A Semi-Virtual Course on Reading Comprehension Strategies

Introduction

The idea of devising an on-line course with some on-site sessions for developing a program in reading comprehension strategies, comes from a previous experience with virtual learning environments and virtual communities, such as Blackboard and Yahoo Groups. The idea of such course originated from previous traditional classes based on a communicative approach with some help of Communication and Information Technologies (CITs), and more specifically through Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) for delivering and receiving course assignments and feedback as extra curricular activities during semesters I and II in 2003. This experience is reported on the thesis entitled "Computer-Mediated communication and Writing, a case study at the Language Center-UPB" (VILLEGAS, 2004; also available on-line at http://www.upb.edu.co/cdelenguas/ourprojects.html).

Taking into consideration the main characteristics of Reading Comprehension courses as a requirement for graduation for postgraduate studies at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, an entirely virtual or a semi-virtual course was thought as a useful way or alternative for a course with a discrete approach to reading strategies. Therefore, as part of a project for implementing a multimedia laboratory  and some strategies for language learning, there was a participation of the leader of this project in a course on Designing Virtual Courses, by using the BlackBoard platform at the Virtual Learning Environments Project (“EAV, Educación en Ambientes Virtuales”) at the School of Education  and Humanities in the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, located in Medellín, COLOMBIA.

After having experienced the platform in BlackBoard, there were also notorious features of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) present in the Yahoo Groups virtual communities. Britain and Liber (1999) provide a very interesting Framework for Pedagogical Evaluation of Virtual Learning Environments in a research done at higher education level in the United Kingdom. Based on this research report and some other sources from the WWW, and the approval of the coordinator for the English programme at the language center, who analyzed the semi-virtual proposal in depth and did not see any problem to carry it out with one of the current Reading Comprehension courses given at the language Center, the experience was undertaken.

Theoretical Background

It was not a hard decision to embark on a virtual or semi-virtual course on Reading Comprehension Strategies. Previous courses with the help of Communication and Information Technologies had yielded positive results on writing at the same language center (Villegas, 2004); distance learning schemes have also proved to be effective where there is no need to emphasize oral / aural communication in order to deliver course materials and writing or reading tasks. However, in order to support such decision, it is necessary to set the foundations for such project. There are several possibilities to set up a virtual course, some are free and some are really costly. In our case at the language center, there was an experience with Blackboard directed by the research group for Virtual Learning Environments on pedagogical issues (EAV, from Spanish: Educación en Ambientes Virtuales) at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana. At the end of 60 hours of electronic discussions, course design and technical or administrative difficulties, there was a first unit for the On-line Reading Comprehension Strategies course. The analysis of the tools provided by this platform showed it could be effective, but some difficulties related to double registering of students might cause troubles for their process of graduation at the end of the period. Therefore, an alternative was chosen: Yahoo Groups, a virtual community with all the features a basic Virtual Learning Environment should have in order to accomplish the goals of any distance learning program or any virtual class, according to the research by Britain and Liber in the UK (1999) a “Framework for Pedagogical Evaluation of Virtual Learning Environments,” developed and applied to the use of learning technology in higher education by Laurillard (1993) as the Conversational Framework, which was, in turn, derived from Conversation Theory developed by Gordon Pask. The organisational model is drawn from the Viable Systems Model for modelling organisational systems proposed by Stafford Beer (1981). Thus, the group receiving the semi-virtual proposal could count on the following tools/features:

Chart taken from the Joint Information Systems Committee Technology Application Programme (JTAP)’s website: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/

These features are briefly described below as they worked in the semi-virtual experience. See Appendix A for Yahoo Groups’ Graphic User Interface or visit directly the E-group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ReadingStrategies/

A Notice-board, or home site for the virtual community where students log in and can see the latest activities in the e-group and have access to the rest of features.

A Course outline, detailed in the section Files as folders named for each week with the corresponding tasks/activities, as well as some suggested Links, also arranged in a sequential order. The same features, Files and Links, are used to provide a File upload area where students can send their material to folders arranged with their names, or where the teacher can provide a Repository of Multimedia Resources.

Bookmarking and Students’ Home Pages are also possible when they have a free e-mail account. These sites just require a banner placed on each student’s site and both students and tutor might suggest interesting places by adding URLs with a short description at the Links section

Email for Tutor and Students; in fact it is a requirement in order to access to the e-group as a member. The interactions can be one-to-one (teacher-student or student-student) with messages to private e-mail addresses, or one-to-many with messages from any member of the e-group to both private e-mail addresses and Noticeboard or Messages section in the platform.

