Planning for authentic language assessment in higher education synchronous online environments

The teaching of some languages in Australia is under threat due substantially to small enrolments. There is considerable need to preserve Australia’s community languages as part of the country’s cultural and linguistic diversity. However, it can be difficult to generate sufficient numbers to sustain the provision of a specific language course in any one location in Australia. Online technologies can provide a solution to this problem. According to the New Media Consortium Horizon Report: 2012 Higher Education Edition “education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid learning and collaborative models”. Models such as these present a possible solution to the problems associated with providing small enrolment language topics such as Modern Greek. The Logos Australian Centre for Hellenic Language and Culture was established at Flinders University in 2011. Promotion and preservation of Greek language and culture is the focus of the centre which is funded by the South Australian Government with support from the Greek Government. In 2012 the centre moved towards enhancing the delivery of Modern Greek by developing and delivering four language topics and two culture topics online. The delivery of these topics identified assessment as an area which needs further investigation. This paper describes the importance of an assessment strategy for foreign language (FL) learning which is based on the principles of authentic assessment and describes how synchronous technologies can support this strategy

New Cyber Charter Teachers’ Perceptions of their Induction Program in Preparing them for Online Instruction: A Mixed Methods Study

Those who teach online are often concerned with preservice or in‐service teacher development, specifically the lack of specialized opportunities focusing on online instructional practices. Online educators have acknowledged that this focus is limited and that the induction years of beginning teachers are an important component of teacher development. This mixed-method sequential explanatory study focused on the induction years of cyber charter teachers. It examined their perceptions of their induction program with the intention of adding to the literature in this under-examined area (Creswell, 2013). Twenty new online teachers shared the perceptions of the induction program through Likert scale items on a questionnaire. The researcher utilized a series of ANOVAs for each of the dependent variables of interest, which were scored on the survey\u27s different subscales. The qualitative phase involved a semi-structured focus group interview and journal entries designed to understand teachers\u27 perceptions of their induction program (Creswell, 2013). The results suggested that the induction program\u27s practical focus effectively prepares and builds confidence in new cyber charter teachers. Additionally, respondents indicated that same subject peers and mentor support as well as access to sandbox courses or practice courses contributed to their effective asynchronous lesson development preparation and synchronous lesson delivery

Today’s Student and Virtual Schooling: The Reality, the Challenges, the Promise

Introduction: In 2008 I was approached to deliver a keynote address at the biennial conference of the Distance Education Association of New Zealand (DEANZ) in Wellington on the topic of today’s student and K–12 distance education. Several months ago, Mark Nichols asked me if I would be interested in putting some of the ideas that I discussed as a part of that August 2008 presentation into a manuscript for the Journal of Distance Learning. This paper represents my best efforts to summarise and expand on those ideas. As in my 2008 keynote, I want to discuss three main themes in this paper. The first is to critically examine the common labels we assign to this generation of students and the characteristics these labels attribute to the youth we find in our schools, colleges, and universities. This examination includes the literature and research, (or lack thereof) to support these labels. The second is to trace the substantial history of distance education at the K–12 level. This history begins with the use of the correspondence model and continues with current online learning initiatives. The third and final purpose is to describe the virtual school movement, with a focus on developments in North America. This description also includes a discussion of how virtual schools have been organised and the nature of students served. From Concluding thoughts: While distance education at the K–12 level has been around for over a century, the use of online learning in K–12 environments and the organisation of these programmes into formal entities are still quite new. In North America, virtual schooling has been a reality for only about 15 years, and it is less in many other jurisdictions. There is therefore still much that we don’t know about this form of distance education with this population of students. Having said that, as the percentage of K–12 students enrolled in online learning continues to grow, and as the population of students who access these opportunities continues to expand, more is needed to prepare both students and teachers to be successful in these environments

Training Teachers for a Virtual School System: A Call to Action

Online learning at the K-12 level is growing exponentially. Students learning in supplemental virtual schools and full-time cyber schools, using a variety of delivery models that include and sometimes combine independent, asynchronous, and synchronous instruction, in almost every state in the US. In some instances the knowledge, skills, and abilities required by teachers in this technology-mediated environment is consistent with what they learned about face-to-face teaching in their teacher education programs, while in many instances, the two are quite different. Presently the lack of empirical research into effective K-12 online teaching limits teacher education programs. However, teacher education programs still need to better prepare pre-service and in-service teachers to design, deliver, and support students engaged virtual schooling

Design and Development of an E-Learning Management System

The trend of e-learning technologies is expanding fast. Web-based learning environments are becoming very common in the higher education institutions. Nowadays e-learning management systems are very popular. Many universities throughout the world deliver educational programs via the Internet. Developments of e-learning systems are generating great impact in the field of education services to improve the teaching and learning process, and overcome geographical displace. In recent years, various kinds of Internet technologies have become available for developers to implement such e-learning system that provide an e-learning gateway on the Internet. The rapid advancements in information and communication technologies, especially the networking and multimedia, have led to the development of many advanced e-learning systems these days. A user-friendly interface and a sophisticated data model are the essential design consideration to make the e-learning system easy-to-use for the instructors and learners. The need for such architecture is critical for designing the system and standards development. The system is developed under Computer Supported Cooperative Work framework and web portal technology. The system integrates all the critical and valuable communication tools that effectively improve the collaboration in an e-learning environment

Establishing a Relationship with Distant Learners: Can it be done? 

