A Blended Teacher Training Model for Online Teaching

Design, Implementation, and Effective Outcomes

Dr. Miao-fen Tseng (曾妙芬)

Alice Lin (锺良音)

Na Li (李娜)

2017 STARTALK Post-Program Conference

UVa STARTALK celebrates its 10th anniversary in the

Academic Village that Thomas Jefferson created in 1819.

The Academic Village transcends high-impact academic excellence and aspires UVA

STARTALK Teaching Fellows to become leading educators in teaching Mandarin

Chinese as a foreign language in the 21st century.

UVA STARTALK Celebrates its 10th Anniversary

http://startalkuva.as.virginia.edu

Anecdote 1: Same or Different? Regan: “Mom, don’t do it. It’s no use at all!”

Miao-fen: “The program we are creating is different from the courses you took before.”

Anecdote 2: Rosetta Stone

Ruth: Rosetta Stone already has online tutors, why do you need to train teachers how to teach online?

Miao-fen: Our program trains teachers to be instructors, not tutors.

Strong Faith in 2 Assumptions at UVa STARTALK

Assumption 1:

Complete or heavy reliance on self-learning for online language courses is doomed to failure.

Assumption 2:

Frequent quality interaction is key to success for F2F, blended, and online learning.

Comprehensive Cycle of Consolidated Learning

Pre-class

Preview

Instant Feedback

1.5 hrs.

One-hour

Synchronous

Learning

Post-classTutorial Session

Review Tasks

1 hr.

Pre-class flipped learning

Study guide Conversation recording

Quizlet

Playposit

After-class integrated tasks

Oral assignment (flipgrid) Written assignment (Padlet)

PaGaMO

Teacher’s Role1. Delivered two 1-hour synchronous morning sessions during the 12-day practicum.

2. Provided feedback to students on their daily review assignments and tasks through Group Board in Canvas.

3. Participated in Facebook discussions.

Tutorial sessions were done by teaching assistants in the afternoon.

Why? Who? How? When? Where?

WIZIQ Online Interactive Platform Canvas Learning Management System

Online Synchronous Learning9:30 AM-10:30 AM

11:30 AM-12:30 PM

Facebook Group

Group Discussion

Daily Topic

Blended Training Model Results of the study on online world language teaching in Europe (Germain-Rutherford and Pauline, 2015): 1. Teachers preferred a combination of online and F2F training

over either one individually. 2. Teachers welcomed hands-on training featuring concrete

examples and activities. 3. Choice of training types

80% supported a blended training model73% voted for F2F training61% preferred a fully online training program

Five-Week Schedule

Week 1 (06/19-23): Online Training I (Pedagogy/Curriculum)

Week 2 (06/26-30): Online Training II (Technology/Instruction)

Week 3 (07/05-08): Hands-on Interactive Workshops (Onsite)

Week 4 (07/10-15): Practicum I (Onsite)

Week 5 (07/17-21): Practicum II & Closing Ceremony (Onsite)

Quantitative & Qualitative Analysis

Quantitative analysis

summarizes the results of teachers’ pre-program and post-program self-assessment and compares their growth in each item.

Qualitative analysis

recounts teachers’ self-reflections on their grasp of key concepts and application of principles for online teaching.

Morning

1. Mindfulness

2. Mindset/Spirit

check

3. Teaching

1. Feedback

2. Rehearsal

3. Discussion

4. Lesson plan

1. Group A

discussion

2. Group B

discussion

Afternoon Evening

What did teachers learnfrom the program?

Foster a Growth Mindset“I was introduced to the growth mindset during the program, which helped me build confidence in not only professional career, but also in personal life. Moreover, I really loved the spirit checking activity every morning, which instilled fresh vitality and energy in us with confidence before teaching. I plan to combine these two elements in my own class, introducing to my students of the growth mindset while encouraging them to engage in spirit checking activities, so that they feel it is a well-supported positive learning environment.”

Team Work Works! “My strength in creating interesting games by using technology creatively helped in team. The team helped me overcome my weakness in creating cognitively overload slides by using limited amount of most essential visual information, keywords, and sequence of appearance of information. In the end, we served our best products to our students.”

Not An Isolated Island Any More! “There was no one to talk to bounce off my ideas. …..A lot of bad practices remained because of my blind sight.”

“I not only learned the teaching techniques but also learned the wisdom of life. This program provided me a great chance to learn and work with a group of wonderful teachers: we got different grouping that led us to know more different person. By conversing with others, I gained not only professional exchanges but also friendship like comrades.”

