As I sit down to write this asynchronous blog entry fairly late on a Thursday evening, I have just returned home from teaching one of my classes. It's a group of 8 "advanced" adult ESL learners. This was the end of the first week of classes, so we have not yet begun to delve into the meat of the course. I had them work in teams to label the provinces and territories of Canada and name the capital cities of the various jurisdictions. That part of the activity was fairly banal, although they had fun and learned something by doing it.
But the really interesting things happened after they were done. We started discussing what they know about various parts of the country. This quickly led to discussion about landscapes, which in turn veered into a discussion about urban and rural life. In discussing cities, we started talking about homelessness. This led to a discussion around substance abuse. And that led to a fascinating discussion of Vancouver's Insite safe injection clinic--initiated by one of the students. We also had a discussion about Canada's treatment of First Nations people, again initiated by a student. These were amazing discussions, with huge amounts of learning taking place, and none of the flow from topic to topic was initiated or directed by me, the ostensible teacher.
So a seemingly "simple" cartographic exercise led to numerous real, authentic, relevant, meaningful discussions about a range of subjects. The learners were able to use and extend their speaking and listening skills. They met new vocabulary. They used a variety of grammatical constructions. They became so engaged in what we were talking about that they became less self-conscious about making mistakes and simply talked--about things that mattered to them. For an ESL instructor, this is pure gold--and it's precisely the sort of thing that could never happen in online learning, be it synchronous or asynchronous.
Granted, the circumstances or context were quite specific--adults, advanced learners, a fairly small group of people who are comfortable with each other, and so on. But I have done this activity several times, with learners at various levels of English proficiency, in groups both larger and smaller, and the result is always the same. The activity leads to spontaneous conversations. The topics vary--but they are always meaningful. The students exchange ideas and opinions as best they can. They encounter things they didn't know--both subject matter and linguistic.
I was about to say that ESL may be a "special" circumstance, but I remembered that the paper by Ge (Ge, 2012) about asynchronous vs. blended cyber learning dealt with ESL students, so clearly ESL is not a special case. Online or distance learning simply cannot--as of yet--replicate the sort of spontaneous interpersonal exchanges I have just described. And more often than not, these kinds of exchanges have, through the magic of serendipity or synchronicity, been discussions I have been able to relate directly to the lesson/unit/topic we are "supposed to be" doing, according to the curriculum and syllabus.
The fact that I can do the work I need to for this course at 22:30 on a Thursday night is fantastic. It's an incredible convenience, and if not for asynchronous online delivery, I might well not be able to do this course or the program of which it is a component. That said, there is simply no way that, given current technology capabilities, any mode of online delivery could possibly reproduce the incredible, spontaneous dialogue that took place in my class tonight. Perhaps someday the technology will exist to allow such things, but at the moment it simply does not, and online learning is always frustratingly attenuated and mediated. Online learning is great in many ways, don't get me wrong; but as far as I am concerned, it is still a fairly pale shadow of the kinds of learning that can take place in a face-to-face environment.
Reference: Ge, Z.-G. (2012). Cyber Asynchronous versus Blended Cyber Approach in Distance English Learning. Educational Technology & Society, 15(2), 286-297.
As an FSL teacher, I cringed when I read the article by Ge (2012) and could totally understand why they were having limited success with on-line learning. I have used some of the distance learning materials as support resources and shake my head at what is considered adequate to emulate oral interactions in order to limit interactions with the teacher. I don't see a technology yet that can facilitate what is required to develop oral language skills. Perhaps if the article's main focus was on synchronous vs. asynchronous on-line learning they would have had more useful data by focusing on a different subject area that wasn't so heavily dependent on communication development.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your ESL experience, I can only hope that interactions become as diverse and engaging in my classroom!
Nicole
Michael,
DeleteThat is so great that your seemingly surface task of provinces and territories led to a great conversation on different aspects of the regions. In a f2f setting, these types of “reading the room” activities are so powerful; as a teacher, you can push deeper, ask questions, leading to powerful (maybe not how your lesson exactly detailed) teachable moments.
On the flip side, in synchronous online experiences, what you describe is nearly impossible; that would almost seem purposely off task behaviour. I recall teaching a synchronous class where several of the participants were online but in the physical world they were in the same room; one made a joke as another enabled their mic; one told another peer their mic was off but it wasn’t. Though probably playful in the “physical” room it was not a good experience for the rest of us in the online room listening to four classmates laugh.
But I think you nailed it on the head with the idea of the 10:30pm post as I sit here, post Superbowl, doing the same thing. Without asynchronicity, I’m not taking a course. I couldn’t. I physically couldn’t make it to a location weekly without family or work suffering. That power of asychronicity is powerful because a lot of people wouldn’t have an education without it.
Thanks for your thoughts, Nicole. I was having trouble expressing what it was that bothered me so much about that article, and you've put it beautifully. I work with students who have come from that type of program delivery in China, and it is precisely their oral language skills that lag behind the rest of their learning. They can read and often write at a very high level, but their speaking and listening proficiency is often far behind those other skills.
DeleteIt will be interesting to see how the technologies of online learning may develop, but I agree with you that they are not there yet in at least this one area!
Hey, Jordan...
DeleteI, too, am doing this post-Superbowl (GRRR!) on Sunday night--so you're absolutely right about the logistical advantages of this model of program delivery!
But on the other hand, you're SO right about "reading the room". It really is such a fundamental and essential aspect of my own teaching practice/style that I can say I would literally be lost without it. I'm fairly fortunate in that the mandated curriculum I work with (as I choose to interpret/work with it, anyway) allows me the time and space to do those sorts of explorations, but I find that those moments are the times when the most powerful and lasting learning really happens.
And on the third hand, I can totally understand your illustration of the synchronous class you were teaching! I wonder if there are, or could be, ways for us to provide opportunities for some sort of playfulness and spontaneity in online learning, either synchronous or asynchronous.