Who’s in control?
September 29, 2008If learning is all about engagement ie. how engaged you are might determine how much you learn, then surely engagement is related to the degree of control that you have. Control in relation to e-learning might be about the learning itself (Do I want to be here?), content (Is this relevant to me?) or the tools (How transparent is the technology?)
Issues for the teacher in relation to the above three might include
- How much do we take into account student motivation, outside lives in relation to learning? Is this our responsibility or can we just ignore it and get on with the classroom business? How holistic am I in the way I address my class?
- How much control do we want to give to students in terms of content? eg. Does it matter what they listen to in English? Can we trust them to find listenings that are the right level for them (i+1)? But isn’t this better than me identifying a single listening for the class that might be i + or – x for each individual?
- How do we measure gain vs load? How do we balance the time taken for students to get to grips with a new application and to feel ‘in control’ (eg. Voicethread which is quite a simple application) and the value that they get out of using it in terms of their language learning? Of course, there is a hidden digital gain, in that what they learn with this application could contribute to their digital literacy in general. So the load vs gain equilibrium is going to be different for each student. Maybe as teacher I need to maximise the ways in which we use a single application.
Rather than hearing a listening text in class where the teacher controls the player, e-learning allows the student to control the buttons and listen to whatever, whenever and as often as she wants. Informal student feedback says that they love control in terms of listening, so they can listen over and over. How can I set up tasks that are appropriate where I don’t have control of the number of listenings? And how can I respond to their frsutration when they still ‘don’t get it’ after multiple listenings – when I don’t know the text because they’ve chosen it themselves? 
The value of e-learning lies in the interactivity that can occur through the medium. Fine with good software where feedback is valuable. But preparing materials with good feedback can be challenging. How much help to offer? How to allow students to control the amount of feedback they want?
All the above is really just me thinking through some of the issues in relation to my teaching and observation of oral skills over the year. Helping students make sense of what they hear – I’ve always thought that listening is the least concrete skill to teach…
This issue of control is an important one. For myself, I haven’t found a way to give up total control of what students listen to or read or write. But I try to give them some options. They may have a choice of listening to this or that or the other audio text. And sometimes I let them choose any text on the theme we are working on in class (education right now).
How I handle tasks is to have them write about the text or record a summary or reaction to it. I don’t know how it would work for you in your setting, but it works pretty well for me.