Online World Language Instruction Training and Assessment

An Ecological Approach

Carmen King Ramírez,Barbara A. Lafford,James E. Wermers

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781647121068
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Sprachwissenschaft

This new guide provides a much-needed critical pedagogical approach to computer-assisted language learning (CALL) teacher education (CTE). By combining best CTE training and evaluation practices with assessment tools to address all facets of learning online, the authors explain how teachers can use technology to build successful online programs.

1

The Challenges of Moving Online

Online teaching and learning have played an increasingly important role in colleges and universities in recent years. Where online teaching and learning were once the exception to the rule in a landscape dominated by F2F classes, it is more and more common for students and teachers to move into online pedagogical spaces. Furthermore, while the movement online has been under way for quite some time, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced change to happen at a much quicker pace since the first half of 2020. During the past year online teaching and learning became, at least for a time, the primary way in which we teach and learn. While the near universal use of online education may well change as F2F classes resume at institutions of higher learning around the world, it seems clear that online learning will continue to play an essential role moving forward (Alexander 2020; Gardner 2020).

This recent explosion in online teaching and learning has presented numerous challenges, many of them unarticulated, to students, faculty, and administrators. F2F learning has been the primary modus operandi of the vast majority of teachers and learners alike. Learning has tended to happen in physical classrooms, in churches, and around kitchen tables far more often than in digital spaces. While engaging in online environments now is a part of everyday life for many, this does not mean that we are prepared to engage in the complexities of online learning. In this chapter, we begin to unpack what moving education online really means and why the shift from F2F to online learning is one that requires that we think very carefully about teaching and learning and, more pointedly, why it means that we might need to rethink how we evaluate online teaching and learning. Although the rest of this volume focuses on the training and evaluation of online language teachers, this opening chapter explores the ecological shift from physical to digital spaces that faculty in all disciplines are now facing.

THE ECOLOGICAL SHIFT FROM PHYSICAL TO DIGITAL SPACES

The movement from physical to digital teaching contexts requires a major expansion of our understanding of the behavioral norms, cultural values, and the types of spaces that can characterize a “teaching/learning environment” and that can underlie two very different pedagogical ecologies. In order to appreciate just how different online education is from the kinds of F2F teaching and learning that have been going on in higher education for more than a century, it is helpful to briefly consider how and why online education became so important in higher education. These reasons range from increased technological possibilities, to financial pressures facing universities who do not have the resources to build more brick-and-mortar structures, to the desire to reach more students (Turoff 2006). The 2019 survey of faculty attitudes toward technology jointly conducted by Inside Higher Ed and Gallup revealed that “a new high of 46 percent of faculty members, up from 39 percent in 2016 and 30 percent in 2013” reported they had taught a credit-bearing online course at some point in their career (Jaschik and Lederman 2019, 7). Furthermore, a 2018 report by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES 2018) revealed that, despite recent decreases in overall student enrollment at universities in the United States, there has been a steady increase in the number of students taking online classes, with only 15.6 percent of postsecondary students engaging in any kind of distance or online learning in 2003 and 43.1 percent taking such courses in 2016. This growth in online teaching and learning is both rich with possibilities and challenges.

The consistent growth in online learning in recent years has disrupted education in significant, if sometimes underappreciated, ways. Online teaching and learning have become increasingly ubiquitous as the twenty-first century unfolds, but the foundations of online learning can be traced back as far as the development of text-based correspondence learning in the nineteenth century (Kentnor 2015). Written correspondence courses eventually gave way to new methods of distance learning with the rise of televisual technologies in the middle of the twentieth century (Perry and Pilati 2011) that allowed for courses to be delivered to students’ homes. Then, starting in the mid-1990s, the development of internet-based distance education led educators and learners to Web-based technologies. Moreover, in the last two decades, the rise in the public use of digital platforms like social media and learning management systems have offered further opportunities for expanding (and complicating) online learning.

Despite seemingly constant growth and change in distance education, there has not always been a demonstrated interest in exploring in depth the ways in which these changes might, or should, affect pedagogy (Conover and Miller 2014; Major 2015; Montelongo 2019; Montelongo and Eaton 2019; Westbrook 2014). Many early conversations about online learning failed to recognize the unique pedagogical demands of online classes and seemingly assumed that the pedagogical practices of the traditional brick-and-mortar classroom could simply be moved into online spaces (Kentnor 2015). Faculty who had been trained to teach in F2F environments and who had themselves grown up as students in those physical educational environments tended to operate on the belief that they could reproduce what they were already doing in their F2F classes, making small tweaks where necessary.

