In this article, we will address the need of a new perspective for language learning in the context of eLearning that could be a solution to support young learners in the acquisition of the French language as a third language in UAE private schools, and to enhance their experience and skill as self-learners.
The project’s main purpose is to create an eLearning platform designed for young learners who need a lot of scaffolding: images, audios, illustrations, and videos (multimedia-base content), to learn the French language as a third language, and to create a planned and organized teaching method using multiple technologies accessible from multiple personal devices (especially smart phones) and displayed in a contextual manner to optimize assimilation of the content.
Backward Design Approach
The project has many design aspects that we gathered in one platform using backward design approach. Backward design approach (Dick & Carey, 1978) aims to set the goals first of what the learner needs to know and determine an acceptable level of evidence that supports that learning has occurred by targeting all learners.
The aim of this design is to ensure that the content taught remains focused and organized to promote understanding. And what most helped us in determining what the learner needs to know is the background research we conducted that included teachers’ experience in teaching the French language in UAE to explore students’ level of recalling information when communicating, and to create a sur mesure learning platform. The background research gave us insightful information on what the students must learn first to reinforce their communication skills and to manage the hard topics that they usually struggle with in a classroom setting. Furthermore, it gave us a road map on how to chunk the learning and make it accessible for the majority of UAE students. Special education students could also be involved in our research and we tried to test our learning tasks and activities on down syndrome children to find the learning necessities and the needed assistive tools for their learning support.
At this stage, we considered incorporating mobile learning for the affordances it gives to our project as a must. One of the important reasons was the fact that the French language has a lot of accents and special characters that a student can find easily when typing from their mobile. It also allows learners to record their answers and upload easily their work.
Self-learning skills
The project main goal is to integrate self-learning as a new skill to acquire in this digital age assuming that students can self-learn when the learning content is planned, organized, and given in small bites with much scaffolding and assistive technology. As result, this could facilitate the assimilation of the content and hence allow young students to have effective self-learning.
One of the most common issues of eLearning is the level of the digital literacy that varies from an individual to another especially during the synchronized sessions where the teacher and the students are exposed to a new resource or tool and they find themselves drifted from the main course of the lesson to handle a digital resource they are supposed to use. That is why, in this project, we considered to plan the lessons, prepare the resources and the tools teachers and students need and embedded all of the content in the platform to smoothen the access to the activities and lift off the frustration that using multiple resources, and opening multiple browsers and navigate between them during the course might create on both the students and the teacher. Planning the teaching content and context could enhance learning outcome and optimize the benefits of the resources at hand.
Just-in-need Learning
In addition, and to keep the work on the platform effortless, we created short and Just-in-need learning activities and tasks using daily practices to improve the motivation to learn as students can see themselves achieving their daily activities easily. According to S. killi and A. Morrison (2015), Just-in-time teaching, and Just-in-need learning is an educational design approach that was tested and developed for more than fifteen years in Oslo School of Architecture and Design. They argue that designing teaching inputs could enhance learning outcomes. This strategy could be referred to in our platform to microlearning.
Microlearning
Microlearning can give to the students concise and precise learning of a single objective at a time. It is characterized by being easy to process and very flexible to deliver. It is related to mobile learning and to a flexible delivery method and interface where students can learn easily wherever and whenever they needed. Furthermore, it is a type of learning that is mostly mentioned in higher education and highly recommended for language learning.
In this project, we attribute microlearning to young learners (Grade 3 and above). It holds the concept that is mentioned in Buchem and Hamelmann (2010): a microcontent that focuses on a single objective at a time delivered in a short study time (no longer than 15 minutes a day). The aim of using microlearning for learning languages in general and for this project precisely, is to reduce the cognitive load, deliver a precise content with a precise objective so that students know what they need to learn, improve retention and engagement (de Gagne et al., 2019) and improve their self-learning skills.
