Social Capital and Online Learning CommunitiesAssignment:
Based on your personal experience, discussions and readings, choose a topic or title that may be of interest to you, personally. Be prepared to present this topic/title to your new team members during Unit 3. When consensus on topics and titles is reached, you and your team will develop a research and/or writing project that will become your final paper for this course.
I'm working with a small but diverse faculty of ex-patriot teachers in Saudi Arabia. They come from varied backgrounds: K-12 teachers from US school districts, expat EFL teachers with years of experience in the Middle East, former Peace Corps, former US and Canadian university faculty with no foreign experience, newly credentialed teachers. Our task, broadly speaking, is to teach the world English now that mastery of this language is the arbiter of access to resources all over the world. Huge numbers of learners struggling against antique and proven-to-fail teaching methods are trained by people ill equipped even to understand the problems their students face.
Many of these problems can addressed either directly or indirectly by online and blended learning solutions. None of the faculty have any substantial experience with this medium. Some are suspicious of it, others simply regard learning new skills as an annoyance and a nuisance.
My immediate problem is demonstrate value and benefit of online learning and teaching to skeptical faculty members, to spark their interest in it and and raise adoption rates. The purpose of doing this is to increase student engagement, improve effectiveness, and reduce attrition. I am particularly interested in the ideas of Ivan Illich, especially his vision of a "learning web".
4 comments:
Driving an interest where none currently exists or where there is an existing bias can be difficult for sure, so your topic idea is timely. One option might be to design an activity that is web-based but not related to teaching English or anything that might relate to work activities. Much like teambuilding activities that involve wrapping Christmas gifts or painting classrooms in a poor school district, showcasing engagement with inline tools in a fun and interactive manner might help spark some interest
Mark, I love the look and the ease of use of your blog. I share some issues with you -- not that I am teaching ESL -- but that I work with faculty who are reluctant to try anything.
I was thinking along the lines of what Chris wrote. If there is some small tangible problem, unrelated to teaching, that could be solved with the computer/internet, that could be a good step in them developing trust and realizing the benefit of the online world.
Or maybe in the English classes, maybe the teachers might be willing to have their students write to long distance pen pals, using email or blogs, as an intro. to long distance communication and collaboration.
P.S. How do you survive there? You are so motivated to try new ideas and technologies!
We have similar issues within the corporate world too - sometimes groups are unwilling to try something new because they understand how to do things the way they are done today and having to learn something new will upset that sense of structure. Adopting new technologies takes time when dealing with a group of people - there will always be early adopters and there will always be those who hold out until the last possible second, just like people filing their tax return.
One thing you could do is generate step action job aids and examples of what can be done. On occasion, people are reluctant to try something new because they are intimidated by it - but give 'em a job aid that walks 'em through the task and lets them create something and they'll get hooked.
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