Online Learning: TESOL & Business Courses Pros and Cons

Online Learning: pros and cons for TESOL and business courses at NorthTec International Campus2018 CRIE Conference Online Learning in International EducationMonday 15 and Tuesday 16 January 2018, Auckland, New Zealand W. Sperlich, S. Warring, S. Chada

Online Learning • There are many definitions of online learning in the literature (Moore, Dickson-Deane & Gaylen, 2011, Ally 2004).

Online Learning: A Definition • “the use of the Internet to access learning materials; to interact with the content, instructor, and other learners; and to obtain support during the learning process, in order to acquire knowledge, to construct personal meaning and to grow from the learning experience” (Ally, 2004)

Constructivist Theory • Constructivism is predominant in the online learning context. • Collaborative and independent study modes are associated with constructivism (Antonacci & Modress, 2008, Australian National Training Authority, 2002, Bach , Haynes & Lewis Smith, 2007, Berge, 2008, Caplan, 2004, Graham, Cagiltay, Lim, Craner & Duffy, 2001, Johnson, 2005, Murphy & Cifuentes, 2001, Rosenberg, 2006, Wagner, 2005).

Constructivism in Online Context • Constructivism applied to the online context - both students and teachers must assume roles which differ than those assumed in traditional educational paradigms....

Constructivism in Online Context • Tutor becomes less of an expert and an information source and more of a facilitator, coach and mentor

Constructivism in Online Context • Students should become collaborative problem-solvers, rather than rote learners and should search for answers to their own questions.

Constructivism in Online Context • Students should be willing and able to learn independently...

Independent Learning Model • Dependent (Level 1) • Learners are unable/unwilling and/or insecure. • Decisions are made by the teacher.

Independent Learning Model • Interested (Level 2) • Learners are unable but willing and/or confident. • Decisions are made by the teacher with explanation and support given to learners.

Independent Learning Model • Involved (Level 3) • Learners are able but unwilling and/or insecure. • Decisions are shared.

Independent Learning Model • Self-Directed (Level 4) • Learners are able/willing and/or confident. • Decisions are made by learners • (adapted from Grow, 1991, pp 129 - 136; Hersey & Blanchard, 1996, p 195)

Independent Online Learners To succeed in the online constructivist model, learners need to be Self-Directed (L4) and possibly could succeed if Involved (L3), with support from the tutor.

Independent Online Learners Are international students Self-Directed (L4) ??...

MOODLE PROS AND CONSPROS FOR TEACHING BUSINESS MOODLE CONS • Being open source, the teacher has to figure out a lot of things. • Not always easy to get support unless dedicated Moodle support is available • Requires a lot of customisation to suit an instructors needs. • Being a complex system , it can be very challenging for a first time teacher. • Students need to be very motivated to go online to access documentation (Beatty & Ulasewicz, 2006)

Pros • Can access a large amount of documentation and videos • Moodle uses well known e-tools for communication: online chat, forum, e-mail which are very useful for teaching (Kakasevski, Mihajlov, Arsenovski & Chungurski, 2008, June). • Developed from a constructivist philosophy model which helps in teaching business using well developed discussion forums (Bremer & Bryant, 2005) • Offers an interactive learning environment for both faculty and students (Beatty & Ulasewicz, 2006) • Easy implementation of assessments

Pros • Good grade management although can be complex or confusing at times. • Resources and guides are free • Can have unlimited users which is very useful for large group learning. • Encourages active learning. • Modular design of Moodle offers flexibility and depending upon the modules used it can used for any type of teaching style or educational mode (Aydin & Tirkes,2010, April)

ONLINE RESOURCES FOR BLENDED LEARNING • … learning online about online resources and blended learning … • … it’s free but it costs 60 Pounds Sterling to get the certificate … • … learning about learning? • … anyone can pass the multiple choice ‘test’ to get the certificate …

Multimedia production • YouTube • Vimeo • Audacity • Camstudio

Presentation tools • PPP • Prezi • Google docs

Collaborative writing tools • Wikipedia • Mediawiki

Reflective tools • blog tools (such as Wordpress, or a VLE based blog tool) through to sophisticated eportfolio tools (E.g. Pebblepad). Blogs are ideal tools for reflective exercises, as they can be as simple (e.g. just text) or complex (e.g. a website with multimedia, text, links, comments etc.) as required. • http://wolfgangsperlich.blogspot.co.nz/

Collaboration tools • Google Hangouts • Skype • Adobe Connect and Blackboard Collaborative have similar features but require a licence.

Interactive tools • Socrative • Poll Everywhere • Nearpod • engage students in interactive activities (e.g. quizzes) during teaching sessions. These tools all offer real-time results to share with learners for instant feedback, and can be very powerful for assessing learning.

