This week, I am going to focus on another important area, online assessment in language teaching. It is a known fact that assessment enables us to measure learning and learner progress, and evaluate the efficacy of our teaching methods. There are two major forms of assessment: formative and summative. Formative assessment is continuous evaluation through pencil and paper tests, class exercises, topical tests, oral questions and answers, and performances. In summative assessment, learners are examined to show completion of a course, achievement of a qualification or advancement to the next level of a course. In this discussion, the focus is on technology-enhanced formative assessment using Socrative.
Socrative is a formative assessment tool that can help both teachers and learners to assess understanding instantly. It is an online quiz-based interactive assessment application that allows the teacher to create a variety of questions; multiple-choice, true or false and short answers and learners to respond in real-time. Besides being an assessment tool, Socrative plays a critical role in the improvement of digital communication skills between the teacher and learners.
How it Works
Socrative to both learners and teachers is accessible on iOS, Android and Chrome operated mobile devices and all web browsers. Unlike other interactive tools, Socrative requires only the teacher to open an account for free while learners only need to receive a Room Code from the teacher to access it.
How Did We Do Feature allows learners to check their own performance in the assessment. The teacher can adjust the settings to show percentages instead of responses
Common Core Standards - allow the teacher to monitor individual learners' progress
Space Race - is a collaborative mode timed quiz which measures and uses the speed of response to rank learners in a quiz.
Progress Tracking - It is difficult to track a learner's progress as student results from one assessment are not connected to the next one.
Display: Socrative has a limited display for classroom projectors and other larger screens
Interface Challenge: If for some reason a learner's dashboard becomes unresponsive, he or she has to log back in instead of continuing from the previous activity.
Communicative Lapses: The tool cannot warn the teacher or learner when performance is going down. the
Conclusion
Socrative is an amazing tool that can save us a lot of time from marking books and tests especially those of us with large classrooms. We can use it to ass learners during or after the lesson and provide feedback to them in real-time. Because of the school rules against cell phones and other mobile devices in our schools, it would be advisable to use school computer lab desktop machines to enjoy the benefits of this tool. I hope you will find time to try it out like I did in this link, the Room Code is 65890965. Let me know how it goes in the comments below. You can also watch the video below to learn more.
Having looked at some apps we can use in our language classrooms, this week I wish to draw your attention to another important concept trending in education systems across the world.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic emerged in late 2019 and put most aspects of life we all considered normal on hold for the last two years, the world has had to adjust its various operations. Traditional classroom interactions have had to be replaced by virtual ones in the education sector to ensure learning continued during the disruption. In the developing world like my country, where access to technology is still limited, the pandemic literally shut down learning activities for a couple of months or more. With the pandemic seemingly easing off, and having experienced both online learning and face-to-face teaching, we need to give prominence to Blended Instruction. Blended Learning or Instruction is described as the integration of the strengths of both traditional face-to-face instruction and Computer-Mediated Instruction in the delivery of education.
Types of Blended Instruction
There are two major models of blended learning: Flipped Classrooms and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs).
"Flipped Classroom is a type of blended learning where students are introduced to content at home and practice working through it at school." Bergman and Sams (2007). It is a pedagogical approach in which conventional classroom-based learning is inverted (flipped) by providing learning access to materials before class and using class time to deepen their understanding through discussion with peers and the teacher, and problem-solving activities in a seminar format online or face-to-face. The content availed in advance can range from recorded video lesson presentations, texts, pictures, graphs and or audio recordings. During scheduled seminars, the teacher leads a discussion of the materials accessed online before the interaction or engages learners in tasks aimed at demonstrating their understanding of the content through application and problem-solving.
These are platforms through which lessons are prepared, delivered and evaluated using multimedia tools like texts, images, videos and audio. They include Edmondo, Moodle, Genially and so on. On the one hand, VLEs allow school, college or university students to access materials at home or hostel before class time through their devices such as mobile phones, tablets and laptops. On the other hand, they enable the teacher to create content for various classroom activities, check learner engagement with the materials and evaluate both the learner and the material remotely.
