THE CREATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF SELF-PACED ONLINE COURSE FOR B2 LEVEL STUDENTS

СОЗДАНИЕ И ВНЕДРЕНИЕ САМОРЕГУЛИРУЕМОГО ОНЛАЙН КУРСА ДЛЯ СТУДЕНТОВ УРОВНЯ В2

Алия Жугинисова

магистр переводческого дела, ст. преп., Алматы Менеджмент Университет,

Казахстан, Алматы

ABSTRACT

The article provides the analysis on online English course development and integration into an education system of Almaty Management University. The study reveals the possible issues to deal with for the successful online course implementation. While the course creation factors like the length of lectures, types of assignments and instructors’ collaboration play important role, students’ level has to be reconfirmed so that the content is not too complicated for them. Students’ motivation to pass the course is predicted to be higher if there is strong monitoring and feedback from the tutors. The learners are eager to take online courses on the condition that they provide enough practical knowledge and interactivity.

АННОТАЦИЯ

В статье приведен анализ этапов создания и внедрения в учебный процесс онлайн курса по английскому языку в Алматы Менеджмент Университете. Исследование выявило вопросы для доработки в целях успешного прохождения курса в будущем.  Ключевыми факторами являются длительность лекции, виды заданий, совместная работа разработчиков, а также, дополнительное определение уровня студентов. Что касается повышения уровня мотивации студентов, проходящих онлайн курс, то здесь важную роль будут играть строгий контроль и обратная связь со стороны тьюторов. Студенты готовы проходить онлайн курсы при условии наличия практического применения знаний и интерактивности.

Keywords: online course, development, implementation, students, tutors, completion.

Ключевые слова: онлайн курс, разработка, внедрение, студенты, тьюторы, выполнение.

Introduction.

The field of language education has been expanding a lot with the constant technological advancements introduced every year. Contemporary instructors and language learners are equipped with ubiquitous programmes and applications to help the former deliver, and the latter memorize and practice effectively. Since the early 2000s when online conferencing was first introduced, the opportunities to exchange knowledge and information became quicker and easier all over the world. However, many still doubt whether these changes are truly positive or negative.

The concept of online education implies several things today. In the first decade of 2000s online lessons were widely conducted in western countries and the question of students’ class engagement was the pressing issue. According to M.D. Dixson’s research [1, p.5] which has involved 186 respondents from two Midwest universities, students feel reluctant completing quizzes, reading tasks and looking at the PowerPoint slides. For them more interacting were discussion forums, group projects, research papers and the assignments on last events. The same investigation has concluded that interactive tasks should be set as mandatory for the learners to complete, and strong instructor presence must be shown during teaching online. For instance, certain electronic platforms could help in exchanging materials and building effective communication between teachers and learners. This actually stimulates students’ engagement, attendance and thus shows better results of the course completion.

Another researcher from Utah University has suggested strategies for successful content creation and online courses’ design and specifically highlighted the importance of structural “cubes” [2, p.15], which would help students to follow the course with ease. Some other helpful tips regarded the video lessons’ length, the availability of digital coursebook and reflective assignments.  

The success of online course creation depends largely on the attitudes of tutors, who both develop and conduct the course. A qualitative study held in 2018 by the instructors from Iran showed a possibility to teach English through Telegram channel quite effectively [3, p.147]. The most important factors contributing to success are tutors’ collaboration, smaller groups of learners and thorough guidelines for the course.

Nowadays the immense number of ICT can be implemented to the education system, thus it gives current instructors wider opportunities in delivering knowledge through distance and even time. Pre-recorded and fully packed online courses can help solving educational challenges.

Research type and methods.

When online education has just started spreading in the early 2000s Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were very popular and were used all over the world especially because they are free of charge. Meanwhile, SPOCs (Small Private Online Courses) appeared to satisfy the specific requirements of a smaller group of participants [4, pp.1-2]. One of the studies conducted in 2020 by investigators from the University of Malaga in Spain proved the SPOCs to be higher in completion rate than MOOCs [4, p.8]. This could be attributed to the fact that SPOCs are created to help students or workers to develop a certain skills or competences which are crucial for their qualification.

At the Almaty Management University, we developed several SPOCs dedicated to teaching Business English course for the sophomore students. Our work has been based on the experience of adaptation of similar courses provided for us by the Arizona State University within our partnership from 2021-2024. The key strategies to take into consideration while developing an online course are understanding how learners would perceive and learn the information through this format. Also being able to provide very clear instructions and make the materials easy to access, and to applying creativity with tasks are the major principles to follow [5, pp.56-57]. Our university has switched to three-year bachelor’s programme two years ago which has affected the number of ECTS students have to cover, that is the reason why some disciplines have been transferred to online format with SPOCs being used. The development and integration of online courses have to start from syllabus structure and defining the core topics to be covered. The course has been based on the coursebook of Business English dedicated for upper-intermediate (B2) level. The whole process of course creation has been fulfilled by the instructor and methodologist, who has provided all the technical support.  

