Trialing project-based learning in a new EAP ESP course: A collaborative reflective practice of three college English teachers

Currently in many Chinese universities, the traditional College English course is facing the risk of being ‘marginalized’, replaced or even removed, and many hours previously allocated to the course are now being taken by EAP or ESP. At X University in northern China, a curriculum reform as such is taking place, as a result of which a new course has been created called ‘xue ke’ English. Despite the fact that ‘xue ke’ means subject literally, the course designer has made it clear that subject content is not the target, nor is the course the same as EAP or ESP. This curriculum initiative, while possibly having been justified with a rationale of some kind (e.g. to meet with changing social and/or academic needs of students and/or institutions), this is posing a great challenge for, as well as considerable pressure on, a number of College English teachers who have taught this single course for almost their entire teaching career. In such a context, three teachers formed a peer support group in Semester One this year, to work collaboratively co-tackling the challenge, and they chose Project-Based Learning (PBL) for the new course. This presentation will report on the implementation of this project, including the overall designing, operational procedure, and the teachers’ reflections. Based on discussion, pre-agreement was reached on the purpose and manner of collaboration as offering peer support for more effective teaching and learning and fulfilling and pleasant professional development. A WeChat group was set up as the chief platform for messaging, idea-sharing, and resource-exchanging. Physical meetings were supplementary, with sound agenda but flexible time, and venues. Mosoteach cloud class (lan mo yun ban ke) was established as a tool for virtual learning, employed both in and after class. Discussions were held at the beginning of the semester which determined only brief outlines for PBL implementation and allowed space for everyone to autonomously explore in their own way. Constant further discussions followed, which generated a great deal of opportunities for peer learning and lesson plan modifications. A reflective journal, in a greater or lesser detailed manner, was also kept by each teacher to record the journey of the collaboration. At the end of the semester, it was commonly recognized that, although challenges existed, the collaboration was overall a success and they were all willing to continue with it and endeavor to refine it to be a more professional and productive approach

A glimpse into nursing discursive behaviour in interprofessional online learning

Background: The importance of interprofessional learning to provide quality patient care has resulted in the increasing use of asynchronous computer mediated conferencing in healthcare programmes within universities. The asynchronicity based on typed-written discussions in a virtual learning environment which provided flexibility in learning was used to increase opportunities for nurses and other allied healthcare professionals to participate in interprofessional learning in higher education. However, successful online learning relies on discursive practices in the virtual learning environment, embedded within discursive exchanges in practice are power relations in nursing language use; which had a negative impact on interprofessional learning and working relationships amongst nurses, between nurses and other allied healthcare professionals. This paper presents an analysis of the discursive practices of registered nurses in interprofessional learning based on asynchronous computer mediated conferencing. It aimed to ascertain if power relations were implicit in nursing language. Methods: Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis was used to analyse eight hundred and ninety typewritten online messages created in a 100% text-based online learning module at Master’s level in a University in North England between September 2004 and September 2009. Although the messages were created by 9 registered nurses and 4 other allied healthcare professionals undertaking interprofessional learning to learn about the issues surrounding e-learning in healthcare settings, this paper is part of a larger study focused on the messages by the nurses. Results: Nurses’ messages tended to appear as the first few responses in the discussion threads and their language was formal and objectifying. The genres resembled those found either in written assignment within higher education or in nursing documentation within practice. The virtual learning environment was an alternative social space for clinical practice where dominance of nurses was created, maintained and reinforced. Conclusions: Existing literature highlighted the incidents of problematic issues of interprofessional learning. In contrast, this paper explains the way nurses, through discursive practices, construct themselves in relation to their nursing and allied healthcare colleagues. Nurses need to be aware of the power-relations embedded in their language use and future research could usefully focus on the discursive aspect of interprofessional learning

Teaching and learning in virtual worlds: is it worth the effort?