Create PowerPoint Slides“I appreciated both master teachers’ assistance to go over the ppt details design and the technics of how to ask. Above are especially helpful for the next day’s rehearsal. Rehearsal is another helpful part, when I went through each slide, everyone’s feedback and comments help me re-shape my ppt as well as reorganize the sequence of the questions for students. After this week’s onsite training, I deeply think about the organization and have a clear and logical flow of what to teach and how to teach.”

Old Habits with No Principles & Strategies

“I have used PowerPoint for many years, but it was my first time to learn about principles and strategies to create PowerPoints for teaching. Reflecting on my previous teaching, I have made a lot of mistakes that should be “avoided.”

“The difference between mediocrity and excellence is attention to detail.”

Quantitative Analysis

Checklist (pre-/during-/post-program)

1. Daily performance objectives are focused on proficiency

targets and meaningful contexts.

2. Activities enable students to assess their attainment of the

lesson’s language objectives.

3. Activities enable students to meet daily performance

objectives.

4. Through the learning tools, has the instructional objectives

been achieved?

Results and Discussions

Self-reflections by Teachers

“As we planned a lesson in the UVa STARTALK program, we always kept the learning targets and the ending performance tasks in mind. The last step we did in lesson planning was to think of what activities could best engage students and provide more opportunities for interactions between students.”

“Backward designing helps teachers stay focused on the goals when planning a lesson. It is very important to bear in mind with the teaching objectives at all times as they also help with the design of engaging activities and tasks.”

Self-reflections by Teachers

“To compare myself today with the instruction I’ve delivered in the past two years, I found myself focus more on students’ pushed output and asking ‘better’ questions to elicit students’ answers. I think that is a good thing and a very important takeaway from the workshops that I’ve attended. With good elicitation techniques, students were pushed to produce sentences, even strings of sentences instead of one single exchange.”

Self-reflections by Teachers“To be more specific, I need to give students more time to talk. Through eliciting, questioning, and various strategies students will be able to produce language with correct grammatical structures. The temptation of speaking English or give pinyin on PPT is always there. Prior to this training, I did not see the harm in giving students translation on PPT or supplying English phrases verbally. After this experience, I feel that I should be able to maximize my class time more efficiently after I get back. Although this learning process is kind of painful, I think it is worthwhile and it will benefit my future teaching.”

Self-reflections by Teachers

“Another of my delight in this program is getting familiar with the newest teaching technology tools …… I can’t wait to try these technology with my students…...”

Flipgrid

Padlet

Self-reflections by Teachers

“Another great technique is how to make use of authentic materials and teach culture. I used clipart a lot in my previous teaching, since it’s easy to find and clear to understand. However, I gradually see the advantage of using authentic materials. …….. I really like the idea that the 10- day study guide is a trip in Beijing. They sing Karaoke in KTV, bargain with 老板 on the Great Wall, listen to the welcoming speech in Beijing Sizhong, do morning exercise and eye exercise with Chinese students, have Chinese food in the school cafeteria, and watch Kungfu performance in the student hall. I think that it’s probably more effective to get student immersed in the culture through authentic materials, rather than presenting something with a tag of “this is Chinese culture.”

Post-program Reminiscences

“Today (Day 10) was a bitter sweet day; our last class was only 40 minutes long with an extra 20 minutes dedicated to the program closing ceremony on Zoom. I can’t help but shed tears during the closing ceremony because I felt so grateful to be part of this wonderfully successful teacher and student program. I have witnessed our students’ dedication and motivation to learn Chinese well, this has inspired me to want to be a better teacher. In our group, one student continued to join our classes online while traveling with family in France, one student came late to one of our class after surgery extracting her wisdom teeth. I am amazed at their language progress in only a short period of time. I feel that the well integration of authentic material, continuous support from the team of teachers and tutors, creative use of variety of technology tools altogether made our students motivated and engaged. I hope to bring all of these back to my F2F classroom.”

Post-program Reminiscences

“This program has transformed me to be a significantly more impactful teacher. I improved in applying backward design methods in lesson planning, using 100% of target language and authentic language materials in delivering a lesson, and creating student-centered interactive activities.”

Post-program Reminiscences

“After this program, I become more attentive to details for instructional design and delivery. I had the chance to hone my elicitation skills and to observe how other teachers taught to help students generate maximal output. Personal spiritual enrichment-wise, I learned to have a growth mindset, which could not only be applied for teaching but also for a broader spectrum-life.”

Post-program Reminiscences “I believe this program has made me a better teacher and helped me grow as a person. I have learned not only teaching methodologies, elicitation techniques, online teaching technology and tools, but also the growth mindset, how to communicative and collaborate with my team and learn from each other, how much detail matters, and I could keep going for days and there are still much more for me to savor and digest in the future.”

Thank you!