At this point, let's discuss what makes an effective blended learning model. How can you tell that it is working well? There are seven critical elements involved:
Clear Learning Objectives: Before implementing a BI system, you should identify and clearly define the learning objectives of the model for three crucial reasons:
(a) to provide learners with a clear roadmap and expectations
(b) to help content developers with a sense of direction
(c) to help school/institutional managers understand topics to be covered and how they will be delivered.
The Right Delivery Mode: It is important to consider and clearly state whether a particular or hybrid delivery model will be adopted.
Flexible accessibility: Blended learning's success will be determined by the degree of flexibility it offers for learners to access content and teachers/tutors to develop and make available digital content to deliver maximum results.
Micro-learning task and design and materials: Every instruction model is meant to enable learners to access knowledge in the most convenient of ways. Therefore, there is a need to ensure that learning activities conform to the material design conventions and curriculum standards. Tasks should be engaging enough for the learners.
Learners: Learners' ability to access and use technological devices for learning is crucial. Therefore, considerable input from the learners should be obtained to tailor the system to the tech skill level.
Teachers/tutors: Members of staff who will be involved in content development, delivery and evaluating learning should have a clear understanding of how the model will work to achieve their course goals.
Assessment and Evaluation: A deliberate decision should be made on when, how and by who the blended learning programme will be evaluated to check its effectiveness and impact on all stakeholders. It should also be clear how learners will be assessed for both the online and face-to-face activities.
Content Creation Applications
There are many applications today that can be used to create content for blended learning programmes and fall into two categories: Apps for Adding Interaction and Apps with Interactive Content.
Applications for Adding Interaction held create content in multimedia which learners access at any time. This category has many apps including H5P, Genially, Xerte, Blendspace, Hot Potatoes and forms with stream videos. Because I am still exploring the others, I invite you to check the content I created in H5P on Vocabulary
Applications with Interactive Content are platforms through which learners interact with each other and teacher in real-time. This category includes discussion forums, Wikis, Quizizz, gap-fill, drag and drops and so on. Interaction can take a form of a quiz or topical discussion.
There are many benefits for both teachers and learners of blended instruction but key among them are:
Increased Learner Participation - Blended learning offers learners who have participation difficulties in a traditional face-to-face classroom a chance to participate in virtual platforms freely.
Flexible Accessibility - Since content is continually available online, learners can access it from any location and at any time. Teachers can equally modify any part of the content from anywhere when it is convenient to do so.
Personalised Learning - Since the teacher can monitor learner participation and performance, struggling learners can receive personalised learning confidentially to improve.
Collaboration - Because the material is available to every learner, it makes it easy for all of them to collaborate on tasks and foster teamwork.
Easy Evaluation - Since paper tests and examinations take a lot of time and resources, online ones are easy to administer and provide feedback.
Reporting and Tracking - Teachers can easily track and report the participation and performance of learners in various tasks.
Improved Efficiency - with appropriate content and proper perimeters in place, blended learning is said to improve teacher efficiency.
Despite the great benefits that come with blended instructions, there are shortcomings one should be aware of.
Tracking and Reporting - Some learners may find the tracking of their engagement with online material a violation of their privacy. How the teacher handles those who have challenges accessing the materials may make or break their learning. Ironically, this is both a good and bad thing.
Access to Technology - Devices required by learners to access materials outside the classroom may not be equally available to all learners. In low income and low tech countries like Zambia, this group constitutes the majority.
Infrastructural Challenges - Many schools in our country do not have the infrastructure to fully implement blended learning.
Conclusion
With increased uncertainty in the world, institutions of learning need to carefully consider fully embracing blended learning to improve their efficiency. Challenges are expected and some cases appear insurmountable, but I think it is truly worth the thought. Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
Welcome to my blog and this week, I will focus on one area that has been a major challenge to most language teachers in my country, fluency. Before the revision of the curriculum in 2013, dictation and pronunciation were the main activities aimed at improving fluency in our learners. Speaking and Listening are the two most neglected skills in our classrooms today. There are many possible reasons for this, which I will not delve into more detail in this discussion. The main purpose of this post, however, is to discuss how technological tools such as FlipGrid can be used to encourage speaking fluently and listening in and outside the classroom.
