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I'm always looking for ways to improve teaching and enhance learning, especially through technology. Recently, I used chat and polling in the classroom. That experiment resulted in a conference paper, presented at the international conference ICT for Language Learning, Nov 2011, Florence, Italy. These slides are from the conference.
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Interactice technology in the FL classroom: Using
polling and chat to promote student participation in
campus education
Elisabeth Wulff SahlénMälardalen University
Sweden
ICT for Language LearningFlorence, 20-21 Oct 2011
The traditional classroom
The traditional classroom
What are you thinking?
Did you understand?
WHAT did you understand?
What about YOU?
And you?
The traditional classroom
If students wrote their answers in a chat, I would be able to access everyone’s understanding…
Communication and participationHrastinski 2007
Communication and participationHrastinski 2007
Students were more motivated to
participate in chat discussions because of direct response.
Chat in education
administrative information rather than supporting cognitive aspects of learning
communication in FL with native speakers and other learners
students are often more focused, thoughtful and honest in discussions online than F2F– even if in the same room!
The Twitter experiment – Twitter in the classroom to get students involved in discussion
Polling and chat in the classroom – a pedagogical experiment
Setting and technologyOn-campus course in grammar and translation for advanced learners of EnglishAdobe Connect Pro to enable polling and chatSeminars in computer rooms, 3 students/computerVideo projector to display student contributions for oral discussion
Polling and chat in the classroom – a pedagogical experiment
Aimspromote wider student participationtap into everyone’s understanding in order to provide feedback where it is needed the most
Adobe Connect Pro (ACP)
A web-conferencing solution where you can◦communicate through audio, video and chat◦show power point presentations◦share your screen, whiteboard and files◦create interactive quizzes◦let students collaborate in small groups◦record the meeting and distribute the URL
through e-mail or on your LMS◦etc… etc…
add functionality through pods
pods may be moved and resized
switch between different layouts (”rooms”)
requires Flash player +internet connection
An example of ACP
app for iphone and android
Polling in ACP
Which of these sentences contain an agreement error? Check all that apply!
Chat in ACP
Teacher experience
no technical problemsparticipation was remarkably wide throughoutreduced waiting time led to active participationopen channel between teacher and studentsinformal and friendly atmosphere
What did the students think?
funmodernworked wellefficient use of class timewe liked the starslightly chaotic when everyone started to correct
themselves
Challenges
Shifting between written and oral communication.
Chat is informal. This will affect the atmosphere in the classroom.
Managing large chunks of text in the chat.
Traditional computer rooms are not ideal for face-to-face discussion.
In conclusion
Using polling and chat in the classroom creates a blend of oral and written interaction that caters to different learning styles while promoting wide student participation. Chat, in particular, has the potential to build a bridge between teacher assumptions and student understanding.
References Clyde, William & Delohery, Andrew. (2004). Using Technology in Teaching.
Yale University Press. Gonzalez, Dafne. (2003) Teaching and Learning Through Chat. A Taxonomy
of Educational Chat for EFL/ESL. Teaching English with Technology. Vol.3, nr. 4:57-69.
Hrastinski, Stefan. (2007). Participating in synchronous online education. Akademisk avhandling. Lund: Studies in Informatics No. 6.
Hrastinski, Stefan. (2009). Nätbaserad utbildning: en introduktion. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Mitchell, Rosamund & Myles, Florence. (1998). Second Language Learning Theories. London & New York: Arnold
Prensky, Marc. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon. 2001, Vol. 9,5.
Reynard, Ruth. (2008). Using Chat to Move the Thinking Process Forward. Campus Technology. (Retrieved 5/9 2011) http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/10/using-chat-to-move-the-thinking-process-forward.aspx
The Twitter Experiment. (Retrieved 5/9 2011). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WPVWDkF7U8
