Page 48 - BLENDED LEARNING

A summary of my guiding principles
When designing the course I took into consideration my learners’ needs, the skills they
have and/or need to acquire and the technology available to meet these needs. When
choosing the technology to support my course I was guided by the considerations of
matching my learners’ present and future needs with the affordances and limitations
of the learning environment that was created, including its accessibility, ease of use,
and the cost of maintaining it. It is important too that such course delivery can help to
promote a shift towards more learner-centred teaching.

How is the course blended?

During the weekly face-to-face sessions, for the duration of two academic hours
students read and discuss a variety of materials, the selection of which is made based
on their interests and taking into account their learning needs. Then the students are
offered a series of activities and exercises to help them to improve different aspects
of writing and the language. Their choice is conditioned by the course syllabus and
at the beginning of the course many decisions are based on error analysis of the
students’ work made by the teacher.

During the face-to-face sessions students do brainstorming and prepare their essay’s
outline. In addition, depending on time availability, the students are asked to work on
their own to freewrite on the topic of their essay and then discuss what they have
written with their peers. This work then continues to the course’s wiki, hosted by
PBWorks, which students can access from home during the week.

In the wiki the students post their works in progress or completed ones. Each of them
has her own folder in the wiki, which makes it easier to navigate. The students are
asked to post their works in the wiki at least one day before a face-to-face session to
leave their peers some time for commenting on their work. In general, they are asked
to comment on at least one other person’s work so as to not overwhelm them with
the amount of work and to encourage them to do it. After that the students should
revise their essay drafts based on the comments of their peers and the teacher.
This way the students go through all the stages of the writing process and can
continuously work on improving their essay drafts.
It is very convenient to draft, revise and edit essay drafts in the wiki, which allows for
an easy exchange of comments and for multiple ways of commenting both by editing
the work and/or adding comments in the thread.

In total the students received 236 hours of instruction over the period of two
years, including 34 and 68 private study hours during the two academic years
of instruction, respectively.

Teacher and learner roles/interaction patterns
Traditionally the Russian system of education is more teacher than student-centered,
so this course offers a way to gradually move away from a teacher-centred
classroom. The teacher controls the choice of texts for discussion, and discussion
questions for the reading selection. She also suggests the tasks the students have

A blended English as a Foreign Language academic writing course | 45