Productive and Receptive skills
For our learners to achieve total communication, they need to acquire both receptive (reading and listening) and productive (speaking and writing) skills in a balanced manner. Of the two major productive skills, speaking, though is the most frequently practised, is different from its like partner, writing in many ways. Firstly, speaking places a high cognitive demand on the speaker to select and retrieve words to use; organise and connect the single words into meaningful chunks, and pronounce them well enough for the listener to decode the meaning. The second challenge involves assessing the listener's needs such as the polite manner in which messages are delivered and the contextual appropriateness of what is said. These challenges arise because, unlike writing which accords the author time to think, write and edit their message, speaking is spontaneous and what is said cannot be taken back regardless of how uncomfortable it may be to both the speaker and the listener. This makes it a high-risk activity that most learners generally shy away from for fear of being misunderstood or embarrassed by the mistakes they make. It is for the aforementioned that teachers should take deliberate steps to not only teach fluency and speaking but also provide tools and a conducive environment for learners to freely practise the skill.
Defining Fluency
Fluency can loosely be defined as the ability to maintain a fast and smooth speech while effectively managing natural pauses. It entails the speaker can naturally retrieve words and automatically effectively manage turns. Fluency incorporates pronunciation with a focus on intelligibility or production of phonemes and morphemes clear enough to communicate the intended meaning.
Importance of Teaching Fluency
Generally, fluency is critical to communication as it helps you to say what you intend to say and your listeners to understand you and provide appropriate feedback.
Technology officers several affordances that the traditional classroom may not accommodate that enable learners to develop their own fluency. Key among them are:
1. Freedom from fear of making mistakes: Learners can practice recording themselves speaking in different ways without the classroom pressure of 'they will laugh at me if I don't speak well,' 'will they understand what I am about to say,' and so on. Such pressure leads to mo mistakes and may inhibit confidence in speaking. In other words, the technology eliminates the risk of 'exposure' that often leads to communication apprehension.
2. Chance For Self-correction- Through technology, learners can record, edit or delete their own speech until it reaches a level they are comfortable with. They can repeat the words, chunks of words and sentences over and over until they get it right.
3. Authenticity: Technological devices provide the learner with a chance to practice speaking in a real-world context and to listen to their own output
4. Personalisation: There is a general sense of ownership of both the message and the speaking activity in general as learners may not feel as though they are doing it just for harmony in the classroom.
Teaching Theories Associated with Fluency
Fluency and accuracy are some of the target skills of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) methodology which emphasises the development of 'Communicative Competence in second language learners. Under this theory, learning of a language takes place through interaction between the learner and his/her interlocutors through negotiation of meaning until there is a common understanding. Fluency is critical in the navigation of this interaction process for the novice to achieve communicative competence.
FlipGrid is a video discussion platform that allows teachers to create a grid for learners to post their audio and video responses and reactions using their mobile phones, tablets or computers. It amplifies learners' voices, especially those who have trouble expressing themselves in face-to-face classroom activities. In addition, it can be used for other creative classroom activities such as storytelling, digital content analysis, language practice and of course fluency.
FlipGrid is simple to set up for both teachers and learners. All one needs is a Microsoft or Google account to sign up and begin interacting. For more set-up details, please watch this tutorial after which you can check my FlipGrid here.
Constraints
Despite its marvellous features, FlipGrid may prove challenging to teachers with low tech exposure and learners with restricted access to mobile devices. Further, more sophisticated features of the application require a subscription which many may not find affordable.
Conclusion
Clearly, technology for language teaching keeps growing as innovators continue to develop applications that support language teaching in more ways than one. FlipGrid is one application easy to set up and use for teaching fluency. However, as teachers, we need to examine our own context and determine which application is suitable for our respective classrooms. If access to technology is still a work in progress, do not worry, but take time to explore FlipGrid. Who knows, you might just find it as marvellous as I did. Whatever you find out, let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.
