We do not expect every student to have a personal internet connection, either at home or at their place of learning. Furthermore, we don't have the facilities to handle individual postings from the more than 300 students likely to be involved in the next phase of the project. We propose two ways that student access could be increased without placing an undue burden on ourselves, the students or the educational institutions. 1. In institutions where there is very limited access to the internet, students could be rostered to monitor the activity in the Virtual Classroom and make postings on behalf of the class. 2. In classes where students have individual access to the internet, the class could be broken up into a maximum of eight Virtual Classroom groups. Each group will operate as a single entity in the Virtual Classroom with its own identifying name. Whatever the arrangement, it is our intention that students should not work on their own, but in small groups using English to negotiate both the use of the computer as well as what is required to complete the task at hand. MATERIALS By March next year the Virtual Classroom will contain a more varied selection of activities. Some will aim at encouraging much more interaction between individual students and groups of students. Others will aim at fostering 'net literacy' and developing research skills. Example 1: In addition to the existing "Our Class" activity there will be a series of activities that more effectively establish the framework for later communication between participants. In the first of the series, students working in groups use a supplied e-mail form to send a message for posting to the classroom with answers to the following questions. Name of the group, as well as the name, occupation, city or town of residence and interests of each member of the group. They also cc the message to their teacher. Next, with the help of their teacher each group in the class selects a posting from one or two groups from another class and asks for further information about their interests by using the supplied e-mail form to send a posting to us. They also provide an e-mail address that the other group can respond to directly. Again, a cc of this message is sent to their teacher. Finally, the groups use a conventional e-mail package, such as Eudora, MS Exchange or Netscape Mail, to respond to the messages they have received, with a cc to their teacher and the Virtual Classroom. Example 2: The "What's Your Opinion" activities in each unit failed to generate much interest during the initial trial. So, in the next phase of the Virtual Classroom we plan to give students a free-rein with these activities. Working in small groups students will be able to enter comments, respond to comments of others and raise new issues as they see fit. Clearly, this means that they will need to be able to return to the activities in future to respond to the comments of others. Example 3: Participants will be introduced to the use of the World Wide Web through the following series of activities which build on the section concerned with 'Holiday Destinations' in Unit 1. First, working in small groups, they read a short article about Australia in the Virtual Classroom and then link via hypertext to the Australian Tourist Commission site to find the answers to several questions. The answers are then e-mailed to the class teacher with a cc to the Virtual Classroom. Next, they use a browser to link to tourist information sites for one of three other countries (URLs supplied). They then prepare a short article about the most interesting place or town contained in the site they have visited on the web. The articles are sent to the Virtual Classroom for posting. Finally, there is an e-mail option which involves students reading the postings of other groups and then using e-mail to find out more information about one of the interesting places (this could simply be the URL for that webpage). Example 4: There will also be several shared activities. This one derives from the first meal Eddie Lim will cook at the hotel. Eddie knows the nationalities of the guest at the hotel and students look at the menu he has prepared and discuss whether it is appropriate. Student groups from one class are paired with groups from another class for a research based task. They are given the choice of three countries (eg Fiji, Mexico and Ireland) and have to pick one that none of the members of either group is familiar with. They then work together to prepare a menu for a meal (similar to that prepared by Eddie) typical to that country. They also have to provide cultural information about the meal and hints on how to prepare it. The students can use the World Wide Web, ESL/EFL Student Chat Lists and any other means they like to obtain the information they need. Students are encouraged to share the research and use e-mail to exchange information and jointly prepare the final menu. The menu from each pair of groups is then posted in the Virtual Classroom as part of an international cookbook. Clearly this will take time but, coming in the last unit of the Virtual Classroom, it is a good opportunity for the students to practise many of the language and net skills they will have acquired. In addition to new activities like the examples above, some of the existing Virtual Classroom activities will be re-written to allow for a higher degree of interaction between participating students and classes. PRESENTATION We are reviewing the design of the Virtual Classroom pages in order to make them easier to use. Many of the instructions were initially written for teachers. In the next phase of the Virtual Classroom they will have to be easily understood by participating students and will be re-written where necessary. A change in the menu structure of the Virtual Classroom will enhance speedy access to specific activities. Also, greater use of hypertext will allow ideas and threads within an activity to be followed more easily.

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