Social tools • Twitter … anyone for Donald Trump? • Facebook … anyone for cyber-bullying? • Instagram … selfies & cosmetics corporations? • Snapchat … listing on the stock exchange?

ONLINE FOR ESOL • Online bilingual dictionaries and spell checkers • … the good, the bad and the ugly • Good: synonym checking (but explain the ins and outs of synonyms) • Bad: bilingual lexical gaps • Ugly:homonyms, homographs • Advanced: etymology, syntactic and semantic webs, idioms, context ….

Translation Machines • Google translate OMG LOL FUK (It’s a fashion label, for F*** sake!)

Original Chinese text …. 1842年，中英鴨片戰爭之後，清朝正快速的走向滅亡之路，人民的生活愈來愈困苦，我的祖先與同村的一群親戚朋友，渡海來台謀生，所謂穿越當時非常艱險、難渡的台灣海峽，又名黑水溝，九死一生，到達中台灣的苗栗沿海，因為來得比較晚，只能佔據比較貪瘠的依山靠海的地方，建立一個小村庄，過著一邊打漁，一邊農耕的生活。

ENGLISH GOOGLE TRANSLATION • In 1842, after the Sino-British Duck War, the Qing Dynasty was rapidly going to the road of demise,People's lives are getting harder and harder,My ancestors and a group of relatives and friends in the same village crossed the sea to come to Taiwan for a living,The so-called crossing of the Taiwan Strait, which was very difficult and difficult at that time,Also known as the Black River ditch, nine died, arrived in Taiwan's Miaoli coastal areas,Because it came later, can only occupy the more barren mountains and rivers,Build a small village, live a farming while fishing.

… movie review (submitted student work)? • Talking about Shuiquan Xiangshui primary high school teacher's mother was ill, he wanted to go home to visit, so he invited a 12-year-old Wei Minzhi as substitute teacher. High teacher before leaving told Wei Minzhi students in the class to one less. But soon, Zhang Hui Branch because the family went to work poor city. Wei teacher came to the town to find Zhang Hui Branch. Finally, with the help of the TV station director, he finally found Zhang Hui. Shuiquan primary school classrooms so old, so few stationery, students' family is so poor….

WHO DUNNIT?

The Mathematics of Statistical Machine Translation: Parameter Estimation (1993) • Peter E Brown*IBM T.J. Watson Research Center • Vincent J. Della Pietra*IBM T.J. Watson Research Center • Stephen A. Della Pietra* IBM T.J. Watson Research Center • Robert L. Mercer*IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

We describe a series of five statistical models of the translation process and give algorithms for estimating the parameters of these models given a set of pairs of sentences that are translations of one another. We define a concept of word-by-word alignment between such pairs of sentences. pairs of languages. We … feel, again because of the minimal linguistic content of our algorithms, that it is reasonable to argue that word-by-word alignments are inherent in any sufficiently large bilingual corpus.

If the English string, e = e~ - el e 2 . . . el, has 1 words, and the French string, f = f~ =_ f l f 2 . . , fro, has m words, then the alignment, a, can be represented by a series, a~ = ala2...am, of m • values, each between 0 and I such that if the word in position j of the French string is connected to the word in position i of the English string, then aj = i, and if it is not connected to any English word, then aj = O. • Without loss of generality, we can write • m • Pr(f,a|e) = Pr(m|e) ∏ Pr(a1|a1j-1, ƒ1j-1, m,e) Pr(ƒj|a1j, ƒ1j-1, m,e) • j=1

COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS à la R. Mercer: GROSS AND CRUDEhttp://wolfgangsperlich.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/ Chomsky’s 1959 review of Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour saved us from ‘gross and crude’ behaviourism in linguistics, if not in psychology itself. In fact, behaviourism in the world of business (marketing and advertising) still rules,and if not checked will lead to neo-fascist models of behaviourist manipulation, as Chomsky also warned. It is my contention that this threat to human civilisation has been further exacerbated by what one can call either an extension of behaviourism or else a new development occasioned by computational linguistics. Initially popular science was enamoured by the idea that language can be compared to the computer in terms of the human brain being some sort of hardware which can be programmed by some clever software. The software in question would have to be something like Chomskyian parsing programmes, embedded in Artificial Intelligence, with the ability to acquire language like children do. Given the slow progress in this seemingly impossible task, this raised the ire of the business community that wanted results so that language could be commercialized – in combination with military applications of course. The enfant terrible in this case, unlike a somewhat benign Skinner before him, is one Robert Mercer, who not only subverted computational linguistics but also made a fortune from it and now bankrolls the likes of Trump and Bannon. The story is described somewhat diffidently in a Guardian article subtitled ‘With links to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage, the rightwing US computer scientist is at the heart of a multimillion-dollar propaganda network’.

