LTMOOC 4: Assessing language skills using technology

This week in the LTMOOC we have been discussing about assessment in blended learning environments. Readings  have mentioned assessment techniques such as self-assessment (e.g., language passport) and language portfolios.
I would like to present a formative assessment task I used some years ago with my Spanish 101 Honor students at college level. I will present the formative assessment task and the rubric I used to assess the outcomes by answering the following questions proposed for discussion:

1. What are the outcomes to be assessed?
2. What are the capabilities/skills (implicit or explicit) in the outcomes?
3. Is the method of assessment chosen consonant with the outcomes and skills?
4. Is the method relatively efficient in terms of student time and staff time?
5. What alternatives are there? What are their advantages and disadvantages?
6. Does the specific assessment task match the outcomes and skills?
7. Are the marking schemes or criteria appropriate?
8. Who should make judgements about student learning – the teacher, the student, the student’s peers or others?

This task was used as a formative assessment because the main purpose was to provide students practice for the formal oral exam. The formative assessment task consisted on interviewing a native speaker via Tokbox (when it was free) to learn about him/her. Students had to take notes about the information provided by the native speaker to then create a Voki (speaking avatar) that introduced him/herself as if they were the native speaker. You can read about this formative assessment task in a previous post.

1.  I was targeting different skills here. By completing this assessment task, students would show they were able to use basic Spanish to: 
a) ask for personal information (name, age, nationality, likes and dislikes, description) in an interview with a native speaker.
b) understand personal information in an interaction with a native speaker and take notes.
c) present the main information learned about a native speaker in an oral form by using an avatar.

2. These learning outcomes assumes knowledge of vocabulary related to personal description, introductions, likes and dislikes, occupations, numbers, etc. Students should also be able to ask and answer personal questions using basic grammatical forms such as verb ser and estar, genre/number agreement, gustar-like expressions, verb-agreement. The task also assumes the ability to produce orally basic information with intelligible pronunciation and fluently. The task also requires the ability to negotiate meaning in case of communication breakdowns during the interview by the use of different strategies.

3. The task used was appropriate to measure the outcomes and skills in an integrated way and more motivating way than a traditional multiple-choice exam. As we practiced in class different role-plays simulating real-life interactions, the assessment task replicated such role-plays and real-life interactions with native speakers.

4. I wouldn't say the method was very efficient. I arranged to have pairs of students interviewing different native speakers. It was not that difficult to find enough native speakers for the class since I have many friends from different Spanish-speaking countries. However, it was challenging to find native speakers available at the same time of the class. We did  the interviews in the computer language lab. The  second part of the task was to create the Voki avatar using the information from the interview. This part was done at home individually. So the whole assessment tasks was not time efficient.

5. An alternative could be to have the whole class interview just one native speaker during a class session. All of them should take notes and record an oral message summarizing what they learned about the native speaker. This would be more time efficient, however it would minimize students participation during the interview and would eliminate the creative part of representing the description of the interviewee in the avatar. It could be less motivating. 

6-7. The marking scheme was as follows:
Instructor's formative assessment:

Students' self-assessment :

8. Both the instructor and the students assess the performance. The teacher assessed the linguistic aspects or skills and the students self-assessed what they were able to do with basic Spanish during the task.

In my experience, technology can bring more authenticity to assessment in blended environments, however the more authentic an assessment task is, the less time efficient or practical to administer and grade it would be. 

LTMOOC - week 3: Social Interaction in Online Language Learning

This week we read about social interaction in online learning and watched an interview with Dr. Dixon, a German professor, teaching German online. The interview with Dr. Dixon was really interesting because he pointed out different ways of interacting in online environments. Besides flipping his German class, he uses different social networks such as facebook to increase the social interaction among students. It makes sense to me that social networks can enhance the learning of a language because it allows students to use the language in the context of communicating with other speakers of the same language. This communication, however, if not mediated by the learning goals of students, could not be as beneficial as it appears to be. The social interaction as a learning task in an online language class should have a real or genuine communicative purpose for the student and it needs to be at his/her level so that they can have a sense of accomplishment. Students are already using these social networks to communicate with friends and family, however I wonder if they are willing to use it for educational purposes. In this regard, studies like the one by Blattner and Lomicka (2012), Facebook-ing and the social generation: a new era for language learning, can offer some insights about the use of social networkings in language learning.

