Blended courses: a mixed blessing.

Abstract

The use of an electronic course management system such as Blackboard to supplement the face-to-face weekly classes typical of many graduate programs can enhance instruction. Blended courses allow students and instructors to communicate and exchange information more conveniently than is the case with either traditional classroom or traditional distance learning courses. However, drawbacks include the usual problems associated with any advanced technology; also, students and instructor (or both, for different reasons) may consider that the additional work involved outweighs the benefits offered by the system.

Introduction

As electronic course management systems (CMS) have been adopted by colleges and universities in the U.S., they are beginning to be considered an essential component in the development and accessibility of a university-level course (Clifford, Earp, & Reisinger, 2004). According to the 2002-2003 annual survey of instructional technology, 91% of colleges and universities reported using some type of CMS in 2002 (Market Data Retrieval, cited in Clifford, Earp, & Reisinger, 2004). The term CMS refers to the educational software products that offer a standard suite of integrated Web-based course management tools. Blackboard and WebCT, for example, allow students to download course materials, exchange documents, submit and receive assignments, and communicate with each other and the instructor in synchronous and asynchronous mode. The speed and ease with which an instructor can add and remove course users, track course statistics, set access to documents, create and deliver quizzes and anonymous surveys, record and compute grades, to name just a few functions, make Blackboard and WebCT a welcome addition to university courses.

An important and well-documented feature of CMS is computer-mediated communication (CMC). Educators and researchers indicate that CMC tools such as web-based bulletin boards and e-mail benefit students and teachers by providing flexibility, interconnectivity, accessibility, efficiency, and economy (Bikowsky and Kessler, 2002; Hanson-Smith, 1999; Kiesler, Siegel, and McGuire, 1991; Sotillo, 2000).Literature suggests that bulletin boards and e-mail can promote collaboration among student teachers in a supportive environment and reduce the isolation felt by novice teachers (Kamhi-Stein, 2000; Schlagal, Traten, & Blanton, 1996; Yildirim and Kiraz, 1999). Specifically, web-based discussion board communication provides student teachers with a sense of community and allows them to participate at their own pace. They can spontaneously contribute ideas and build upon their classmates' messages and engage in sustained communication due to the asynchronous nature of CMC (Schlagal, Traten, & Blanton, 1996). The teacher, in turn, can devote more attention to individual students than in face-to-face exchange because of the opportunity to see, save, and print out all discussions as well as to reply to each posting individually if necessary (Chism, 2004).

This article is an account of the use of a CMS in one graduate TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) teacher preparation program. Supplementing traditional in-class practices with Blackboard allowed us to deliver instruction more effectively by increasing flexibility and student interaction as well as improving class logistics and time management. In the course of theoretical and practical preparation graduate students, who come together on campus only for weekly class sessions, rely on CMS to access course materials and additional learning resources, share their experiences and discuss a variety of themes. Such blended format has its own advantages as well as challenges which will be discussed below.

Why blended courses?

Blackboard has become an integral part of the Seattle Pacific University MA- TESOL program. The program itself is rooted in a four-strand approach. The first strand, academic preparation, includes courses in linguistics and second language acquisition. The second strand, pedagogy, includes methods courses that serve as a bridge between theory and practice. The third strand, practica, includes reflection on direct experience in both language learning (one quarter) and language teaching (two quarters). Almost all classes are now taught in a blended format where traditional face-to-Pace weekly meetings are supplemented by asynchronous online interactions. We see two benefits of blended format specific to this program that prepares language teachers. The first is the ability to save precious face-to-face time for activities for which it is essential, e.g. those where presentation skills are honed and immediate feedback is most helpful. Second, language teachers are expected to have excellent skills in the use of educational technology. Since good teaching typically involves an ability to empathize with students' learning curve, experience using these materials as students is invaluable. "If students are to use technology effectively for teaching in the future, they must use it for learning while they are students" (Kamhi-Stein, 2000, 424).

An important benefit of integrating CMS is improved logistics and time management. Blackboard provides a fast and reliable electronic means of disseminating class materials and collecting assignments, making announcements about updates and emergencies, keeping records and computing grades. The ability to select which documents are available to students and which are invisible to them allows the instructor to set up most of this section before the course begins, and make materials available when needed with minimal effort; new materials can be added at any time. Furthermore, a student's absence from the class no longer serves in and of itself as an excuse for any missed work, as s/he can access lecture notes and handouts, participate in the discussion, receive and submit assignments with the help of Blackboard_ Adopting blended format for our courses allowed us to significantly expand learning resources. Handouts are now available online, along with numerous web links on course-related topics, including texts of academic articles. All materials are stored in the same Blackboard location; they cannot be missed or misplaced and are easily accessed from any networked computer any time during the quarter. A combination of on-line and off-line materials offers a significant expansion of resources that neither a traditional classroom nor a traditional distance-learning course can afford. The massive storage capacity of the university web server is used to display students" work. Very often students express interest in collecting copies of their classmates" lesson plans, language learning activities, article reviews etc. for future reference. Blackboard enables students to share projects with their peers and receive feedback electronically by either posting them on the course site or exchanging them via e-mail.