This ethos of simply moving F2F courses and practices into online spaces, sometimes referred to as “porting,” might at first appear to make some sense. On the surface, online teaching and learning might not seem all that different from the kinds of teaching and learning we have done in brick-and-mortar classrooms for at least a century. We are, after all, teaching in the same disciplines and covering much of the same material that we always have. There are, to be sure, some similarities between F2F and online education. Ideally, in both platforms, students and teachers work together toward educational ends that include passing on information, challenging assumptions, developing new knowledge, and eliciting teacher-student and student-student interaction. Also, in both F2F classrooms and online education, such ends are approached through a combination of reading, lectures, discussions, and the submission and assessment of assignments. However, when we look a little bit closer, these similarities end up being only superficial, and there are, in fact, significant differences between F2F and online education.

One way to think about the differences between the F2F and online modalities is to compare them to the differences between American football and fútbol (soccer). To the casual observer, football and fútbol might appear quite similar. Both games involve two teams of eleven players each pitted against one another and attempting to move a ball toward a goal at either end of a large, lined grass pitch. However, any fan of football or fútbol is likely to tell you that despite the similar sounding names and seeming commonalities, the two games are ecologically quite different. Football is a sport of stops and starts, of quick and explosive bursts of energy punctuating relatively long periods of inactivity. Fútbol, on the other hand, is a flowing and continuous game of endurance. The unique nature of each of these sports also means that athletes with different kinds of characteristics are required to build effective football and fútbol teams. A three-hundred-pound lineman might be essential in the violent starts and stops of football, but they would be significantly less so in a game that required them to run thirteen miles in a single outing. Likewise, the endurance athletes that excel in fútbol might find themselves badly out of place in a game that required bulk and mass to slow movement at a point of attack.

As with football and fútbol, the apparent similarities between online and face-to-face learning are often superficial. While we are ostensibly teaching the same content in the way that both football and fútbol see eleven-person teams moving with purpose toward an opponents’ goal, online and F2F teaching actually require very different skill sets and, often, very different teachers as the practices and skills that make a teacher excel in one modality are often a liability in the other. In turn, this means that the skills and tools we have developed for evaluating teaching need to be updated to reflect the significant differences between F2F and online teaching and learning. Many instructional strategies that worked in the past likely will not work now, so the tools we used in the past to assess our accomplishments need to change as well.

Some examples to illustrate the difference in skills needed to teach in F2F and online contexts are in order. Perhaps the clearest example of the gap between F2F and online teaching is how one cultivates a teaching style and persona. It is not uncommon to see faculty who learned through F2F methods and who became themselves practiced and accomplished teachers in physical classroom environments almost naturally employ a wide array of behaviors that correspond to successful F2F teaching. Experienced faculty often know how to make use of the physical space of the classroom to craft and break down barriers. They understand how to modulate their voices for dramatic effect, how to read curiosity and confusion on students faces, and more. These are skills, some of them so subtle as to be almost imperceptible and immeasurable, that are cultivated over a lifetime. They are also skills that likely do not transfer effectively to online learning—that is, learning that takes place in digital spaces and through technologies that can confound even the most seasoned F2F teacher.

It is not only teaching styles that may not easily translate into online spaces from F2F spaces—assessment has to be rethought as well. This includes both the kinds of work that students are assigned and the various modes of feedback provided by faculty in response to that work. We likely all either teach or know faculty who teach online classes that employ many of the same quizzes, writing assignments, and projects that one might find in an F2F class. It is also not uncommon to see faculty employ things like cameras and LockDown Browsers, Web browsers that seek to limit student Web use during a given online course activity. While rarely articulated this way, the logic at work here seems to be that whatever differences exist between online and F2F courses do not necessitate that we recreate our assignments to take advantage of the affordances of new digital spaces. This logic also seems to extend to the manner in which feedback is provided on student work in online classes, with many faculty opting to provide the same kind of written (or typed) feedback that they had been providing in F2F classes instead of taking advantage of feedback digital channels with more teacher presence (e.g., audio or video commentary).

In part, the failure to make the necessary adjustments for the new realities of an online world stems from faculty resistance to online learning. As Robert Ubell (2017) notes, there are a number of factors that lead to faculty resistance to teaching online, including concerns about efficacy, autonomy, and recognition. Such concerns are well captured in the 2019 Inside Higher Ed survey (Jaschik and Lederman 2019) on faculty attitudes toward technology. This survey reveals a common opinion among faculty that online learning is necessarily inferior to face-to-face learning. Only 33 percent faculty surveyed agreed that “for-credit online courses can achieve student learning outcomes equivalent to those of in-person courses” (25). Absent a belief in the efficacy of online learning and its value for students, it makes sense that faculty might be reticent to invest significant time and energy in developing the necessary skill sets to make a change from what they have always done. The same survey also shows skepticism among faculty that the move online will benefit students financially, a key argument of many administrators, with only 37 percent of faculty agreeing that online education is likely to lower the cost of education for students moving forward. There are also persistent concerns about labor in online spaces. Faculty have expressed concerns about how their labor is valued and supported. Only 36 percent of faculty believe their intellectual property is adequately protected when it comes to digital work, and only 35 percent of faculty agree that they are fairly compensated for such work. Further, only 25 percent of faculty believe that administrators fully understand the demands of teaching online, and only 22 percent believe there are appropriate awards in place for contributions to digital pedagogy. Given both the complexity of the move online and faculty perceptions about doing so, it is perhaps unsurprising that we find ourselves in the midst of a major ongoing pedagogical challenge that we are not yet taking the necessary steps to overcome.