The question then is how to promote effective interaction in an online class. I have never taught an online class, but I am familiar with the online Spanish classes at my university. Students interact with content through a commercial e-textbook, interact with other students and the instructor using platforms such as Elluminate, wimba tools, etc. It seems to me that this kind of interactions are not enough. If we consider    the strategies for incorporating interaction suggested by the Academic Technology Center of WPI, it is obvious that we, language teachers, can do much more to improve online language education.  I like the idea of having student participate in online simulations. In this sense, I think virtual environments such as second life could help. A Spanish professor, here in Arizona, has created a virtual place in second life, Mi casa es su casa, where his students interact with vocabulary and forms in simulated real life place.
Also, in Hawai'i, Dr. Gonzalez-Lloret has used the task-based language teaching approach to create a virtual environment "En busca de Esmeraldas" that allows students to perform tasks such as "giving directions" and tasks where the language is used for specific purposes such as in the health professions. You can learn more about the application of technology in TBLT in this youtube presentation.

 In sum, it is clear to me that the kind of interactions provided in online learning environments can increase the motivation of students and their participation in the course. Language learning students are not the exception. They need to see what they can do with the language more than what they know about the language in any kind of learning context: face-to-face, blended or online.

Usando TED, Skype y Vocaroo en la clase de español

Me encanta cuando la tecnología hacer reflexionar a mis estudiantes no sólo sobre el español sino también acerca de su mundo, metas y valores.
En mi clase de composición estuvimos discutiendo sobre el tema de la infancia en latinoamerica. Uno de las tareas de los chicos fue ver un video TED sobre EL Sistema - programa social de orquestas infantiles en Venezuela. Muchos de los estudiantes en la clase tienen inclinación por la música y les gustó mucho ver cómo la música podía afectar la vida de los niños más desposeídos de Venezuela.



Después de ver el video, discutimos sobre el tema en clase. Posteriormente, organizamos una video entrevista usando skype con Ron Davis (Twitter @Music_rondavis), joven director de una orquesta infantil en Groenlandia, que fue formado en el Sistema de Orquestas Infantiles de Venezuela.


Ron contestó las preguntas de los estudiantes y hasta tocó la pieza venezolana "Moliendo Café" para los estudiantes. Fue una experiencia que marcó a alguno de los estudiantes. Algunos estudiantes tomaron la oportunidad de reflexionar sobre el trabajo con la música en su comentario oral para la clase usando Vocaroo.


Audio recording >>

LTMOOC - week 2

This week we read some interesting articles about Content-Based Instruction by Stoller (2002), Input by Szynalski, and Inputs/Outputs activities.  Below, you will find my reflections about these topics.

In regards to CBI, I would say my teaching is pretty much based on content because I teach advanced classes. This semester I am teaching a Spanish composition class and our writing practice is framed within topics or themes. So for example, we were discussing a unit on Children in Latinoamerica and their challlenges. Students had to read articles about children and labor work in some Hispanic countries. Students also watched some videos about issues related with being a kid in a hispanic country. One of the videos was a TED talk about "El Sistema", a social program of children orchestras in Venezuela. Students were very interested about this topic so I decided to invite one of the young directors in El Sistema to talk and be interviewed by the class via Skype. Students prepared questions and were really motivated to be able to use Spanish to get more information about El Sistema. Some students chose to write their final projects about this topic with their own perspectives (e.g., trata de los niños en latinoamerica, adopciones en Guatemala). Therefore, I would say the content is the meat of my class and technology definitely help students access the content and use it to write about different topics using the L2.

I really believe input -oral or written, especially in the form of reading for my Writing class, is key when learning a second language. However, I have to disagree with the Szynalski in several points. He points out the input hypothesis as the only way to learn a language when different SLA scholars have pointed out the just input is not enough. There are multiple variables such as motivation (see studies by Dornyei, quality of the input, opportunities for interactions (see studies by Long) or to produce the language, that could affect the second language acquisition process.  He also diminishes the role of output  in the SLA equation when we know that it's only when students are asked to produce when they realize what they can or can't do with the language (see studies by Swain). When students produce the language (output), they get the opportunity to get feedback about their language and thus get more input. Feedback and how it is given and received is crucial. I have learned as an English learner that receiving technical explanations about language forms as feedback does not work for me.  The most valuable feedback for me is the one directed to the message/content and how effective the language I am using is to make it comprehensible for the reader or listener.     

For the inputs/outputs activity, I believe the relevance of specific kinds of inputs or outputs can only be determined taking into account the specific language learning goals of the learner. So if I have a student who wants to learn how to write academic papers, maybe listening to a song on the bus is not that relevant for his learning purposes. But that same oral input (the song) can be motivating for a beginner student that just want to learn about the culture and how to use the language in real life situations.