The course features 13 topics with business video-lectures lasting 10-15 minutes, self-check tests, practical assignments and additional material for independent study. Students had to complete half of the course and take the midterm test. Having completed the final topic, the learners took end-of-term and final tests.

Results.

By the completion of the whole course students were asked to answer five open-ended questions for the purpose of qualitative analysis of the course effectiveness. Unfortunately, only about 15% of students who passed the course answered the questions. One of the main reasons for skipping the survey was the fact that many students were not in touch with their tutors, that is they were completing the course on LMS and mostly did not need a lot of communication with the teachers. Therefore, tutors and university administration could barely reach them for the request of questionnaire completion. Students knew they could text teachers in MS Teams to get certain information but mostly skipped meetings or any announcements posted for them. However, those students who answered the questions provided very insightful thoughts on online course implementation.

One of the survey’s questions was related to course full coverage, that is if the learners watched all the pre-recorded lectures on the course. The result was 81% yes and 19% no. Among those who picked “No” were the comments that reading the text of the lectures was simpler than watching the lectures.

Graph 1. Students’ survey

A reasonable explanation for this could be that some percent of students had lower level of English than B2, which has hindered them to understand the content of the lectures. Several students mentioned that the technical and technological issues complicated watching all the videos. Some students honestly answered that procrastination was the reason for leaving out the course content. Among other reasons were weak time management and busy schedule.

The next question in the survey was “Which part/topic of the course was useful and most memorable for you?”. Among those who answered this question 27% said that all topics are interesting, 13,5% responded that “first impressions” and “motivation” were useful and engaging. And almost 11% of students mostly liked “ethical business” and “communications” units.

Graph 2. Students’ survey

For the question given in the second graph, students mentioned that the course made them think about the topics which are related to Business English, that is they have learned some useful theory. Many mentioned that the course’s parts like training grammar and vocabulary were specifically useful. Around 80% of respondents mentioned the effectiviness of vocabulary sets in the course. Some students specified the improvement of listening skills thank to the course’s lectures.

For the quite controversial question “Do you think online courses can be effective, or language should be studied with a teacher?” students gave different opinions.  The answer with the highest rate 32% said that offline regular lessons with instructors are more preferrable since they give a sense of control and constant contact with a teacher. The next number 16,2% of responses indicated that online courses can be effective on the condition that besides video-lectures, tasks and tests there are also weekly live meetings with the tutors, so that students could practice their skills. At the same time 13,5% of students shared that both options, English studied with a teacher in a traditional way and within an online course are effective, it all depends on learners themselves.

The last question of the survey asked the students if they would suggest any changes to the course, and 32% of students responded that as an online course, it need no alterations. However 27% voted for adding weekly live sessions with tutors.

Conclusion.

We can conclude that for the next academic year the same online course should be used with some crucial alterations. Firstly, students need to be tested for their actual level before they take the independent online course. And in case their level is lower, they should be required to take less complicated B1 level course. Secondly, course completion could be controlled by the Online Education department by tracing the digital trail and this is how we can make sure the students are passing all parts of the course. Hence, if they tend to skip parts, it must affect their grades. The survey incompletion issue could be fixed by the imposed requirement to pass it before students take final tests. Thirdly, as the questionnaire has found out, the learners would be more willing to practice their language skills if they met the instructors weekly. Therefore, for B2 students every week live sessions should be made mandatory.

Nowadays, youngsters’ attention span is lower and sometimes many learners are unable to stay focused for extended periods of time like they used to in past. Hence, for the next course development, lectures could be shortened up to 4-5 minutes and made more interactive with special effects looking more like attractive videos from the social media. This way the trainees would be more willing to watch them all till the end. However, the question is, would the academic knowledge still be perceivable if the content is too interactive. In this case, lectures could vary, and the course would feature interactive content and academically challenged one as well.

The effective and successful online course integration depends largely on several factors like motivation of learners, the supervision of instructors and content’s interactivity and usefulness.

References:

1. Dixson, M. D. (2010). Creating effective student engagement in online courses: What do students find engaging? Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 1–13.
2. Graul, Antje R. H. (2020). Successful Strategies for Content Creation and Design of Online Classes. Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence: Vol. 4: Iss. 1, Article 5.
3. Khoshsima, Hooshang & Saed, Amin & Arbabi, Mohammad. (2018). Online Teachers’ Attitudes toward Using Technology in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research. Volume 5, Issue 2, 2018, pp. 134-148.
4. Ruiz-Palmero, J., Fernández-Lacorte, JM., Sánchez-Rivas, E. (2020). The implementation of Small Private Online Courses (SPOC) as a new approach to education. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 17, 27.
5. Halupa, Colleen. (2019). Differentiation of Roles: Instructional Designers and Faculty in the Creation of Online Courses. International Journal of Higher Education. International Journal of Higher Education Vol. 8, No. 1.