Teaching Languages in Blended Synchronous Learning Classrooms

A Practical Guide

Alba Girons, Nicholas Swinehart

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781626168060
• eBook ISBN: 9781626168077
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Teaching Language Arts
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Blended synchronous learning (BSL), where some students are present in a physical classroom while others participate online in real time, has been gaining momentum and shows great potential for teaching less commonly taught languages (LCTLs). In Teaching Languages in Blended Synchronous Learning Classrooms, Alba Girons and Nicholas Swinehart provide a concise overview of BSL as it pertains to language instruction. Topics include a number of key factors in the BSL classroom:

• types of BSL environments• pedagogical considerations• group dynamics• creating and adapting activities• common logistical challenges• optimal space design• technology selection, training, and support

This practical guide will be of use to teachers, technology staff, and program administrators, all working together to implement successful BSL programs and ensure quality learning opportunities for every student.

1

Contextualizing Blended Synchronous Learning

THIS SYNCHRONOUS MIXTURE of learning modalities has been referred to by several names, including “synchromodal” (Bell, Cain, and Sawaya 2013) and “synchronous hybrid” (Butz et al. 2014), with “blended synchronous” (Hastie et al. 2010) emerging as the most consistently used label. Definitions are similarly varied, including “the integration of physical classroom and cyber classroom settings using synchronous learning to enable unlimited connectivity for teachers and students from any part of the world” (Hastie et al. 2010, 10) and “learning and teaching where remote students participate in face-to-face classes by means of rich-media synchronous technologies such as video conferencing, web conferencing, or virtual worlds” (Bower et al. 2014, 11). In an attempt to further distill the definition to its most integral components, we define BSL as technology-mediated learning environments where face-to-face and remote students are joined synchronously.

What does this look like in practice? On one end there is usually a fairly traditional classroom—an instructor and face-to-face students gathered around tables or desks, a surface for the instructor to write on—with the addition of conferencing technology that allows remote students on the other end to participate in the class. This means that even the physical environment is blended in a way that forces instructors to direct attention to both the physical and technological components simultaneously. On the other end(s), remote students may be gathered in a similar conferencing-equipped classroom on their local campus or may join individually from a personal device, depending on the context. Each student, regardless of physical location, is a full participant in the course and can receive equal course credit.

Benefits and Challenges

BSL environments offer benefits to a wide range of stakeholders. At the institutional level, BSL allows universities to make efficient use of limited resources. Some institutions may be able to offer one course to students at multiple campuses, rather than running multiple sections with smaller enrollment. In other cases, universities who are unable to hire faculty to teach a given course may be able to “share” that course with another institution, typically as a result of mutually beneficial partnerships. Academic programs, particularly at the graduate level, can make their programs more accessible to students who may not otherwise be able to attend due to geographic or schedule constraints. For instructors who consistently struggle with low enrollment, BSL offers opportunities to open courses up to new populations of students who need such specialized offerings. Finally, BSL can enable students to participate in highly specialized courses at other campuses or institutions that would otherwise not be available to them, as well as engage in a more interactive and dynamic online learning experience.

The benefits of BSL come at the cost of significant challenges and demands on resources in terms of administration, technology, and pedagogy. The administrative challenges come in part from logistical concerns from having students in multiple locations, and they are exacerbated when these students are enrolled at different campuses or separate institutions. Technological challenges include selecting hardware and software, integrating the technology into well-designed learning spaces, training instructors and students to use equipment effectively, and providing ongoing support and evaluation. While these administrative and technological challenges are formidable, particularly in the early stages of BSL implementation, there are many workable solutions for institutions to choose from, depending on their needs and resources. The pedagogical challenges of teaching two (or more) separate audiences simultaneously, however, are even more numerous and lack easily identifiable solutions. As a result, the majority of this book is devoted to discussing pedagogical challenges and strategies for overcoming them.

Example Contexts

Examples where BSL has been implemented are as diverse as the many needs and contexts of institutions, multi-institution organizations, and individual programs, and each context presents different motivations, challenges, and considerations. What follows is not an exhaustive history of BSL environments but rather a number of contexts representative of typical uses of BSL.

Within a Single Institution

The most common use of BSL is within a single course or program where all students are enrolled at the same institution. Some students attend class in an on-campus classroom, while other remote students (either permanently or temporarily away from campus) attend via conferencing technologies. These situations typically align with more traditional contexts of online courses or distance education, with BSL serving as a tool to further remove barriers between remote and face-to-face students. This can sometimes be used for relatively large lecture classes where remote students have the option of either viewing the lecture synchronously or watching a recording asynchronously (Popov 2009). However, BSL is most beneficial for smaller groups where interaction among all participants is key. Graduate programs are one of the most common users of BSL (e.g., Bell et al. 2016), which offers solutions for maintaining engagement among students who are often geographically dispersed. Using BSL in smaller courses or programs like these allows for more interaction than asynchronous online sections or activities, enabling graduate students to build and maintain relationships with faculty and within their cohort of peers.