The suite of communication features of Blackboard, particularly e-mail and a discussion board, proved to be the most important advantage of blended courses. While students are encouraged to participate in the class discussion, the constraints of time and curriculum can curtail face-to-face exchanges. The Discussion Board allows the conversation to continue beyond the weekly meetings, so that students can participate at a comfortable pace. This appeals to those students who are reluctant to speak up in class and is very useful in a program where classes do not meet every day. In addition to students' forums that reflect on topic-related problems and describe their practical experience, the instructor initiates her own forums to focus on class content and/or ponder a question from a different perspective. The instructor also participates in student-led forums responding to messages and providing information when appropriate; a concerted effort is made not to dominate the discussion. Discussion Board with its capability of multiple threads of discourse and a permanent record for referencing becomes an additional learning resource while increasing students' control over their learning and creating a sense of community. Another form of asynchronous communication available through Blackboard is e-mail. Although other possibilities exist for e-mailing individuals and groups (e.g. Microsoft Outlook, the campus-wide Banner Information System), the convenience with which the sender can select names from the list and attach files of any size to the message without leaving the Blackboard site makes it an expedient tool for course users.

Challenges

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to using Blackboard effectively is the all-too-familiar constellation of problems with technology. To give just one example, the Digital Drop Box feature, which is designed to make submission and retrieval of assignments easy, has been nothing but trouble for instructors and students. Numerous complaints about its malfunctioning (attachments lost, message delivery failed) prompted our Instructional Technology Office to disable this feature for the entire campus. Snail mail, e-mail or the old-fashioned trip to campus seems to be more reliable than the Drop Box.

A problem of a more general character and the one that is regularly mentioned in student evaluations is the lack of a home computer and/or a convenient access to the Internet for students who live off campus. Also, university technology departments vary widely in their levels of cooperation and resources; support may or may not be available during evenings and weekends when graduate courses often meet. Finally, early versions of Blackboard do not support use of diacritic marks and non-Roman writing systems except in posted documents--a problem if languages other than English need to be used for Announcements, Discussion Board etc. Asynchronous communication itself may be a mixed blessing. Despite its benefits, it can be tarnished by problems inherent to the nature of the medium itself, namely the amount of time required to type the information and the delay between soliciting the response and the response itself (Nunan, 1999). Countering the benefit for the instructor of being able to post all materials before course begins and making them easily available or unavailable the Discussion Board needs constant tending. The need to constantly check the Discussion Board to participate in forums increases the students" workload. Similarly, the instructor has to allocate a sufficient amount of time for constantly updating the site, uploading materials, and monitoring student discussions in addition to regular responsibilities involved in teaching.

Incorporation of a Groups function of Blackboard proved to be exigent. This feature allows groups of students to communicate in synchronous and asynchronous modes, exchange files and send e-mails exclusively to the members of the group. While group assignments have been successfully used in face-to-face instruction on a regular basis, they have not worked well with the online component because of differences in students' schedules. For the same reason we recommend against using the virtual chat. Although in the context of a Web-based graduate TESOL course real-life chatting can offer students an opportunity to "engage in a conversation ... with their professor and fellow students as their ideas evolve in real time across different educational and cultural contexts" (Nunan, 1999, 58), the disparity of students' schedules and the demands of life outside a classroom complicate implementation of virtual chat sessions.

Another challenge lies in the students themselves, especially less technologically adept ones, who can exhibit reluctance in taking full advantage of the online component, particularly participating in online discussions (Nunan, 2002). Student evaluations show a certain degree of anxiety towards Blackboard, particularly at the beginning of the course. Explaining the benefits of Blackboard, offering personal assistance, recruiting more experienced classmates to help novice technology users, and assigning credit for Blackboard use have proved useful in overcoming students' reluctance. Finally, and another example of a mixed blessing, the ease with which Blackboard users can access, store and retrieve course documents does not promote the development of appropriate skills in "organizationally challenged" students. Handouts and worksheets are carefully organized in online folders for them; some students do not even take notes in class, relying on PowerPoint slides that can be printed out before or after the lecture.