LTMOOC 2013 Introduction

I have heard so much about MOOCs this last year and even know that there is a MOOC for learning Spanish that I was intrigued to learn that there will be MOOC for language teachers using a platform known as Instreamia. Administrators at my university talked about the possibility of having open courses and the reactions were divided among the faculty. I have also followed some other faculty that are using MOOCs to teach language (see for example, Fernando Rubio's post on his Spanish MOOC), but nothing like experience this new trend in education yourself. So here I am, participating in the MOOC for language teachers. My first assignment is introducing myself:

• Where are you from? I am from Caracas, Venezuela, but currently living and working in Flagstaff, AZ.

• What’s your background? I have been teaching for almost 24 years. I have taught English in Venezuela at different educational levels and Spanish in the U.S.  I also teach linguistic courses and graduate classes in the MAT in Spanish at NAU.

• What is your native language? My L1 is Spanish What others do you speak? English 

• What language(s) do you teach? I teach Spanish

• Where do you teach? I teach at Northern Arizona University

• What do you hope to get out of LTMOOC? I hope to learn how new technologies and open education can serve different kind of students in their achievement of specific language learning goals.

• What hobbies or activities do you like to do? I love hiking, trail running, scrapbooking and traveling. 

#ELTchat Summary: Assessing Oral Skills in Large Language Classes

Assessment of functional language ability in the classroom could become problematic in large classes because of different variables that affect students’ opportunities to speak, and the time that teachers have to provide feedback and support to individual students.

Assessment issues include the size of the class. Size of classes considered large vary depends on the instructional context. Some language teachers have classes with more than 60 students or more, like those at Myanmar universities. In other cases, 20 students in a 50 minute-class can be considered too many to assure that every student can be assessed appropriately. Similarly, a class with 15 students can be deemed too large if it is taught in a very small room. Other factors interacting with class size and impacting teachers’ assessment of oral skills include the educational level (e.g., elementary vs. college-level language classes) and the age of the student. For example, older learners seem to work better in groups and stay on task more than younger learners or teenagers.

In order to address the oral assessment needs in their classrooms, teachers need to ponder the following elements in the assessment situation: the purpose of the assessment, the type of interaction, the participants in the interaction, and the time available to assess the students. It is important to contrast the formative assessment in which the teacher provides feedback to the students so that they improve in their performance and the more formal testing situation in which students are given a grade to indicate what they have achieved in terms of oral communication at the end of a language course. Also, the type of interaction will determine students’ amount of participation in the assessment activity. Interactions between the teacher and one student may be the ideal assessment situation to elicit a large amount of language and provide detailed feedback. However, this assessment procedure can be impractical with large classes since it will take different class sessions to assess all the students.

Language teachers striving to perform oral assessment in large classes are addressing some of the issues already mentioned by considering group interactions to reduce the assessment time and maximize students’ oral participation in the communicative situation. In group interactions, it has been suggested a task be provided and divided into mini-tasks. Each member of the group is assigned a mini-task task, a role (e.g., grammar monitor), or an assessment responsibility to control discipline and keep students on task. Once the task is completed, the teacher collects the result as a group or has a representative of the group report back to the class. Before students start working within their group, the teacher should provide a task rubric with the assessment criteria for success. Also, students can be involved in the assessment process by providing them with the opportunity to self-assess and peer-assess their oral performance.

Group assessment poses some issues of implementation or practicality. For example, how to form the groups so that they are productive? Should we mix students with different levels of proficiency? It seems that group formation is a process of trial and error until teachers find out the right group combination of students. Also, how can teachers keep track of students’ participation while they work in groups and identify weak student in order to later help them? Some strategies include devising a system in which you use groups in shifts that rotate. Then, the assessment follows the rotation, that is, the teacher goes from group to group with a checklist to record students’ participation in the group. Also, for visually-oriented teachers, a large tracking chart on the wall may work to get a picture of all the students’ progress in their oral skills. It seems that a real challenge is to provide feedback to individuals in groups. Other issues focus on students’ personality (e.g., being timid or introverted) and their willingness to participate in the group interaction using the L2. In monolingual classes, teachers often observe that students switch to their L1 to complete the task. To avoid having students rely on their L1 to complete the oral task, students should have clear instruction on how to complete the task. They also need to have the language ability to complete the task. Furthermore, groups should be encouraged not to speak the L1 and to be proud of it (e.g., Give them a banner that says “ This group never speaks Spanish in class”).

Although individual assessment in large classes is believed to be impractical, it can still be done. Teachers can have the class works on a task while they assesses a student or a pair of students. Students can work on fixing errors of other students’ written work, work on blogs, practice grammar points, while the teacher conducts the assessment. Other individual assessment strategies include using greeting sessions at the beginning of the class in which a student takes a turn at presenting a topic and the other students can ask questions about that topic. Each class session, a different student takes a turn to speak for the greeting session. Similarly, to assure individual oral participation during the class, some teachers use ice-cream sticks with their students’ names on them. When asking questions during the lesson, the teacher picks up one of the sticks from a cup and call on the name on it to get an answer for the question. The idea is to have no sticks left in the cup by the end of the lesson.