Multiple Campuses within One System

Institutions with multiple campuses, like large state university systems, can at times use BSL to offer courses taught at one campus to students attending other campuses. One example relevant to language instruction is the University of Wisconsin’s Collaborative Language Program, established in 1998 and serving approximately 300 students per semester (University of Wisconsin n.d.). This program allows students at branch campuses to learn languages like Hmong, Japanese, and Russian, where materials and even instructors can be difficult to find. Compared to partnerships between separate institutions, the administration of these courses is relatively streamlined in terms of coordinating enrollments, classroom space, technology, and support staff.

Cross-institutional Partnerships

A third context for BSL is partnerships that allow students from one institution to enroll in courses offered by another, typically while attending online from their home campus. This represents the most complex use of BSL and will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 2. Two language-specific examples are the Shared Course Initiative between Columbia University, Yale University, and Cornell University, and the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s CourseShare program. Both these programs make a wide range of languages available to a large number of students who would otherwise not have access to such offerings, but they require a significant investment of resources—financial, technological, and human—at each institution.

Research

A growing body of research has served to increase the visibility and availability of information on blended synchronous instruction. Initial problems regarding BSL research included a lack of common vocabulary: as noted above, researchers had used several different terms to refer to face-to-face and remote students in the same class. At present, BSL research appears to be in transition from the early stages of descriptive case studies to more analytical research tied to theories and methodologies of teaching and learning. This section briefly highlights some common strands of research regarding BSL environments.

Case Studies

By far the largest amount of published research on BSL is case studies that describe the practices of one or more instances of BSL, often including findings in terms of best practices and recommendations (e.g., Bell et al. 2016; Cain, Sawaya, and Bell 2013; Chakraborty and Victor 2004; Cunningham 2014; Rogers et al. 2003; Roseth, Akcaoglu, and Zellner 2013; Szeto 2015; Wang and Huang 2018). One particular example is Bower et al.’s (2014) Blended Synchronous Learning: A Handbook for Educators, which presents seven different case studies from a range of contexts and a cross-case analysis of student perceptions, technology, pedagogy, cognitive load, and institutional factors.

Perceptions of Students and Instructors

Another large group of studies investigates the perceptions of students and instructors on their experiences in BSL environments (e.g., Bower et al. 2014; Conklin 2017; Conklin, Oyarzun, and Barreto 2017; Cunningham 2014; Stewart, Harlow, and DeBacco 2011; Szeto 2014). One key finding for instructors is the added cognitive load when dealing with two seperate groups of students in one learning environment (Bower et al. 2014; Conklin, Oyarzun, and Barreto 2017). Results for students are varied and at times contradictory, but these studies highlight the fact that both groups have advantages and disadvantages that can affect their satisfaction and perspectives. For example, online students tend to have higher intrinsic motivation due to enrolling in a course that may not otherwise be available to them (Conklin 2017), but they are isolated from their instructor and the physical classroom and may not have the same ability to speak as freely as their face-to-face peers. These face-to-face students, on the other hand, may feel uncomfortable having remote students in their class (Conklin 2017) and that their instructor is giving more attention to the remote group (Szeto 2014).

Comparative Studies of Learning Outcomes

Another strand of BSL research, and one that remains underdeveloped, is studies that compare the experiences and outcomes of face-to-face students with those of online students. The goal is to ensure that both groups attain equal (or at least equitable) learning outcomes and identify factors that may favor one group over the other, so that those factors can be mitigated in future implementations. Szeto (2014) found that the two groups experienced different learning effects, with the remote group perceived to have received more attention from the instructor, but similar learning outcomes. Butz et al. (2014) similarly found few significant differences between the two groups in needs satisfaction, motivation, or perceived success.

Models and Frameworks

Several studies use findings from their own and other research to present models and frameworks for BSL implementation. In designing the layout of BSL environments, Bell, Cain, and Sawaya (2013) and Hastie et al. (2010) both provide models and illustrations for possible combinations of students and instructors in the physical and online spaces. Szeto and Cheng (2016, 500) focus on factors that occur during course meetings i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1 Contextualizing Blended Synchronous Learning
• 2 Preparing BSL Environments
• 3 Pedagogical Challenges
• References
• About the Authors