Student feedback

Course evaluations reveal that students generally recognize the advantages of supplementing graduate courses with an online component. Responding to the question "What did you like about the course online component?" one student remarked that she likes "being able to choose to print information or save it to a disk or just read it on the computer screen. I also like to check my assignments online at home and print up anything I may have missed in class." Another wrote, "It's wonderful being able to access a variety of course documents at any hour of the day or night." Still another stated that she "can use it as a platform to turn in my assignments without printing and make my lesson plans available to everyone without spending twenty dollars on printing." Students appreciate the organizational crutch: "I'm not very organized, and I can't find any of the class handouts or my notes, but I can look online, and study from the posted materials and know when assignments are due without calling my classmates or professor." Finally, students appreciate the communication tools that enable them "to have a message system available in the form of class announcements/forums," and "continue discussions begun in class, so that we can raise issues that come up during the week that we might forget about if we waited until the next session."

Others are less enthusiastic. A critical issue for many students is the lack of a computer at home: "One disadvantage is that, for anything that we MUST do on-line, it is problematic for students who do not have a computer at home." Another challenge is Internet access: "Not every student has it and so they have to find a place to use a computer with Internet access, which can be very inconvenient." Even if a student can log on to the Internet from his/her home computer, "this could be very time consuming and tie up the phone lines." Several students seem to be dissatisfied with the discussion board; they particularly resent the time commitment associated with an online debate. Describing the benefits of the discussion board one student notes, "Mandatory online discussion embedded with a class however adds a massive amount of work to any class load". Another comments, "Discussion board can be helpful and it can also be very time consuming and not worth even logging onto. Sometimes I have nothing to say about the topic being discussed or somebody else has already said what I wanted to say. Other times I find it hard to put into words what I want to say or I misunderstand what another person has written. I would much rather go to class and have a discussion than take the time to type something out and have to formulate my thoughts into well formed sentences that other people are going to read and try to understand". These comments, though infrequent, demonstrate that students realize the demands of a blended course and seek ways of adapting to the new way of learning. In short, while some students find Blackboard "a great educational tool", others' "feelings are mixed."

Conclusion

Blended courses that combine online course management resources with traditional face-to-face meetings offer enhanced learning and convenience for students and instructors alike. However, in life there is no such thing as a change that does not involve more work. As Nunan (1999, p. 71) states: "In the end, it is the learning that matters, and the technology is simply a means to that end. This may seem a somewhat trite, even obvious, observation. However it is one that appears to be often overlooked in the excitement generated by the emergence of new ways of bringing together teachers and learning, and learners and learning."

References

Bikowsky, Dawn and Greg Kessler. "Making the most of Discussion Boards in the ESL Classroom." TESOL Journal, Vol. 11, No.3 (Autumn 2002).

Chism, R. "Electronic Message Boards: Conversations and Communication Beyond the Classroom." In L. Lomicka and J. Cooke-Plagwitz, Eds. Teaching with Technology, 149-155. Boston, MA: Thompson Heinle, 2004.

Clifford, Joan, Samantha Earp, and Deb Reisinger. "Course Management Systems and Foreign Language Curricula: The Case of Blackboard at Duke University." In L. Lomicka and J. Cooke-Plagwitz, Eds. Teaching with Technology, 2-9. Boston, MA: Thompson Heinle, 2004.

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Kiesler, S., J. Siegel, and T. W. McGuire. "Social Psychological Aspects of Computer-mediated Comanunication." In C. Dunlop and R. Kling, Eds. Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices, 330-349. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1991.

Nunan, David. "A Foot in the World of Ideas: Graduate Study through the Interact." Language Learning and Technology, Vol. 3, No. 1 (July 1999).

Nunan, David. "Teaching MA-TESOL Courses Online: Challenges and Rewards." TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Winter 2002).

Schlagal, B., Traten, W., and Blanton, W. "Structuring telecommunications to create instructional conversations about student teaching." Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 47 (1996).

Sotillo, S.M. "Discourse Functions and Syntactic Complexity in Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication." Language Learning and Technology, Vol. 4, No. 1 (May 2000).

Yildirim, S., and Kiraz, E. "Obstacles in integrating online communication tools into pre-service teacher education: A case study." Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1999).

Ekaterina Nemtchinova, Seattle Pacific University

Kathryn Bartholomew, Seattle Pacific University

Nemtchinova, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of TESOL and Russian, and Bartholomew, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Languages & Linguistics, in the College of Arts & Sciences.