AVALON Teachers’ Training Course

 

1. Pre-course preparation

1.1 Decision-making process

 

This course seems to have been developed in detail by a team working in one institution, namely the University of Manchester. I can thus imagine that most of the operational decisions were made by people who were used to working together and who had no technical problems establishing a common frame of reference within which to make decisions about how the course was to be designed and delivered.

 

1.2 Aims/objectives

 

The aims and objectives were formulated in relation to the AVALON Project as a whole. There was thus a specific need for the course and there were plenty of human and technical resources within the project on which the course team could rely. The main aims were related to the participants’ own skills in using the virtual environment, with secondary aims relating to the use of virtual environments in the participants’ own teaching.

 

1.3 Funding

 

The course was funded via an EU project, but there was an ambition to develop the course as a fee-paying course in a later version. There was thus no immediate need to search for separate funding in order to make the course happen.

 

1.4   Environment and the learners

 

There were two groups of 10 learners working with two tutors allocated to each group. The groups thus had the opportunity to develop a group identity and loyalty. The learning environment in Second Life was the Avalon Island, which has all the facilities the course teachers required. These included a number of different teaching environments, allowing for different types of plenary and group sessions to be run, and display facilities, such as screens for slides and video sequences, which the teachers could use.

 

The course also used a Moodle space for the exchange of ideas about teaching in Second Life and for the distribution of different types of resources relating to the course. The Moodle space was also used to introduce group members to each other.

 

1.5   Logistics and timetabling

 

The pilot course involved the participants attending 2 two-hour sessions each week for six weeks (12  two-hour sessions in all). The tutors on the course working in teams, team teaching each group of participants respectively. The island they worked on (Avalon) is sufficiently large for the two groups to work simultaneously without disturbing each other. The teams of tutors planned together and shared experiences as they progressed through the course.

 

In addition to the scheduled lesson time, participants were asked to commit to 26 hours of self-study during the course.

 

1.6   Course syllabus

 

The course worked to a schedule, rather than a set syllabus, and the nature of this schedule changed as the course progressed, as each group developed slightly differently, depending on the interests and skills areas of the respective tutors and participants. 

1.7   Advertising the course

 

The course was advertised to a number of different interest groups and institutions via e-mail, social media and flyers. 

 

2. Course implementation

 

2.1 Technical issues and support

 

The main technical issue had to do with VoiceChat. At times there were participants who weren’t able to use audio to interact with other participants and tutors, but instead had to resort of text chat. Support was given by the tutors themselves, sometimes outside lesson times. Having at least two tutors per group of participants allowed one of the tutors to help participants out if there were sudden technical issues which needed dealing with.

 

2.2 Interaction

 

Personal and individual e-mails were used for interaction between individuals on the course, and the discussion forum in the Moodle space was also used extensively to discuss issues of both a professional nature and to establish other types of contact between the participants and tutors (who were all language teachers).

 

2.3 Resources

 

The materials and resources used on the course were created by tutors for their own sessions, although these were shared openly between tutors, and many of these links and resources were shared with participants.

 

2.4 Ethical issues

 

No significant ethical issues emerged. Participants were asked in advance to commit themselves to attending all the sessions, but not all of them managed to meet this commitment all the time. In general, participants did contact tutors in advance to warn them of absences from the teaching sessions.

 

3. Post-course

 

3.1 Assessment

 

Participants were required to:

 

a) produce a 10-minute PowerPoint presentation about a lesson which would take the potential of Second Life into account,

 

b) post a brief lesson plan on Moodle, and

 

c) carry out one activity from the lesson (in a maximum of 15 minutes).

 

Feedback was given by tutors about how well the lesson and its activities were connected to the theory of teaching and learning in Second Life. Participants received certificates of participation form the ICC International Language Network.

 

3.1 Evaluation 

 

There’s nothing about participant evaluation of the course in the case study.

 

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Analysis

 

This seems to be a well thought-out and -delivered course, which has some lessons for the design of future courses.

 

Pre-Coures (Conception, Planning and Design)

 

The team working on this course seem to have had close contact with each other before the course started and have built into the design various mechanisms which made it work:

 

1) They had a system for sharing expertise between them, and the personal contacts between course delivery team members allowed them to react quickly and responsively to the various technical and personal hitches which are inevitable when you're designing such a high-tech course.

 

2) The structure of the course is very clear, which makes it easy for participants to see what they have to do and when they have to do it.

 

3) The course team established a Moodle site for the course which also facilitated the exchange of ideas (and documents) between course team and participants, and within the group of participants.

 

4) The timing of the course seems fairly realistic (although there may be ways of reducing the course's length somewhat).

 

5) The course aims were suitably limited and well-adapted to the way the course would be delivered.

 

Course Implementation

 

1) There was a good procedure in place for inducting students on to the course and for solving technical problems, especially at the beginning of the course. Since studying courses in virtual environments often places extra strain on students' computer equipment, internet connection, etc, having this sort of flexible technical 'first aid' team at hand is a really good idea.

 

2) The student groups were sufficiently large to allow for interaction between group members, but sufficiently small to allow both students and teachers to be able to handle the extra stress of working in a virtual environment. As teachers become more experienced at working in virtual environments, it becomes easier to work with larger groups, but even experienced teachers often need more time to become accustomed to new course material and new colleagues in environments like these.

 

3) The demands on students seem reasonable and also spread throughout the course at reasonable intervals.

 

Post Course

 

1) The tasks the students needed to perform look interesting and challenging. Each group of 10 students would need a minimum of 5 hours to complete them all, though (assuming the performance was done individually). The time needed to assess and evaluate student performance needs to be quantified and built in to the 'time budget' for any course, but this is particularly important for a course delivered in a virtual environment. The more 'chaotic' nature of a course in an environment like this with its technical and pedagogical challenges tends to make time management more difficult than it would be in a conventional environment.

 

2) Although student evaluation of the course isn't mentioned in this report, it's a very good idea to carry such an evaluation out, whether the particular education system you're working in requires one or not.