Week 6: Managing large classes and Interactive PowerPoint

Discussion

This week's discussion focused on finding online and offline ways of engaging learners in large ESL classes. The topic  and suggested readings were of much relevance and interest to me as I have taught large ESL classes for almost 25 years in really difficult circumstances.

It is generally observed that as the number of students increases, the related educational problems such as mixed abilities (in English) among the students, the decibel level of the classroom, teacher's efforts to teach effectively, his use of usual methods and materials, learners' disciplinary problems, etc. reach unmanageable proportions. The large size of a class thus leads to the magnification of the 'given' problems -- the problems which could be considerably minimized had the teacher had adequate opportunities to address the individual problems of the learners. It follows that if we want to ensure learning especially in teacher-fronted classes, the class size should be such as could allow teachers to monitor learners' 'on and 'off' task classroom behavior and provide them sufficient opportunities to give productive feedback within the allotted time. 

Fortunately, online learning can help us in providing student-centered, individualized learning opportunities. As suggested in the recommended readings for Week 5, Web tools like webQuests, PBL, e-mail, discussion boards, blogs & wikis, interactive power point presentations need to be integrated judiciously to make learning effective in large ESL classes. I agree with Sam that discussion boards can help us in reaching out to every learner in our class but then it becomes extremely difficult to read and respond to hundreds of learners within the limited allotted time. Sam suggests that we can somewhat manage this problem by creating smaller work groups. But it can still be as Robert points out, a lot of work for a teacher to respond to each learner. He recommends that we should respond according to the learning focus, to take the discussion forward.

In my undergraduate literature classes of 60-80 learners, I generally use power point presentation and videos alongside my interactive lecture. Though my "presentation" is effective, I am not sure what each learner has learnt at the end of the class. I think web tools like webQuests and discussion boards can help me out and I can send quizzes, comprehension checks, and other extension tasks to my learners to understand and address their individual learning problems. 

Some important considerations to manage large ESL classes:

1.The teacher and students must be very clear about the ROUTINE of the whole class and composition class activities. This helps in quick "settling down" and getting down to business.

2.The biggest challenge is to address learners' individual learning problems and give prompt feedback on them. This involves a lot of hard work for the teacher whether one chooses to do this manually or electronically. Peer correction and group correction did not work for me with my low proficiency learners. I  got some helpful suggestions from Robert (Using Clickers) and Safaa (using Drop Box) and Jit's recommendation to use Blackboard as LMS sounds quite promising. 

Task: Interactive Power Point

Interactive PPT is yet another hands-on tool we have been suggested to help  make our teaching interesting and effective. Although I have been using PPTs for quite some time it was good to go through the suggested readings and see the sample PPT to get a fair idea about making PPTs effective. Features like conceptest, quickwrite and blank slide make sound pedagogical sense and are quite useful. 

Using some of these features I  made a PPT for teaching John Keats's "Ode to Autumn" for my undergraduate learners and uploaded at the class Wiki.

Project Task 5: Begin to implement the change

My teaching learning context

1. Class size: 60-80 low proficiency/mixed abilities learners sitting in rows on desks. 

Associated Problems: Noise & discipline, how to address learners' individual learning problems, to monitor their learning behavior and to provide corrective/productive feedback.

2.Prescribed Syllabus & Text books: Anthologies of poems, stories, essays appended with some reading comprehension/language exercises.

3.Evaluation: Annual term-end achievement tests where students are asked to write essay type answers to 5 questions out of the 8 given questions. These questions are fairly "guessable" and students normally memorize them.

4.Examination-oriented learning motivation: Students know that they can "pass" their annual exams by memorizing answers to a few well-guessed questions, so they do not feel the need to participate in class room activities, or sometimes even attend the class!
My objectives for Technology integration: 

• To shift my learners' attention from exams to learning to communicate in English.
• To engage them to use online resources along side traditional class room learning.

Possible solutions:

A. Whole class presentation: The aim of the whole class activity is to provide "comprehensible inputs" to the whole class.

a) Traditional way of teaching the prescribed texts (poems, stories, essays) using text books, by lecturing and explaining, using black board "the chalk and talk" method.

b) Tech-integration: Interactive PPTs, videos, Smart boards

B.Grammar and Composition groups: The class size is reduced to 20 students and they are given practice in LSRW, grammar and composition activities.

Traditional way: Handouts, assignments and "chalk and talk".

Tech-integration: Web Quests, wikis and blogs, e-mail, discussion groups, chats. Though Robert pointed out that Discussion groups can be difficult to manage at times and we need to prioritize responding to them as per our learning focus.

On these lines I tried out a webQuest  on "How to write a Persuasive Essay" and an interactive PPT on John Keats's "ode to Autumn" with my class and observed that my learners were very receptive and and enthusiastic about these new ways of learning. Though PPT was quite easy to receive, they took some time to learn from the webQuest. But they were happy to work online in small groups of 4 learners. I found the whole class presentation responsive, quieter and students showed willingness to learn. I feel I need to give them some training to learn "how to learn independently" from online resources.

I am preparing more PPTs and webQuests based on the prescribed syllabus and will try them out with my learners in the coming week.