In sum, it has become increasingly clear in recent years that online teaching requires that we rethink staid assumptions and practices related to online learners, instructors, and content development (Kebritchi, Lipschuetz, and Santiague 2017; Major 2015). We can see this more clearly if we take a moment to tease out the teaching and assessment issues discussed above. If we are to train instructors in best pedagogical practice, we need to evaluate skills necessary for their success in whatever teaching environment they inhabit.

TRAINING FOR ONLINE INSTRUCTORS

Critics and practitioners have become more and more aware that teaching and learning in online environments are markedly different than they are in F2F environments, and there has been a growing push to begin to think in more robust ways about how we might prepare teachers to meet the challenge. While in the earliest years of online teaching there was little and often no support for teachers moving from F2F to digital environments, there is now a growing body of research on best practices for teaching in this new pedagogical context (Kentnor 2015; Major 2015; Montelongo and Eaton 2019). While there are a variety of online teacher-training programs ranging from preservice programs, to online webinars, to asynchronous online courses, there is a coalescing conversation about what the best of those include. While a more in-depth look at online teacher training in language-learning environments is taken up in chapters 2 and 3, here it is useful to look more broadly at trends in online training and assessment across disciplines.

Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt (2011) have developed an excellent framework for understanding what quality online instruction looks like and for thinking about what training looks like for instructors who need to learn to teach in digital spaces. Building on a body of critical work focused on online instruction (Chickering and Gamson 1987; Graham et al. 2001; Palloff and Pratt 2011; Weimer 2002), Palloff and Pratt (2011) argue that the excellent online instructor is one who

understands the differences between face-to-face and online teaching . . . is committed to [online teaching] . . . is able to establish presence early in the course and encourages students to do the same . . . is highly motivated and in turn is a good motivator for students . . . [and] understands the importance of community building and devotes time at the start of the class to this function. (13)

Some of the characteristics listed above undoubtedly overlap with those of the excellent F2F instructor. For example, an instructor’s motivation and their ability to motivate students are essential in any learning environment. However, the bulk of what Palloff and Pratt identify here are characteristics that are unique to the challenges of the online environment.

More recently, Florence Martin, Kiran Budhrani, Swapna Kumar, and Albert Ritzhaupt (2019) have identified five different roles that they see as being occupied by the excellent online instructor: facilitator, course designer, content manager, subject matter expert, and mentor. As in Palloff and Pratt’s (2011) model, the competencies of an excellent online instructor identified by Martin and colleagues are very often unique to the online teaching environment. The extent to which the excellent online teacher must have a unique set of carefully cultivated characteristics not necessarily present in the excellent F2F instructor has been echoed by numerous other scholars (Chatham-Carpenter and Spadaro 2019; Major 2015; Montelongo 2019; Morris 2018; Shackelford and Maxwell 2012). This has led to a consensus that focused training is required to aid faculty striving for excellence in online environments.

Extant forms of training for online teachers take a variety of forms including, but certainly not limited to, preservice trainings, massive open online courses (MOOCs), focused online modules, and even fully online classes (see chapter 2 for more details on online training formats). At present, there is no systematic or codified standard for how to best train online faculty (McGee, Windes, and Torres 2017). However, it is clear that any quality online training must begin with a frank assessment of the extant competencies of a given faculty member (a needs assessment). While we may live in a world immersed in digital technologies, this does not mean that all, most, or even many faculty will be prepared to immediately and effectively make the move to online teaching. This is particularly important to bear in mind in the present pandemic moment where exigency has forced many faculty to teach online, whether they were prepared to or not.

As Palloff and Pratt (2011) note, the cultivation of the skills and traits required for excellent online teaching can take a number of years and can be productively imagined as proceeding in phases. Many, if not most, faculty make their first moves toward online teaching through the use of some limited deployment of online tools in an F2F classroom (e.g., learning management systems). These faculty members, whom Palloff and Pratt label “visitors,” are just beginning down a long path toward the cultivation of skills and traits that will make them excellent online educators. From here, faculty can, with guidance and support, develop the skill sets that enable them to become what Palloff and Pratt label “novices,” “apprentices,” “insiders,” and eventually “masters.”

Movement from “visitor” to “master” is not something that happens accidentally; it is the result of effective training programs that clearly understand how complex such progress is. Here again, Palloff and Pratt (2011) provide a valuable framework. Drawing on Caffarella (2002), Palloff and Pratt identify a handful of key elements of effective online training:

•Don’t use cookie-cutter approaches.

•Use approaches based on adult learning theory.

•Honor experience!

•Model best pr...