Educators have been quick to spot the enormous potential afforded by virtual worlds for situated and authentic learning, practising tasks with potentially serious consequences in the real world and for bringing geographically dispersed faculty and students together in the same space (Gee, 2007; Johnson and Levine, 2008). Though this potential has largely been realised, it generally isn’t without cost in terms of lack of institutional buy-in, steep learning curves for all participants, and lack of a sound theoretical framework to support learning activities (Campbell, 2009; Cheal, 2007; Kluge & Riley, 2008). This symposium will explore the affordances and issues associated with teaching and learning in virtual worlds, all the time considering the question: is it worth the effort

Transforming pre-service teacher curriculum: observation through a TPACK lens

This paper will discuss an international online collaborative learning experience through the lens of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. The teacher knowledge required to effectively provide transformative learning experiences for 21st century learners in a digital world is complex, situated and changing. The discussion looks beyond the opportunity for knowledge development of content, pedagogy and technology as components of TPACK towards the interaction between those three components. Implications for practice are also discussed. In today’s technology infused classrooms it is within the realms of teacher educators, practising teaching and pre-service teachers explore and address effective practices using technology to enhance learning

Blogs in Higher Education : encouraging self-reflective learning in group assessments for Business Students

This article analyses and assesses the inclusion of blogs in higher education learning and teaching, and its use as an enabler for reflective learning, particularly in the context of group work. The research reports on findings from existing literature and from an isolated ob-servation of a class of 130 business students at undergraduate level. Two main areas for discussion have been defined: the impact of blogs on group work and the impact of blogs on student engagement. It has been found that the use of blogs in teaching and assessment deepens students’ individual learning experience and increases group performance through the application of Kolb’s Learning Cycle. Kolb’s theory has been used as guidance in tailoring blog tasks and activities. Overall, blog activities have minimised issues between group members and allowed for a more flexible and positive learning experience throughout the duration of group work; it was also found that students engaged in blog writing were able to motivate their peers to write on their own blogs too. Moreover, a relation between blog writing and better overall achievement in learning has been found.Peer reviewe

Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies

A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size. As a result of this screening, 51 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes—measured as the difference between treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation—was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face. Analysts noted that these blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions. This finding suggests that the positive effects associated with blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se. An unexpected finding was the small number of rigorous published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K–12 students. In light of this small corpus, caution is required in generalizing to the K–12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education)

A REVIEW OF TEACHING STRATEGIES FOR ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN HEALTHCARE STUDIES

Teachers of English as a foreign language are faced with difficulties in selecting the proper teaching strategy for students learning English for academic and professional purposes. Fifteen research studies were included in the current study on teaching strategies for students with English as a foreign language in healthcare studies. The objective is to determine the most useful and effective teaching strategies for healthcare students learning English as a foreign language. The review study was conducted using Noblit and Hare methasynthesis and Dearholt and Dang’s Johns Hopkins Nursing Evidence-Based Practice Model and Guidelines for evaluation, selection and analysis. Language teaching strategies play an important role in teaching English as a foreign language especially in specific professional environments such as healthcare and medicine. The study divides language teaching strategies for English in healthcare into two perspectives; those concerned with improving students’ language learning performance and those examining specific instruction strategies and their effects on students’ knowledge. Further it gives an outline of four general English language skills and most commonly used teaching strategies. The results of the study may be used by English language teachers and content creators for developing new teaching materials and courses to help students succeed. For healthcare as a profession, a future with newly educated professional who have skills in English and other foreign languages will be beneficial in helping their target population

Facilitating academic words learning: a data-driven approach using a collocation consultation system built from open access research papers

It is essential and beneficial for ESP students to master collocations of a set of core academic words. Corpus analysis tools (e.g. concordancers) have been widely used in facilitating collocation learning, and promising results have been demonstrated in the literature. This paper presents a learner friendly collocation consultation system built from 50,000 open access research papers made available by CORE (https://core.ac.uk/). The research papers are grouped into four disciplines: Arts and Humanities, Physical Sciences, Life Sciences and Social Sciences. From these articles, useful syntactic-based word combinations (e.g., verb+noun, noun+noun, adjective+noun) are extracted, organized by syntactic patterns, sorted by frequency, and linked to their context sentences. Learners can search collocations and look up the usage of an academic word in any of these four disciplines by simply entering the word or selecting it from one of pre-compiled academic word lists. The paper will also show how the system was used in an initial study carried out with 15 international students studying computer science at University of Waikato, New Zealand