Disponible en français dans EDUQ.info sous le titre "Établir une relation pédagogique à distance... Est-ce possible?"In a distance-learning context, where, by definition, teaching and learning are isolated, what kinds of teacher-student relationships exist? What impact can such relationships have on education? The author explores the particular features of the educational relationship in an asynchronous distance-learning context, examining the former from a theoretical perspective and describing how it is manifested. Lastly, she discusses the implicit causal link that frequently exists between the teacher-student relationship and academic success

Balancing the Pedagogical and Practical Concerns in Remote Higher Education: A Cyberethnography

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about physical school closures and quick transitions online, with universities making decisions for this new mode of instruction. Such decisions, however, were open to discussion and debates, particularly as students and instructors held varying concerns, experiences, and expectations for remote learning. We investigate what these debates are using a cyberethnography of a Facebook group for students and faculty, and an anonymous Freedom Wall page for students in the same university. The concerns centered on workload that balanced academic rigor and practical exigencies; learning modalities that balanced accountability and flexibility; and assessments that balanced academic integrity and viable accommodations. Taken altogether, these suggest that faculty and students’ concerns are not merely about discrete curricular choices but are, at their root, about balancing pedagogical excellence and practical adaptability. We thus suggest that universities couch their policies not through discrete options but through the balancing of values

Evaluating the efficacy of a hybrid nutrition course offered to on-campus and distance education students

The purpose of this research endeavor was to identify and apply effective strategies to evaluate the efficacy of a university-level general education hybrid nutrition course offered to distance education and on-campus students. A review of relevant literature indicated that student engagement levels, student characteristics, and the use of instructional technology are important to consider when evaluating postsecondary learning environments. Furthermore, the balance of asynchronous and synchronous learning activities within hybrid learning environments should be deemed suitable for the subject matter as well as the receiving student population. Finally, student perceptions and learning outcomes should also be assessed by hybrid course evaluations. The study described in this work established that a standardized general education hybrid nutrition course offered by Utah State University can effectively facilitate learning while generating positive student perceptions from the majority of enrolled distance education and on-campus cohorts alike. All course materials were available online, and were supplemented with weekly, synchronous recitation sessions. Interestingly, the learning outcomes and satisfaction rates of the two student cohorts were similar. However, notable differences in learning preference and performance were identified based on student age alone. Modifications to subsequent versions of the evaluated hybrid course were made based on the findings of the study. Other instructors and course design teams involved in postsecondary nutrition education may view this project as an outline for their own hybrid course development and evaluation efforts, although, limitations did exist and should be acknowledged. An experimental design exhibiting more control over potential extraneous variables, such as instructor, could offer more concrete evidence than the observational nature of the present study. Also, it appears that students\u27 success levels in a given learning environment are not only influenced by instructional measures, but also by the personal and contextual factors of each individual student. Future evaluative efforts should place a greater emphasis on exhibited learning patterns, educational background, and academic discipline of students within the hybrid learning environment. Ultimately, the primary challenge of a modern-day hybrid course is to offer a cohesive and effective blend of uniformity, customization, flexibility, and instructional guidance based on anticipated needs of students

Voracious Appetite of Online Teaching: Examining Labour Issues Related to K-12 Online Learning

A paper presented at the annual Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE) conference, Waterloo, Ontario, February 16, 2013. Distance education and online learning at the K-12 level is growing at dramatic rates in Canada, the United States and worldwide. Barbour (2012) estimated that there are approximately 245,000 Canadian students who are enrolled in one or more distance education courses. This figure represents approximately 5% of the total K-12 student population in Canada; up from the estimated 2.5% to 3% reported just two years earlier (Barbour, 2010). This is dwarfed by the rate of growth in the United States, where the Ambient Insights (2011) estimated there are 4,000,000 students engaged in online learning; up from 2,000,000 the previous year (Wicks, 2010)

Conducting Synchronous Assessment through Web Videoconference to Improve Online Learning: Case Outcomes with Nonparametric Analysis

Online assessment has always been a challenge to online teaching. Educators have been exploring a variety of methods to perform online assessment. However, it appears that there is not enough work in the field focusing on online synchronous assessment. This paper presents two cases that demonstrate the design and implementation of using web videoconference for synchronous assessment in an educational research methods online course and an instructional video production online course. The purpose of the two cases was to explore whether or with what methods student online learning could be improved through synchronous assessment. Case outcomes were analyzed with nonparametric methods, and the results did show students’ improvement in their learning, specifically in their understanding and mastering of factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive knowledge. Methods, procedures, tips and cautions of conducting such videoconference-based synchronous assessment in online courses are discussed