Conference Tools might vary. Students can participate through the Noticeboard with text-based asynchronous discussions, or they can participate in Chats, and/or use instant messaging tools (Yahoo Messenger ®) to have Synchronous Collaboration Tools.

Assessment, Grade books, and Class lists, are available through the Database tool. Here students can see their progress or important information to contact classmates.

A Calendar provides the members of the e-group good tools for planning. This customizable agenda sends notifications about important dates to all members some time in advance. For example, students receive a message two days and the night before the final test so students do not forget about it.

Finally, Metadata, Navigation Model, and Search tools are inherent to most URLs today. Basically, these e-groups provide the owner with some tools to customize the lay out of the site which make it attractive and with some key words the site can be included in most search engines in the WWW.

Subjects in This Experience

The eighteen subjects who received the proposal were all enrolled in a specialization programme in management. The proposal was to work a two-hour session per week at the predetermined classroom for the course within the campus, and other 4 hours independently from their offices or from home. They received training on the platform the second session in a computer facility room at the Language Center and they continued the semi-virtual course the next weeks as planned until 40 hours were completed and students took a final on-site test to check if they had learnt to use some basic reading strategies to know what a text in English was about. They were given the URL and they had to access the e-group at least twice a week in order to read messages, and pick up and send assignments to the tutor, which were corrected in the on-site sessions.

A Contrast of Traditional classes and VLEs

In contrast to a semi-virtual experience as stated above, it is important to describe further how traditional courses on reading comprehension strategies are taught at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, or at least, to outline some basic procedures this kind of courses have in common and the difference they might have with a reading comprehension course through a Virtual Learning Environment (I will refer to them as VLEs from now on).

One of the most important elements or influences in these courses is the fact that they are a requirement for graduation from any of the postgraduate programs offered at the university. Students usually have the chance to take a test to prove they have  a basic understanding of written English and answer some questions about texts about different topics. Should they fail this test, they have to take the “reading comprehension course” sooner or later in the course of their studies. The advantage of using a VLE, is that students can sign in for a course that might last 8 to 10 weeks and come to some pre-arranged on-site sessions and a final session to take a final test.

Another factor influencing these courses is the heterogeneity of participants’ knowledge of English. In most cases at the “language center”, these courses are taught in Spanish as a source of directions and explanations. However, to keep some connections with the target language, the texts might be read aloud in the class and then students might work in pairs or individually to have an on-board collective feedback from the teacher after each student or pair of students provides the answers to the tasks given in the classroom. In the case study reported here, not all students had a proficiency  enough to understand a class entirely in English, and many times, explanations were given more than twice for the tasks to be completed and understood. Through a VLE, these differences can be treated on an individual basis and each students’ progress can be truer by exchanging messages with the tutor or classmates.

Other factor that should be taken into account for these courses is the variability of schedules and how this could affect the availability of time for completing the tasks assigned. Some courses meet, for example, like the one of this case study being reported, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 8 in the morning; while other courses might meet the same days from 6 to 10 PM, resulting in 3½-week courses or 7-week courses. It is also worth saying that these students normally have to take classes in these schedules because they are professionals whose jobs do not let them have a flexible schedule for studying. Therefore, a semi-virtual class appears in the horizon as an answer to those questions of where to get more time for the activities and responsibilities. A VLE provides that non-place-restricted time for reading and sending tasks to tutor and a wider span of time for the course during the specialization programme.

Talking about contents, students from these reading comprehension courses usually receive a set of copies from different sources which are in “photocopy centers” within the campus. Normally, these copies are graded from easy to tough as they progress in the course. In the semi-virtual course, these materials can be richer and more accessible at all times. Students can have access to on-line explanations and further exercises on the topics they are reading about. The richness of hypertext and multimedia increases the relevancy and meaningfulness of the materials provided. In both kinds of courses, the process follows these topics / reading strategies:

·         Recognition of parts of speech (Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs, Adverbs, and others) and the function of affixation in this recognition.

·         Parts of sentences and paragraphs: topics, topic sentences, main idea, supporting sentences, concluding sentences.

·         True/false cognates and dictionary use.

·         Guessing meaning from context by typographical clues.

