I heard good news today… Nelson got his written expression test results and he met the language requirements of his position! He is now the proud owner of a B in both, reading and writing!… Now, he only has to work on tackling the oral interaction test (which is not the easiest of course!). It would be wonderful if he could avoid ful-time training by getting his B beforehand!… He is such a good learner that I would not be suprised he could actually do it!
Congratulations Nelson!
Also… Luna started in her French essential position this morning… although she was a bit nervous, I am sure that she did very well… I will know everything about it when I will see her online for her weekly lesson tomorrow evening. As for Krystal in Toronto, she is kind of fed up with the endless process (more than six months for the two positions she applied for) of trying and getting a job within the Public Service of Canada… therefore she started looking elswhere… yet she still wants to move on with her French training, judging that being bilingual is an asset for any career she will pursue. And, if she is ever called in for the PSC SLE tests, she will be ready…
Tomorrow Joyce in Moncton and Michelle in Toronto will start preparing for the SLE oral test and working on improving their French. None of them has a date for their testing yet… but they know that, sooner they are getting at it, better they will perform when they will be called in. It is what I call a judicious decision… waiting until the very last minute is rather ill-advised…
Which brings me to what I have been pondering upon for quite a while… Is teaching online taken seriously?… Of course, I am excluding my own trainees because they really do appreciate being able to get the help they need because of a technology that allows them to get the same quality training they would get in a face-to-face setting. A few years ago, this type of training would have been unthinkable… well, it could have been done over the phone or Skype with a minimum of tools (if none at all). Today, with virtual classrooms, screen and library content sharing, a whiteboard and access to their sessions recordings, my trainees get a state-of-the-art professional service.
That being said, the kind of specialized training I am providing is quite draining… often I have only a few hours to help people preparing for their three SLE tests with the federal government. Of course, I want all of them to achieve the levels they need to meet their positions language requirements… therefore, it is as much stressful for me as it is for them! Although most of my students get their levels, some do not and I cannot help it: if I had had more time with them, I could have prepared them better… even if they never blamed me for not passing their levels!… Unfortunately I am no miracle worker… though there are some days I wish I would be!
This is why, last winter, I thought I could join a site where I could teach French a couple of hours per week without stress… I was thinking of people wanting to learn the language based upon personal interest instead of upon vocational purpose… I did not want to add this type of training to my already existing business because I wanted to keep it the way it was: a service intended for federal public servants and people who had applied for a job within the PSC.
It did not take me long to realize that it was not what it was supposed to be… I gave two series of four classes each that ran in April and May: the first one was kind of successful… five people had joined and they attended regularly. Then, two dropped out before the second one started… then another one after the first class of the second round… I finally ended up with two students. I do believe some teachers do just fine by providing one-on-one tutoring… most of their students are probably the ones they already had and they brought them there so they could use the platform.
There are thousands of people (both students and teachers) on that site, yet I would say that the vast majority is inactive… Also, when they had introduced classes at the end of 2008, in order to attract students they had made them free… Of course people were signing up for classes yet, when teachers decided that their work had to be compensated financially (online teachers have to pay their bills as anyone else) and started to open classes that were no longer free, the numbers of attendees dropped drastically. In my mind, it was already too late for that shift… the FREE culture had already taken deep roots… Since then, management is trying all kinds of incentive to attract people into paid classes… so far, the no shows rate has not dropped!… instead (from what I read in the forums) it would have increased… Giving away mugs, bumper stickers, pens or T-shirts is called advertising/marketing, but giving away the actual service? I call it dumb!… especially when it is done on an extended period of time…
I have even seen people requesting free classes from teachers on topics they were interested in!… I do believe this is rude and I actually do not understand such mentality of “give me, give me”… Some argue that it is due to the nature of the Internet: apparently people using the web are expecting everything for free… FALSE!!!… In my mind, if you do market your services based upon free stuff, you will get the individuals who are indeed looking for freebies all the time… then do not expect them to change overnight when you want to turn things around!… This is why, before starting giving away your services, it is important to know exactly what you want… if you want your site to be a free resource, well… so be it!… But if you wish to make it a source of income, then think twice… because professional teachers who will join your site are expecting to be paid for the service they will provide and they will not wait for ages until that happens!… And, above all, do not maintain false hope… they are intelligent people and they will choose for themselves whether they wish to pursue or move on elsewhere. E-teaching is a serious job… and I do know that motivated people with a goal value it… I see it every day in my practice…
“L’expérience est une lanterne que l’on porte sur le dos et qui n’éclaire jamais que le chemin parcouru”
Confucius
2 Comments
Hi Lyne
Below is my philosophical ponderings on this subject based on my experiences of online learning and teaching.
We both know the site, it looked full of promise, and still does at first. It is marketed as a new era in learning, attracting students and teachers in many fields. A vast open community of information sharing, teaching and learning, a breakthrough in distance education and community.
I now look at it and wonder, is it a new era, is it open, does it promote learning.