Assessment can also be performed outside of the classroom. Students can be assigned oral homework or activities based on the topics taught in class. They can record, individually or in pairs, their oral production using tools such as Audacity, Voki, Mailvu, or Voxopop. Recordings are analyzed for assessment purposes and feedback is provided. Individuals or pairs can record their homework again. One of the advantages of having students recording their oral production is that the teacher can track students’ progress from a first recording to a final recording in a course.

Language teachers have multiple challenges and issues to assess oral skills in large classes. However, they can experiment with different strategies and reflect upon their assessment experiences to find practical and useful methods to track the progress of their students’ oral abilities in their particular instructional context. It is important to remember that assessment should be a process that students enjoy and feel comfortable with.

The ideas in this summary were provided by the following ELTChat participants during the chat sesion on Wednesday Nov. 16, 2011:
OUPELTGlobal
Cherrymp
theteacherjames
harrisonmike
rliberni
allede
crystalannie
yitzha_sarwono
Marisa_C
marcego03
PumkinEnglish
pelekas
cybraryman1
dreadnought001
alhen_
michaelegriffin
barbsaka
TEFL101
BobK99
yya2

Resources mentioned:

Jeremy Harmer en Chile - making larger classes smaller
Voices in the crowd: Strategies for teaching
Dogme & Formal Assessment – the odd couple?
Oral Language Development

Códigos QR

Recientemente, he visto pequeños códigos en publicaciones, como mi periódico local para obtener la aplicación del periódico para aparatos móbiles. Me preguntaba para qué servirá o cómo el código me puede llevar a esa aplicación. No fue sino hasta que asistí al webinar de Shelley Terrell y leí el blog de Ogasawara acerca de distribuir presentaciones powerpoint sin projector a través del twitter que decidí entrar en el mundo de los códigos QR o (quick response - respuesta rápida). Estos códigos son códigos de barras de dos dimensiones que pueden ser leídos por una aplicación o lector de códigos (ej. Google search, Qrafter) en un aparato móbil (teléfono inteligente o tabletas, por ejemplo). Los códigos pueden contener textos cortos, enlaces, archivos de video o audio. Para generar los códigos QR se pueden utilizar sitios en la red como el de Kerm Erkan, la página en la web de google para acortar enlaces: , o Sparqcode.

Mi aprendizaje sobre estos códigos comenzó con una tarea, cómo generarlos y hacerlos funcionar en el aparato móbil.
Lo primero que hice fue seguir las instrucciones de Ogasawara:
a) Tome una de mis presentaciones en slideshare (images and slideshows in the language classroom) y copié la dirección de url de esa presentación (http://www.slideshare.net/yasencion/images4education-3007025)
b) Luego fui a goog.gl para acortar el enlace: http://goo.gl/fyykW - Una vez obtenido el enlace en su versión corta, hice click en la opción "details" al lado del enlace y me llevó a otra página donde aparecía el código y el enlace de ese código http://goo.gl/fyykW.qr).
c) Copié la imagen en un papel u hoja de un documento word:

d) Después fui a mi tableta iPad donde ya tenía la aplicación Google Search. Allí seleccioné la opción buscar por fotografía. Apunté la cámara de mi iPad hacia el código, tomé una foto del código y Google search buscó el enlace relacionado con el código. Al llegar al enlace me llevó a la presentación de slideshare.

Ahora bien, me parece fenomenal que ahora pódamos compartir información de esa manera y que haya maneras de tener acceso a ellas usando aparatos móbiles, pero me interesa saber cuáles serían las posibles aplicaciones de estos códigos en el aula de lenguas. Nick Hockly sugiere algunas ideas en su blog. Por ejemplo, el profesor puede generar códigos para claves textuales alrededor del aula o de la escuela para que los estudiantes practiquen el entender y seguir instrucciones en el segundo idioma. Por ejemplo:(1) Salga del aula. (2) Doble a la derecha hasta la puerta del edificio. (3) Al salir del edificio, doble a la izquierda y siga derecho por dos cuadras. (4) Ahora ha llegado a su destino, tome una foto del edificio y diga cómo se dice ese edificio en español, por ejemplo - la biblioteca. Los códigos se pueden tener en cada uno de los lugares a los cuales llega el estudiante en cada clave. Los estudiantes al volver a clase pueden resumir de forma escrita las instrucciones que siguieron sin recurrir a las claves en los códigos.

Para otras ideas que se pueden adaptar al salón de lenguas ver el siguiente Glogster de theohiobloke: