Relationship-Based Management

Classroom Management, Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication, Reflective Teaching 0 comments

Photograph contributed by Fernando Carranza and taken in Honduras, CA

Relationship-Based Management

For virtual or F2F learning settings

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Post 304

Teachers, professors, faculty members, and any kind of instructor face lots of classroom management challenges every time they walk into a classroom. So is it that difficult to manage a group of learners? Do you really consider classroom management a difficult task to achieve? No doubt that answers will vary from educator to educator, and most will answer both questions with the cliché expression, “it all depends.” But, what does it depend on? In education we are certain that variables affecting this particular kind of management are many, and after asking a good number to teaching professionals for the answers, many commonalities can be easily spotted. However, in blended learning education, we instructors follow three principles that can help us all have a better control of the class and that can be easily moved into face-to-face teaching sessions: teacher social presence, instructor’s teaching presence, and student cognitive presence.

Teacher Social Presence

Learning to Interact with one Another

All of us educators are human beings dealing with other humans, and because relationships are necessary, it is important to exercise the teacher social presence to empathize with learners. Based on Mary Scholl (2016), who had a talk on relationship-based management as part of the PD Talks organized by the Mark Twain Library at CCCN (Costa Rica), the very first thing to establish with learners is interaction. For Scholl, it is imperative that learners can get to know who the instructor is, and in return, the teacher can also get to know who is in class. In synchronous or asynchronous blended and online learning education, a “virtual” relationship is then created with course participants by means of the posting of the facilitator’s bio (usually composed with very specific standards), the personal teacher/student correspondence through the platform being used, and with any other kind of announcements connected to the course and its learning tasks. And there is no reason why this model used in bLearning cannot be applied in F2F teaching scenarios where the teacher social presence also needs to be established. If the establishment of the instructor’s social presence is absent, as Mary Scholl (2016) posited in her PD Talk, “classroom management fails when teachers do not relate to students.” The moment in which interaction cannot be established, teacher social presence is out of the classroom management equation.

The Way Teacher Social Presence is Exercised

How is instructor social presence exercised? Though a couple of ideas where shallowly stated above, let us explore how this presence can be used in vitual instruction and in F2F teaching.

Virtual Social Presence	F2F Virtual Presence
· Let students know who you are by providing them with a bio with a tint of personal information about hobbies, pastimes, and the like. · Create a forum, such as a Class Café, to allow learners to introduce themselves to peers and to you, and ask further questions after welcoming them to the course.	· To start relating to learners, introduce yourself with a kind of activity in which a bit of personal information can be shared such as things you like. · Establish an open channel of communication with students by asking them further questions and sharing a bit of who you are as a regular human.

Whether these ideas are actually used in virtual or F2F learning environments, they allow your pupils to know you and their peers. In a virtual environment, relating to students is a way to have them understand they are not interacting with a robot, but with a human being interested in having them construct their knowledge and develop skills. Not relating to learners leads to classroom management failures (Scholl, 2016); the setting of a class culture or community of learning is part of exercising our teacher social presence.

Instructor’s Teaching Presence

Having them Believe

Based on the four components of Nonviolent Communication stated by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg (2005), observation, feeling, needs, and request, we teachers need to have our learners really believe in our believing in them. As educators, no matter what learning environment we are part of, we will walk into it “without introducing any judgement or evaluation” (Rosenberg, 2005) of what we are observing; since our outmost interest in learners is to have them learn what needs to be studied, we will teach based on our relationship-based classroom management. The new scenario will no doubt produce feelings in ourselves that will flourish while we see what happens around us. We need to ask ourselves, “are we hurt, scared, joyful, amused, irritated, etc.?” (Rosenberg, 2005) to exercise our teaching presence and produce deep learning among our pupils.

Mary Scholl during her PD Talk at CCCN, San José, Costa Rica

As soon as we teachers have indentified what is felt based on what is being observed while teaching, we must “say what needs of ours are connected to the feelings we have identified” (Rosenberg, 2005) and what needs we are perceiving from our students. Our teaching presence can soothe learners’ dispair, fears, and needs for pain relief while our power as educators is exercised in the classroom. All this is leading us to the fourth component that addresses “what we are wanting from the other person that would enrich [their] lives or make [their learning] life more wonderful” (Rosenberg, 2005) for them. The ultimate learner request in an educational environment is fully established when “we connect with [learners] by first sensing what they are observing, feeling, and needing, and then discover what would enrich their lives” (Rosenberg, 2005) by receiving the product of our teaching presence, bearning in mind the importance of our social presence or the relationships that need to be created to foster learning and the development of new skills.

Student Resistance towards Learning

While listening to Mary Scholl during her PD Talk at the Mark Twain Library at CCCN (San José, Costa Rica), my mind began toying with the idea of how students resist my teaching (presence). Not really understanding what they feel and what needs they have can lead to a dead-on street in terms of relationship-based management. Though I was not exactly aware of how much resistance learners can bear, I have always counterattacked it with a bit of common sense, by helping them complete course work in any of the two teaching environments I work in, and by aiming at having them sense that I want to assist them in their learning process as a guide, tutor, facilitator, and friendly hand.

At this point of my teaching career, I have come to realize the importance of empathizing with learners and become a helping hand for them, and one that they can hold on when their learning is at risk. As Scholl (2016) suggests, students need to be brought to life in our teaching. By showing learners our social side, by having them feel that we are there to assist them in their learning, and by correctly applying our teaching presence (with suitable teaching approaches and with the application of a variety of learning strategies). If all this is done, along with Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication model, we can help learners not to resist learning but to embrace all we can provide them to make them feel academically fulfilled.

Student Cognitive Presence

Their Resistance to Learning (Once Again)

Classroom management is directly linked to breaking student resistance to learning, which becomes a failure in the correct application of their cognitive presence. Since this is a symbiosis of elements to build up a relationship-based management, student cognitive presence needs to be connected to the way in which we entice them with what needs to be learned in the course we are teaching. It is imperative to keep learners alert and focused on learning and making them feel fully backed up by us, the faculty members, educators, instructors or teachers. The objective of their education and their sole reason to be in a classroom is to build their knowledge and skills.

A way to break student resistance to learning is correlated with the exercise of our power (control) over the students that must be done with nonviolent leadership. As it has been probably witnessed by many of us, the wrong exercise of power can backfire on us and in our teaching; as a consequence, the whole cognitive experience we want to provide learners is sent down the drainage. The cognitive presence can be fostered and boosted if we simply empathize with students instead of imposing what we think is the best (for us, usually), and if the four components of Nonviolent Communication are forgotten in the darkest corner of the (physical or virtual) classroom, no cognitive presence is endorsed by our teaching. This is why we need to beware of how power is exercised and how it is perceived by our students. The more threatening their learning scenario becomes, the more they will resist our teaching.

What Classroom Management is for us

So far what we have been doing is seeing how classroom management based on relationships can be enhanced with the inclusion of the triad of presences commonly used in blended and online learning, but we have not really defined what classroom management is. Based on the Glossary of Education Reform, it can be defined as a “wide variety of skills and techniques that teachers use to keep students organized, orderly, focused, attentive, on task, and academically productive during a class” (Classroom Management, 2014). All these “skills and techniques” are much connected to what Mary Scholl had us PD Talk participants include in what we think classroom management (CM) implies. In her session many of us came up with the following list:

As it can be seen after analyzing Scholl’s exercise during her PD Talk and intending to make sense of what these words can tell us, most of our classroom management is based on our teaching presence and how our learners feel/react toward our teaching. The CM we are practicing is incredibly teacher-centered, with a little, little bit of social interaction, and with lots of needs that are not exactly dealt with properly by the instructors and that produce many feelings on both sides that are not coped with in the best way neither by the learners nor by the teachers. This shows some evidence that the need for more relationship-based classroom management needs to be cultivated.

When Scholl (2016) asked her audience what our goals in classroom management are three ideas came into my mind, but now and after analyzing the implications of classroom managements, other ideas have popped up. Initially I started considering the importance of breaking student resistance towards their learning. Furthermore, I started to think again on how essential it is to build a community of learning for students to feel at ease while being instructed, and how CM is transcendental for us educators to help pupils construct their knowledge and skills. Now that I can see what we normally do in our classrooms in terms of presences and Nonviolent Communication, we are very far away from the ideal teaching scenario where we are really interested in our students and their learning, or we are sidetracked by our personal interests that we forget that students are there waiting for us to give them a hand in their education.

Relationships in CM

If we want to strengthen our relationships in education, it is necessary to identify the kind of interactions we educators experience in our teaching settings. Based on Scholl (2016), we teachers along with learners undergo several types of binary relationships that are not productive for the teaching process: student-student, teacher-student, student-self, and teacher-self. As it can be seen on the chart for what CM is for us, there is a need for the strengthening of teacher social presence, which is the origin of the relationships with learners.

Binary relationships are not always good. The four different components for Nonviolent Communication cannot be met this way. Student-student relationships can only add to the amount of frustration one or the two learners are bearing and no relief is going to come since most of our classroom management is connected to us, the instructors. Teacher-student interactions can also be counterproductive if no observation, feeling, needs, and request are comprehended when coming from the learner, and it is surely not understood either by the student who may be getting input s/he is not able to process. Student-self and teacher-self are the least two explored binary relationships that can produce the rupture of any attempt to having some good classroom management. Who helps any of the two but the self? Is this right?

Concluding Remarks

This is just a simple reaction towards what Mary School proposed during her PD Talk session at CCCN (San José, Costa Rica). Some more research is needed to uncover some more of the truth linked to the way classroom managements based on relationships can be improved with the three types of presences used in blended and online education nowadays. If, along with the presences, we can include Rosenberg’s in a more in-depth study of a more efficient relationship-based classroom management, the equation can be more complete and more meaningful data can be obtained. But in the absence of this study, a shift in the way we hold our relationships with our students and the way we handle our teaching needs to be re-oriented to satisfy more students’ needs for learning.

References

Classroom Management. (2014, August 20). Retrieved from The Glossary of Education Reform: http://edglossary.org/classroom-management/

Rosenberg, M. (2005). Nonviolent Communcation A Language of Life. Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press.

Scholl, M. (2016, October 7). Relationship-Based Management. PD Talks. CCCN. San Jose.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Teaching the Working Adult Student in Virtual Classrooms

Higher Education, Leadership, Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication, WAS 0 comments

Taken from http://www.glogster.com/shivg/resume-glog-by-shivg/g-6ll6hp1v75pulvjk088o3a0

Teaching the Working Adult Student

in Virtual Classrooms

A Nonviolent Communicative Approach to WASs

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Friday, October 21, 2016

Post 302

As stated by Laureate Education (2016c), the most challenging situation one as a faculty member can face in a virtual learning scenario is WASs’ “expectation of adaptation to the modality of study or to the suggested methodology, especially in cases where the new technologies are needed.” However, in spite of the challenge this may represent, teacher leadership plays a transcendental key role to encourage learners to be functional in a virtual Classroom and embrace the changes.

“Transformational oriented teachers provoke changes in their students by making them conscious of the importance and value of results obtained after carrying out assignments” (Laureate Education, n.d.). A transformation is sought by the instructor in every single WAS or traditional student in a course; this transformation implies that any learner will work on the course projects either to be submitted in print or to be delivered via the institution’s LMS. However, there will be WASs may look like failing in adapting to new and required technologies in a course. As Marshall Rosenberg (2005) suggests, “allowing others the opportunity to fully express themselves before turning our attention to solutions or requests for relief” is a better idea than simply jumping into a solution. If this is moved into a virtual classroom, let our students speak up their mind for us to show them our empathic trasnformational leadership.

As posed by Rosenberg (2005), “when we proceed to quickly to what people might be requesting, we may not convey our genuine interest in their feelings and needs.” Empathy for what they may be experiencing with new methodologies and suggested methodologies for online learning environments cannot be demonstrated properly if we leaders simply rush to finding a solution for the learner. Students “may get the impression that we’re in a hurry to either be free of them or to fix their problem” (Rosenberg, 2005); they need to understand that we instructors are here to help them out when these feelings of impotence arise, and they do not know exactly what to do and how to mange the amount of stress they are suffering. Transformational leadership in education needs to be directed towards, as pointed out by Rosenberg (2005), offering learners “a chance to fully explore and express their interior selves” and discover that they are fully equipped to learn in a virtual environment in a more autonomous way while being guided by their instructor.

The transformational leadership instructor can perfectly prepare his/her learners for the new learning scenario once the initial “negative” feelings in their “interior selves” have been soothed. WASs can be highly adaptive learners when a bit of nonviolent communication is established with them, and we faculty members are not supposed to underestimate their capability for adapting to new learning situations if we have not offered them to speak up their minds (“explore and express” their feelings). With a bit of transformational leadership aided and boosted by nonviolent communication, WASs can face online, hybrid, or blended education willingly, especially when they discover the flexibility this allows them to organize their working and personal agendas along with their studying tasks. And we can be certain of this when our students have “received adequate empathy,” and “we sense a release of tension” or when “the flow of words comes to a halt” (Rosenberg, 2005).

What’s the advantage of this learning scenario for WASs? Since by means of some nonviolent transformational empathic leadership, the faculty member can motivate learners to be autonomous and work on their personal, professional development beyond the class and course content, and then see the practicability of what is being learned in their working lives. The true transformational leader is not that individual “who have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain [his] own position or feeling” (Rosenberg, 2005); on the contrary, this is an educator who is willing to empty his mind of any kind of preconception towards WASs in an online environment and who is ready to listen to show his empathy with the students who may find a virtual environment and suggested methodologies difficult to follow and to adapt to.

Then after having explored and expressed their emotions and realized of their own potential, what happens to the WASs when they comprehend their autonomous learning role and the importance of developing themselves beyond the classroom boundaries? They understand the geographic dispersion is a way to cope with course learning tasks and schedules; they can feel freer in this respect due to the flexibility of calendar that a virtual environment offers them. Due to the nature of virtual learning, the syllabus the WASs are exposed becomes personalized and more diverse in its content and scope due to the intrinsic variety brought by each learner and endorsed by the professor. Higher education for WASs turns into fully learner-centered; the student becomes the transformational agent of his/her own education and skill, competency developer due to its also intrinsic capacity for reflection and re-elaboration of his/her own knowledge for their working life. And all this can be simply achieved with the aid of nonviolent communication channels where the students feel the empathy coming from their instructor. “Bass (1998) believes that transformational teachers help their students to successfully face conflictive or stressful situations by providing self-assurance and tolerance before uncertainty” (Laureate Education, n.d.).

Is virtual learning seen as a way to lose control over WASs’ attendance to class? Many faculty members do believe this is so. But is this really true? The fact is that just because you do not see a learner sitting in a classroom, it does not mean that learning is not taking place. Learning is not linear or geographical, and it does not mean that we must have students in class for them to learn linearly and chronologically. Education and its resulting process(es) have nothing to do with a linear, geographical, and chronological cognitive process or phenomena; it does take place beyond the bricks of a classroom and in schedules we may not really consider for ourselves, but that are needed by people who cannot be with us inside a classroom. And once these learners have overcome their virtual scenario stage fright, we can allow them the chance to fully express themselves and tell us whether the virtual experience has become rewarding and freeing for them; then we can continue being empathic, nonviolent, transformational leaders and teachers who can take students to the finish line: success.

References

Laureate Education. (n.d.). Excerpt from “A las aulas con liderazgo”. Retrieved from Laureate Faculty Development: http://global3.laureate.net/

Rosenberg, M. (2005). Nonviolent Communication A Language of Life. Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

What does Being a Leader for My Students Imply?

Higher Education, Leadership, Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication, WAS 0 comments

Taken from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/248740

What does Being a Leader for My Students Imply?

A Brief Reflection on Leadership Styles

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Friday, October 21, 2016

Post 302

Should an educator be a classroom leader? It would be no surprise that almost every single teacher, instructor, and faculty member would state a resounding yes! Still others, -I am almost sure of this-, will question whether they are or not effective leaders in their weekly teaching and will question whether their students are good followers. In spite of all these possible answers, an undeniable fact of our teaching profession, either in primary or high school, college, or any other teaching setting, is that we become the leaders of our own teaching and how that teaching impacts our students. For me the initial sentence for this introductory paragraph cannot be a “should you” question but a “you should” statement; we teaching professionals should be the leaders of our teaching scenarios.

When one gets to reflect upon one’s teaching practice, this reflection gives us the chance to see how one experiences the kind of leader one is in the classroom, whether this is in a digital or F2F setting. As a teaching professional with more than twenty years in college settings, I strongly believe I have the responsibility to lead my students to deep learning and the development of working skills and competencies they can eventually apply in their current jobs or in future teaching positions they can hold. If we extend this to other teaching fields, learners will construct their learning and competencies as well. As a consequence, being a leader in the classroom is the chance to exercise one’s power to lead others towards learning objectives, which add to an exit profile a student is meant to attain by the time s/he finishes a study program in higher education or elsewhere.

If I am right on my understanding of what leadership in education is, no doubt one has to be the classroom leader one’s students need. Reorganizing the information shared by BusinessDictionary.Com (2016), one can conclude that as a classroom leader, one is meant to “establish a clear vision” for one’s students to attain the required learning in one’s course(s). One’s task as a classroom leader also implies the sharing of “that vision with [one’s learners] so that they follow willingly” in the attainment of learning objectives that are part of a course outline; moreover, the provision of “information, knowledge and methods to realize that vision” and the coordination of “and balancing the conflicting interests of all [class] members” are two other areas one must concentrate on.

Once I observe my interpretation of leadership in the classroom, metacognitively speaking, I also see myself doing the following to exercise my “power” as the class leading person. When the course outline is discussed with learners the very first day in F2F courses, my main intention is to “establish a clear vision” of what needs to be covered along the course, and how it is going to be covered. Sharing my vision of what I expect from my learners and listening to what they expect from my class is a way to smooth the path to have students follow me willingly towards what needs to be achieved by the end of our course. And part of the exercise of my leadership power is the provision of information and the balance needed when conflicting interests pop up in a class full of WASs (working adult students) coexisting with traditional learners. As someone who is in charge of four more people at one of my two workplaces where I am the head of Curriculum Development and someone who is aware of his expertise acquired in leadership and personnel management, these elements -vision, information provision, and coordination- are a necessity to have everyone “pulling the learning oxcart” towards the same direction.

This exchange with peers, students, and colleagues needs to be based on vision, information provision, and coordination, but also on compassionate communication for an effective leadership. Based on Dr. Marshall Rosenberg (2005), Nonviolent Communication (compassionate communication) is the integration of four constructs: “consciousness, language, communication, and means of influence. As a classroom leader this implies the following:

1. Consciousness is “a set of principles that support living life of empathy, care, courage, and authenticity.” As educators and course leaders we turn to our learners being empathic, caring, encouraging, and authentic to provide them with the confidence we want them to have to follow us willingly.

2. Language is “understanding how words contribute to connection or distance.” As teaching professionals and leaders we want to create a community of learning where every single student feels at ease and willing to take risks and exchange ideas; we do not want to be offending anyone with language that creates distance and a feeling of hatred. A good leader brings the class together as a unit not as individual members.

3. Communication is “knowing how to ask for what we want, how to hear others even in disagreement, and how to move toward solutions that work for all.” A good leader and a good instructor (especially the one working with WASs) is a good listener and negotiator in search of the golden means of communication where everyone is a winner in terms of what needs to be learned and what students want to be taught to be more effective at work.

4. Means of Influence is “sharing ‘power with others’ rather than using ‘power over others.’” The good teacher/leader always shares his/her “power” with learners to give them responsibility over their learning and over the course of action in a class/course. Imposition is so negative that the whole community of learning can get on a rampage against the “dictator.”

What does being a leader for my students imply? The implications, based on Dr. Rosenberg’s conception of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), are threefold. First of all, NVC will “increase our ability to live with choice, meaning, and connection” (Rosenberg, 2005). As leaders, if we can teach our learners to “live with choice, meaning, and connection,” they will find learning a fun task and fully rewarding for their current or future jobs. Secondly, NCV will help us “connect empathically with self and others to have more satisfying relationships” (Rosenberg, 2005). For the student this can mean that having more solid relationships with the members of the community of learning (including the faculty member in charge of the class), learning is built in peaceful and fun social contexts where respect is nourished and strengthened. Finally, NVC implies for our leadership the “sharing of resources so everyone is able to benefit” (Rosenberg, 2005), and so all students in class, traditional or working adults, are always in a win-win situation among themselves and with their professor/leader.

As a final and concluding remark, leadership in teaching implies different but supporting factors that help teachers to become a solid leading figure for learners. Vision, information provision, and coordination are crucial to start building a good leader-follower (teacher-student) relationship. However, if Rosenberg’s integration of his four constructs, consciousness, language, communication, and means of influence, is not present, the leader may not be that effective when trying to materialize learning for his/her students.

References

Leadership. (2016). Taken from the BusinessDictionary.Com webpage at http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/leadership.html#ixzz4EPl3FIKe

Rosenberg, M. (2005). Nonviolent Communication A Language of Life. Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press.

Friday, October 21, 2016

In Search for Comprehending Learning Attitudes

Andragogy, Higher Education, WAS 0 comments

Photograph contributed by Fernando Carranza and taken in Honduras, CA

In Search for Comprehending Learning Attitudes

Embrace Differences and Help College Learners Succeed

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Post 301

As a language teaching professional with 20 years of experience in higher education settings, trying to understand college students’ learning attitudes has been a real challenge. Coming from a very different teaching scenario (a bi-national center sponsored by the US Embassy) before I started teaching English at the university level was not exactly the experience needed to deal with language trainees in university classrooms. Time has been a very persistent and eloquent trainer for me and for many of my colleagues; it has taught us lots of lessons when one intends to understand traditional learners and working adult students’ attitudes towards their learning in higher education.

To try to fully comprehend learners in higher education, their attitudes need to be isolated and compared. Working adult students (WASs) are very much different from the traditional learner who is coming to college for the first time in their lives, usually with no work experience. Any student needs to be understood based on his/her knowledge and abilities, self-concept, expectations, needs, and attitudes. All learners present a very interesting symbiosis of elements that make them unique and different; this implies embracing all the diversity that can coexist in a classroom with respect and admiration.

in search for comprehending learning attitudes chart from jonacuso

The panorama of higher education can be better understood when one is aware of learners’ attitudes towards learning. Traditional learners and working adult students differ substantially, but this does not mean they cannot coexist in a classroom. Having WASs mentor traditional students while developing projects is one of the best ways for adult learners to see how they can also guide newbies into the working world they live in on a daily basis. As an instructor in higher education one is exercising different leadership trends that can help WASs develop their potential and can help other learners to construct their knowledge for the working life to come.

To conclude, do analyze learners in your higher education teaching context to have a better understanding of what your students are and what they expect from their education (and from you). Self-evaluate what you understand and see in each of their attitudes:

- Knowledge and abilities,

- Self-concept,

- Expectations,

- Needs, and

- Attitudes.

Comprehending each point and how they relate to learners will help you develop a more thorough understanding of who is sitting in class waiting to be guided towards their construction of knowledge.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Data-Driven Teaching: A Shift in Blended Learning Education

Data-Driven Teaching, DDT, Hybrid and Blended Learning, LMS 0 comments

Photograph taken in Honduras, CA and contributed by Fernando Carranza

Looking Through Casement ELT Window

Data-Driven Teaching:

A Shift in Blended Learning Education

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Post 300

For several years now, blended teaching in language learning is an integral part of many programs in universities or at language schools around the world. That is, with the incorporation of learning management systems (LMSs) for language development and mastery, teachers are now in much control of what students are doing away from the classroom. Though the LMSs has come to substitute the traditional print workbook of yesteryear, data now coming from the platforms are not really being used to plan instruction and learning focused on the students. A shift in blended learning education has not yet been accomplished, and it is a real need nowadays.

Let’s Understand Data-Driven Teaching (DDT)

“Data analysis can provide a snapshot of what students know, what they should know, and what can be done to meet their academic needs. With appropriate analysis and interpretation of data, educators can make informed decisions that positively affect student outcomes” (Lewis, Madison-Harris, & Times, n.d.). In terms of language teaching and learning, DDT must then be focused on relevant areas of instruction for learners; DDT does not focus on teacher-centered instruction, but quite the opposite. Its main reason to exist is to help educators to create activities that guarantee student-centeredness in language training. While using data to guide one’s teaching, planning is then targeted to strengthen student weak, developing areas and not to just cover course textbook content due to the suggested pacing for a course.

Instructor-Led Online Hours do Count in DDT

Are language instructors really aiming at using DDT while teaching a course? Based on my experience with LMS administration and usage mostly recorded in memoranda, this has not materialized yet in my language teaching contexts, at the university and the language school where I work. The LMS is being loosely used by instructors and colleagues to basically assign content on the platform to somehow practice what is covered in F2F class sessions. Somehow the LMSs continue being used as eWorkbooks rather than a system to collect data for the strengthening of one’s teaching to develop student performance weak areas. The effect of using the platform as an eWorkbook is that the time spent online is not consolidating student learning, which is meant to be the reason why LMSs exist. As a consequence, planning needs to be connected to what data on the platform are telling instructors to guide them in class teaching in a blended learning scenario. The one single imperative that is being left out in this new educational scenario is the analysis of statistical reports to create a connection between the classroom, the platform, and back to the classroom. And part of this imperative is to use this blended learning instruction cycle to make instructor-led hours count for student language development.

Why LMS Work Instead of Paper-Based Homework

If my typical, traditional student is like yours, print workbooks for homework are not exactly a priority for them. A typical learner of mine is that one that shows up for class with not homework on his/her workbook, either because they simply forgot or because s/he could not find the time to complete the assignment. Consequently, learning consolidation may not be achieved when this kind of learner decides that homework is not important for him/her due to their other social or educational endeavors. Moreover, for the teacher –when the workbook’s exercises are checked orally, there is no way to know what areas are giving learners a hard time; something that can be easily done now with the statistical reports that an LMS can produce for instructors. To sum up, language teachers with no DDT orientation as part of their planning and teaching fail in LMS correct use. The right usage of the LMS explains why it is essential to use statistical information to use the platform instead of a print workbook due to the amount of information that can be derived from LMS’s reports.

The Need for Making LMS Instructor-Led Hours Count

A mind shift is needed on how LMS work is perceived by students and orientation is needed from instructors. Student independent work is quite good for self-regulated individuals, and many people take their language learning seriously, whether that is a language or something else they are interested in. For more traditional students, the LMS guided hours can be very fruitful if DDT is present. The idea that platform exercises just need to be completed to comply with work for a course is not exactly the expected behavior a real interested individual demonstrates in language learning. That is why it is necessary make the LMS instructor-led hours count for language mastery and performance. Online hours, as it can be seen, need to trigger data to drive the blended learning cycle to practice the areas that must be practiced, and not a random exercise a teacher arbitrarily decides is the right one to join class activities with platform tasks and then back to the classroom exercises. Though the LMS work may good for some individuals, those students who already know the subject-matter by heart do not need to review what they have already mastered; the platform hours need to be guided in such a way that learners just work on the areas they need to continue developing.

The Blended Cycle and DDT

To really make the LMS instructor-led hours count, the blended cycle needs to be based on data-driven teaching. At this point in language blended education, the instructor is practicing content in class to improve student performance in the four skills. Then, practice activities to continue building on class content is assigned as a consolidation task (group of exercises). Then, learners, guided by the teacher, retake the same content to demonstrate the mastery of it in class. Data produced by the LMS reports generated by the platform is analyzed prior the retaking of content for demonstration; this is done to create a lesson plan that is initially based on the LMS trouble with activities learners had and that the data show. Whatever is going to be (re)practiced in class is to help learners who show difficulty in their LMS work understand whatever they have not been able to grasp 100%.

Taken from https://www.cli.org/blog/what-is-data-driven-instruction/

Measurably Better

“If teachers deploy blended learning ‘properly’, students’ results are measurably better” (Baber, 2013). Why is it that we are still striving to get better results with students when we have information right at our fingertips by clicking here or there in the LMS? As Baber (2013) cleverly states it, “a key element of ‘proper’ deployment is that teachers regularly log into the learning management system, view students’ performance, and then adapt what they do in the classroom.” But based on my reflective journaling and personal memoranda, I can barely see any of this Baber is talking about actually happening in any of my two workplaces. Once again, LMSs are being used as eWorkbooks that will not yield the same kind of result similar to the one we could be getting by simply logging into the platform from time to time to see what the whole group as a whole is having trouble with, and from that point on continue building the language they need to develop, but with a more constructivist orientation in our planning process and blended teaching practices.

“If teachers plough on with their pre-determined curriculum regardless of the students’ strengths and weaknesses as visible from their performance date –they may as well go back to old-fashioned homework on paper” (Baber, 2013). Yes, it is true that we have course outlines to follow as well as a coursebook that needs to be covered, but without understanding learners’ “strengths and weaknesses” we are just contemplating what really is happening outside through a casement window; while there are teaching professionals deploying blended learning practices properly and there are students learning a language proficiently, what are we waiting for to log into the system(s) we are currently using and learn from what our students are striving to learn to give them a hand and the correct kind of blended activities to guide them through their construction of the inter-language to speak English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) as it is described in the CEFR.

References

Baber, E. (2013, May-June). Data-driven teaching: the next big thing? Voices, 232.

Lewis, D., Madison-Harris, R., & Times, C. (n.d.). Using Data to Guide Instruction and Improve Student Learning. Obtenido de SEDL.Org: http://www.sedl.org/pubs/sedl-letter/v22n02/using-data.html

Saturday, October 15, 2016