Distance transmission of useful information has been around for thousands of years. It has existed since humans first found ways of sending information to other humans in order to share information about distant lands and peoples, warfare, technology, opportunity and resources.
There are many instances of messages and information changing the actions and the beliefs of the receivers of messages originating in far off lands. Later we see examples of scholars exchanging letters and views over long distances, often the messages took weeks or months to arrive and formed a lifelong interchange of ideas.
In the last 150 years we have moved into the era of almost instant communication, first the telegraph and then radio and television and now the internet.
Distance education as a formal method of education delivery is also not new, correspondence schools have existed for a long time now.
My neighbors, the New Zealanders started the Correspondence School (Te Kura-a-Tuhi) back in 1922. It is New Zealand’s largest school, with students from early childhood to secondary level. It began with “with 100 primary level students, expanding into secondary education in 1928 with 50 students and into early childhood education in 1976.” (wikipedia)
When the School was first established New Zealand parliamentarians referred to the founding vision as “a school for the benefit of the most isolated children, for example of lighthouse keepers and remote shepherds living upon small islands or in mountainous districts”. (wikipedia)
In Australia the School of the Air began in 1951 using two way radio allowing children in remote areas to participate in classroom activities and interact with teachers. It required students and teachers to add “over” at the end of a message.
It worked, “School classes were conducted via shortwave radio from 1951 through 2002, after which most schools switched to wireless internet technologies to deliver lessons that include live one-way video feeds and clear two-way audio”. (wikipedia)
So why am I talking about all this. It is to make the point that distance education is not new, there are many examples through history and in different parts of the world.
What we are seeing now is not a “revolution” in education but an adaptation of new technology to include formal distance education and mass or communal participation.
It is this latter part that is supposedly new. Is it ? Hmm, well I remember that in the rural town I grew up in, small community organizations existed based around specific interests and hobbies. Their purpose was to share information and they encouraged newcomers and made an effort to make people feel welcome.
We move forward in time to the early stages of the internet, where cooperation and freedom to express opinion abounded. Later, about 15 years ago, I was introduced to the world of the internet community and information sharing. I could ask a technical question late at night in Australia and someone in another part of the world, in another time zone, perhaps early morning, perhaps at midday, would provide a comment or suggestion. This information sharing often almost instantly solved or helped me to solve a technical problem.
Later came the further developments in the search engines and then wikipedia. Search engines are commercial while wikipedia is voluntary, perhaps not so much of a community as a collections of contributions from individuals.
Now we are seeing the rise of the so called educational revolution where information is available to all and can be taught by anyone and delivered to everyone.
Sometimes this occurs in open online communities that cooperate for single objective, such as the development of “open source” software. Those communities are usually are open to discussion and criticism, but they strive for accuracy of content.
Sometimes it is in the form of a religion, with devotees and ideologies and little tolerance for dissent.
The platform Lyne and I experienced was delivered through a company with mixed objectives of providing a quality teaching forum and developing a community. In my view this presents specific problems, particularly the issue teachers with experience and knowledge appearing alongside people who have decided they have something to say and want to have a go at teaching.
I think that both groups have a place online, but they need different forums. If a site has both types of teaching, and does not moderate or classify its teachers, the student has little guidance in selecting quality and experience. Such a site can be an education maze of choice for the student.
Another issue that arises is that the promotion of the site as a community means that many people think that a community online equals free. On such sites people are often reluctant to pay for services.
This contrasts with communities online that work. In my experience the functional online communities are places where people contribute their time and skills and in exchange gain such things as new knowledge and friends.
What about the “commercial” educational community. A company or a business enterprise usually means that the organization is reluctant to tolerate real criticism or real and open discussion of its faults and failures is not acceptable, nor is direct comparison with other similar sites. However, normally a commercial organization will try to fix its faults, if is doesn’t it will go bust. But the community commercial organization is always trying to keep the majority of people happy and in the process quality can suffer in pursuit of mass appeal and an underlying ideology.
It becomes more of a problem when the “commercialism” is interwoven with some sort of post 60’s idealism. In that environment neither a real business model nor a real open community develops. Often the “community” and “education platform” of the site can be so blurred that serious education based subjects are offered alongside the bizarre.
What is a serious teacher to do? In my case run away and find other platforms. What do I lose though taking this approach? The main loss is that I no longer participate in a community that has potential, but at present the community has a long way to go.
However I have been fortunate enough to have contact with several teachers who have had similar experiences and have reached similar conclusions.
So I have returned to finding my own community and expanding my teaching knowledge and finding my own students.
The technologies are new, audio, video and whiteboards online, and they are very useful. But even so the bulk of my teaching of English online to date has been through text chat, a form of fast correspondence.
What does all this mean? I think it means that the ideas behind teaching online are not new, what matters are the qualities and skills of the teacher and the dedication of the student.
Hi Philip!
I really enjoyed reading your philosophical thoughts on this topic tonight… and I agree with you, distance teaching/learning is not new… only the tools changed. And today it can be done in real-time…
Online or in real-life settings, I support your idea that… “what really matters are the qualities and skills of the teacher and the dedication of the student”…