·         Recognizing true/False statements or looking for answers by skimming and scanning

·         And finally, recognizing a text’s outline

There were some technical difficulties. Five subjects had problems to access the e-group either from home or from their offices so they had to get the reading material through a classmate and hand in the reading tasks at the classroom, as a traditional class, but working on their hard copies as planned in the semi-virtual proposal: at home or office, and outside the classroom. Among the main difficulties one might encounter with the group are the restrictions some companies have for their intranets, thus, they could not make use of the Yahoo platform within their offices. Another great difficulty is the fact that not all people has a high literacy about technology and a simple technical problem like accessing the WWW from home or removing virus might keep them from participating through electronic tools.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty of this experience was related to assessment. In a traditional course on reading comprehension, following the general guidelines provided for such courses at the language center, and with my very personal teaching style, students would work in pairs or even in groups. They would hear the text aloud first, and then they would follow some instructions and tasks like underlining the cognates they recognize in the text. In the same fashion, some other activities might be developed with the other reading strategies, and then students’ answers could be compared to the teacher’s answer on the board with the respective explanations in their mother tongue. In terms of time consumption, the feedback for 18-20 students could take 20-30 minutes of work previous to the class.  In a VLE, the time consumption is much higher. The assessment is individual since the teacher has to check each student’s paper as it arrives at the repository provided for that purpose. So in terms of time, checking a single reading task from the whole group might take a whole morning or a whole day, depending on the length of the text and the kinds of questions asked.

Some Findings in this case study at a first glance

These time consuming tasks paid well in the end. One could see how well each student was progressing along the course and the results were true when grading a test taken in the traditional classroom after having experienced the virtual sessions.

Attitudes towards learning English might shift from negative to positive as students find out a VLE facilitates their learning style, especially with reading strategies as a discrete approach. With the appropriate tools and guidance, a bad language learner might turn into a good language learner. Students might change their point of view. English might become relevant and meaningful to them and it might stop being a burden and an obstacle for their graduation.

A VLE provides the tools for becoming an autonomous learner, through the interaction with authentic material, on-line tools and a good guidance. But when there is no expertise in the use of technology, a VLE might become a burden for some people. Therefore, it’s necessary to have a clear purpose and offer this kind of courses to people who have at least the technical elements and knowledge to fulfil the goals.

From the results of the survey in the polls section at Yahoo groups, an On-line “Course on Reading Comprehension Strategies” could work well and be effective for students with time and place limitations. It appears as an alternative for other on-line courses offered within Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana which also require a basic proficiency in a foreign language for graduation.

Students seemed to like and enjoy this kind of semi-virtual courses and the materials provided through the e-group were effective. As a general point of view, most students would recommend this course to other students and considered the materials and their distribution in 7-8 weeks good or very good. The level of interaction between students and student-teacher was also evaluated as good. In general terms, the semi virtual course can be implemented as a regular course for specific cases where students might have some travelling or schedule difficulties. It is worth trying it with a first on-site session to show how the environment works and a final on-site session to take a final test. Also, a printed or on-line manual could be implemented to illustrate the procedure to registered students accessing from other cities.

Survey and results

All students were asked seven questions through the Polls section. Due to technical problems already mentioned before, 5 out of the 18 students did not answer the questions. The results of the poll is based on the answers from 13 people who actually sent their responses to the E-group. This 13 people constitute 72,2% of the group.

The questions translated from Spanish are the pie charts below:

References

From the WWW:

Britain, Sandy & Liber, Oleg. (1999) A framework for pedagogical evaluation of Virtual Learning Environments. University of Wales-Bangor. Taken from the URL: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00001237.htm . on October 20/2003

Mason, R. (1998) Models of Online courses. ALN Magazine 2. In: http://www.aln.org/alnweb/Magazine/vol2_issue2/Masonfinal.htm

Matas, Cristina P. and Birch, Gary. (2000). Web-based second language grammar development: Researching the options. In: CALL-EJ Online vol 1, N 3. Retrieved in 2000 from http://www.lerc.ritsumei.ac.jp/callej/4-3/matas_birch.html

Unesco, Information and Communication Technologies in Teacher Education, A Planning Guide. Taken from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001295/129533e.pdf,  2004

Villegas A. Jorge H. (2004) Computer Mediated Communication and Writing: A case study at the Language Center-UPB. Graduate thesis for the Specialization in English Teaching, Faculty of Education, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana. Also available at the URL: http://www.upb.edu.co/cdelenguas/tesisCMCwriting/VersionHipertextual/TesisCMCwriting.html

Warschauer, Mark.. (1998). Interaction, negotiation, and computer-mediated learning. In M. Clay (Ed.), Practical applications of educational technology in language learning. Lyon, France: National Institute of Applied Sciences Retrieved June, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/papers.html

Warschauer, M., & Kern, R (2000).  Theory and practice of network-based language teaching.  In M. Warschauer & R. Kern (Eds.), Network-based language teaching: Concepts and practice . New York: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved December, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/nblt-intro.html