Mercer, a non-linguist, had the brilliant idea that voice recognition and machine-translation can be achieved by simple statistical matching: when you say ‘hello’ when you phone your insurance company about a claim, the voice recognition program immediately constructs a digital oscillation and compares it to a stored model recorded by an average speaker, and if there is a match within an allowable range, the computer program accepts your ‘hello’ and then responds with a phrase that has a high statistical value in the context of an insurance claim, like ‘hello, we value your call, please state your claim number’. Similarly if I want to translate this phrase into German, the program will check the data bank for previous translations of this phrase and select the one with the highest statistical value, given some context that is calculated by some clever algorithm. Given the advent of ‘big data’ just about everything that has ever been said and written can be stored in digital format and can be statistically matched to anything you say or write.

PTE • Computational linguistics as statistical modelling has already reached new heights in English language testing, as for example in the Pearson Test of English, which is totally computerized in all language modes, i.e. speaking, listening, reading and writing. While the passive modes of listening and reading have long been subject to education systems that control and limit freedom of expression, it is now the active modes that have been harnessed. The algorithms that check your essay writing will not allow sentences that - while grammatically correct – find no match in the prescribed data base. If you write, à la Chomsky, that the United States are a terrorist state, along with North-Korea, Israel, Saudi-Arabia and any other state you care to mention, you will fail your English language test and in addition will be referred to various secret service agencies that mine such data for dissenting language.

AUTOMATIC ESSAY SCORING • On March 12, 2013, HumanReaders.Org launched an online petition, "Professionals Against Machine Scoring of Student Essays in High-Stakes Assessment". Within weeks, the petition gained thousands of signatures, including Noam Chomsky. • The petition describes the use AES for high-stakes testing as "trivial", "reductive", "inaccurate", "undiagnostic", "unfair", and "secretive” • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_essay_scoring

CONCLUSIONS • PROS and CONS FOR ON-LINE RESOURCES FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS (and their teachers) • Ease of access (but what when the system is down?) • Huge variety of resources (but how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?) • Blended learning (but it requires independent learning motivation, which for inter/national students is often lacking …)

… highly prescriptive course material does not allow for ‘independent learning’, e.g. NZCEL L4-academic strand) • Easy to incorporate intelligences other than ‘academic’, such as visual, kinaesthetic, musical – I use music videos with lyric subtitles a lot – instant ESOL Karaoke (but what when the teacher next door complains about ‘noise’?)

More Cons (unfortunately) Study of one cohort of Chinese International students (Warring, 2013) foundstudents were not at level 3 or 4 of the independence model. Did not have the ability, confidence and attitudes which will allow them to succeed in the constructivist online context.

Study of one cohort of Chinese International students (Warring, 2013): these students lacked confidence, ability and believed that the teacher is responsible for their learning, indicating they are level one or two learners.

Constructivism in Online Context The tutor has a significant role to play in creating the conditions for students to perform in a constructivist online paradigm. Are tutors experts or facilitators?..

Many online courses are merely ‘content dumps’ with a discussion forum added. Collison, Elbaum, Haavind & Tinker, R., p. 13).

It is a common misconception that if the teacher is taken away, students will manage their own learning (Wenden,1995).

Can’t just take the tutor away: The facilitator may be required to assist learners who are not ready for autonomy and need to be taught self-directed learning skills first (Wenden, 1995).

Can’t just take the tutor away: The facilitator may be required to develop productive groups (Berge, 1995)

AND THE WINNERS ARE … • THE CONS (who sell you the product …) • … EDUCATION FOR SALE … • And the PROS (professionals) losers are: • Students and teachers

References • Ally, M. (2004). Foundations of Educational Theory for Online Learning. In Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. (Eds.), Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Canada: Athabasc University. • Antonacci, D. & Modress, N. (2008). Envisioning the educational possibilities of user-created virtual worlds. AACE Journal, 16 (2), 115-126. Retrieved August 02 2012, from http://www.editlib.org/index.cfm/files/paper_24253.pdf?fuseaction=Reader.DownloadFu llText&paper_id=24253 • Australian National Training Authority (2002) Australian Flexible Learning Quick Guide. Retrieved June 03, 2012 from http://pre2005.flexiblelearning.net.au/guides/assessment.pdf • Bach S., Haynes P., & Lewis Smith, J. (2007). Online learning and teaching in higher education. Maidenhead, England: Open University Press. • Age Publishing, 14:1.

Online Learning: TESOL & Business Courses Pros and Cons