Assessment Strategy: an Outcome-based Education
Wall, Hursh, and Rodgers (2014) define assessment as “a set of activities that seeks to gather systematic evidence to determine the worth and value of things in higher education” (p. 6). Now, it is important to mention that our project is designed for school students which is supposed to follow pedagogical assessment strategies. However, this project is designed based on andragogical context where students are self-directed, and the curriculum is not limited to a particular set of objectives, it is an open learning where students learn about situations and issues of their environment in another language so that they can apply their learning immediately.
Throughout their learning occurring day after day, students provide evidence on their abilities in self-learning, their learning performance and success. This is a student-centered approach called an outcome-based education (OBE) created by William Spady in (1994) where learning is driven by the achievement of the student not by the objectives of the curriculum. We decided in this project to let the student learn what he could learn with no pressure on what he could not, that is why he is self-directed and can gear his learning the way that it suits his abilities, and if the development of the tasks is considered boring or hard to follow by certain students, we offer topic-based courses, taking into consideration that some students might have a certain level in French (advanced or less) and might not be able to follow grade-based courses, and this is very common in UAE private schools.
Moreover, the project aims to create self-learners, that is why we decided to include it as an outcome skill to measure. Overall, the assessment of the student performance and success is made to measure three outcomes:
Measure the student’s performance: this is related to the ability of the student to transfer the learning into social communicative instances (forums, chat groups) and his interaction with the content.
Measure the students’ skill of self-learning: this is related to the ability of the student to conduct learning sessions with little or no help from the learning team, and frequencies of interaction.
Measure the student success: It is related to the evaluation of the student’s overall understanding of the Unit using summative and formative assessments.
In addition to that, and considering the fact that students are self-learners, we made sure to post the achievement rubrics in the platform so that students can see what is requested from them in each stage and what they need to achieve in each skill posted in the platform, and to measure their own Knowledge, Understanding, Communication, Application, and Thinking levels.
Knowledge refers to the content acquired in each grade.
Understanding refers to the comprehension of its meaning and significance.
Communication refers to the ability to convey the meaning through various forms.
Application refers to the ability to use knowledge to make connections between various contexts.
Thinking refers to the ability to use critical and creative thinking skills and processes new ideas accordingly.
At the end, we came out with a unprecedented project for teaching languages in UAE schools with the goal of empowering self-learning skills and creating an easier interface for a young online learner. While we are at the testing phase of this project, you can visit our platform Français au Quotidien, test it, then drop your comment here to help us improve our work for the betterment of learning: your opinion matters!
References
Wall, A. F. 1 afwall@warner.rochester.edu, Hursh, D., & Rodgers III, J. W. 1. (2014). Assessment for Whom: Repositioning Higher Education Assessment as an Ethical and Value-Focused Social Practice. Research & Practice in Assessment, 9(1), 5–17. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=99222103&site=eds-live
Norman, P. (2006). Outcomes-based education: A PNG perspective. Contemporary PNG Studies, 5, 45–57.
Yılmaz, Ramazan. (2017). Problems Experienced in Evaluating Success and Performance in Distance Education: A Case Study (Uzaktan Eğitimde Başarı ve Performansın Değerlendirilmesinde Karşılaşılan Sorunlar: Bir Durum Çalışması). Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education. 18. 39-51. 10.17718/tojde.285713.
Childre, A., Sands, J. R., & Pope, S. T. (2009). Backward Design: Targeting Depth of Understanding for All Learners. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 41(5), 6–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/004005990904100501
Dick, W., & Carey, L. (1996). The systematic design of instruction. 4th ed. New York, NY: Harper Collin Gustafson, K. and Branch, R. (1997) Revisioning Models of Instructional Development. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 45 (3), 73-89.
de Gagne, J. C., Park, H. K., Hall, K., Woodward, A., Yamane, S., & Kim, S. S. (2019, July 1). Microlearning in health professions education: Scoping review. JMIR Medical Education. JMIR Publications Inc. https://doi.org/10.2196/13997
Comments