Looking back on 2018

I love year-in-review posts. They’re often a tad more personal than the usual ELT blog post in that they touch on areas of life outside of the classroom, which I always enjoy reading about. I’ve been following some folks’ blogs long enough to feel as if I know them in real life, so it’s great to read about their successes and challenges, and how they overcame/are dealing with the latter. Year-in-review posts can also be a useful reminder of things people have previously shared on their blogs or social media, but with the flood of news out there it’s often easy to overlook/forget bits of pertinent information.   

The idea for this post came from Sandy Millin’s blog, where you can also read which other posts inspired hers. I’ve adapted it a bit because a) it’s not December anymore, b) if I wrote about 31 points this would be completed in June, and c) I have nothing to say for some of the prompts, so I left them out.   

Your favorite activity from 2018

I haven’t taught offline much for quite a while now, so I’m going to go with an online activity which isn’t from 2018 but remains one of my favorites: the anonymous peer review. I wrote about how it’s set up in my course and which tweaks have been added over time in this post.

Most memorable story from 2018

This would have to be my visit to Athens in the spring. I hadn’t been to Greece before and it was great to have the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks there. One thing I’ll definitely remember the visit by is meeting one of my PLN in person – thanks for everything, Christina! Proof that the ELT world is indeed a small one is that in the brief time while I was in Athens the sixth BELTA Day took place and Christina was a presenter, so I was able to reminisce about the lovely BELTA people and previous BELTA Days without – hopefully – sounding too nostalgic.

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Nap time. #catsofinstagram #athens #greece #theperfectbench

A post shared by Vedrana Vojkovic Estatiev (@venvve) on May 9, 2018 at 2:56am PDT

the moment in 2018 you felt proud as a teacher

This isn’t classroom related but I’ve been adjuncting at the University of Zagreb since 2008, and a couple of years into this I was expected to qualify for the title of lecturer, which is the educational title lowest on the scale in the Croatian tertiary education system. Once you qualify, you hold this position for five years, after which you can go for re-election or try to move a step up the ladder. Last year I qualified for senior lecturer, which sounds grander than it is (especially if you’re still adjuncting – I expect I could soon be setting some kind of record), but was a bit of a proud moment nevertheless.

A new idea you implemented in 2018

The idea isn’t new but I finally got around to trying out badges. I’m still planning to create two more – for which I’ve more or less defined the criteria – by the end of the semester.

Your favorite teaching aid in 2018

A reliable board marker that doesn’t die on me halfway through the class.

The moment in 2018 when you felt proud of your student

There was definitely more than a single moment/student, but one that readily comes to mind is when a wonderful, very motivated and hardworking student – who recently graduated (or is almost there) – got a job at a place that inspires job satisfaction and looks good on their CV.

Your favorite teaching website in 2018

I don’t really have one. My favorite resource for everything teaching related is Twitter and I follow up on interesting info I come across by clicking through to whatever resources the person tweeting has linked to. These are, however, far more often blogs than websites like Edutopia or Teaching English. A quick look at some of my recent retweets suggests that I may have visited the EdSurge HigherEd website pretty often and I think this is explained by the fact that they cover topics of relevance both to my non-teaching (but still in the education sector) job and tertiary ed topics.

The person who inspired you in 2018

Some of my coworkers. I won’t single anyone out just in case someone from work ever reads this, primarily because many people there have been inspirational in a number of small (and not-so-small) ways and I don’t want anyone to feel left out.

Your greatest challenge in 2018

Overcoming impostor syndrome. Changing professions/working environments after such a long time did leave me with nagging doubts as to whether I was doing a good job, even if objectively I knew I was coping at least satisfactorily. Before I always used to be the one who had been doing that job forever when a new coworker came along and it was a challenge to be on the other side.  

Your strongest point as a teacher

Modesty dictates I say my students should be asked about this. But now I think about it, this really is a tough question. I’ve been teaching for 20 years so there are probably few things I’m hopeless at (apart from teaching YLs and teens, which I’ve never done). I hope I’m good at making students feel confident about their language skills. Let’s put it this way: I would be happy if that was how students felt.    

Your favorite teaching application in 2018

Definitely H5P, which I’ve written about here and here. I’m planning to try out more of their content types this year.  

The best CPD book you read in 2018

Readers of this blog know I occasionally do translations, so I think I’m justified in choosing this as a CPD book: Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos.

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellos #amreading pic.twitter.com/LuKNsAtPVD

— Vedrana Vojković Estatiev (@Ven_VVE) June 24, 2018

Your greatest frustration in 2018

Probably the fact that I wasn’t sure if my non-teaching contract was going to be extended, as a result of which I thought it would be prudent to hang on to any work I’d been doing previously. This included proofreading/language-editing/translation work and online teaching, so I worked almost every evening and weekend for the first half of the year. Luckily, the contract was eventually extended.

One thing you want non-teachers to understand

That it’s normal for teachers to be on the lookout for things that will make their job easier. People in other professions do this too. It’s great that there are teachers who enjoy being immersed in PD opportunities 24/7 and who will always take the more challenging route, but that works for them and shouldn’t be seen as the norm every teacher should necessarily aspire to.

Your most memorable teaching experiment in 2018

This has got to be the workshop on academic writing I delivered for my coworkers. I asked for my PLN for ideas and input in this post and would like to thank everyone once again: I thought the workshop turned out pretty well. There was some talk at the time that we might have more frequent sessions for those interested, and not only on academic writing but other aspects of language, but that hasn’t yet come to pass, primarily because I haven’t done anything about it. I didn’t want to commit to something I might not have the time and energy to do properly.

your personal success in 2018

I’m not sure if the “personal” is meant to stress that I see this as a success only I contributed to/brought about (as opposed to being part of a team), but I’m going to interpret it as also referring to team successes. I wrote about being involved in AMORES project here and here. The project ended three years ago but in 2018 articles describing project results were published in two books. It’s great to see the project living on!

One thing you plan to change in 2019

If I were the least bit confident that there was a chance of this actually happening, I’d say I’d do more exercise. 

Your greatest discovery in 2018

I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but you know the timer app on your phone? Oh, okay, I know, Google Keep. ILovePDF? Nope, nothing revolutionary.

Thank you for reading! I hope it’s not too late to wish you a great year ahead and please let me know if you’ve done a year-in-review post – I’d love to read it!

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Can you get everyone to like your MOOC?

My last post started out as an idea for a compilation of random observations on course design, based on the Introduction to Linguistics MOOC on FutureLearn – a brief digression: I only just realized that the spelling seems to be with a capital L mid-word – but then it turned out to be a sort of introduction to the topic and an overall comment on what it felt like to be doing a course which you’ve joined when it’s practically over (spoiler alert: alone). I feel reasonably confident that this post will achieve what the last one was meant to because I already have a list of observations; I just have to flesh them out.

A bit of context first: this was apparently this MOOC’s first run. It’s a three-week course and the study time estimated per week is three hours, so not very demanding and overall in accordance with the course aims:

On this course, you’ll get an introduction to the main approaches used in linguistic research, including linguistic experiments and discourse analysis. You’ll find out about the key methods used in linguistic descriptions, and some of the everyday ‘myths’ about language. You’ll discover how linguistic researchers turn our ideas about language into linguistic knowledge.

There seemed to be two mentors/moderators – one lead educator and one educator, as FutureLearn calls them (or is it just this course?). Perhaps there were more, but I could only find the lead educator’s bio. They obviously kept an eye out on what was happening on the course, as there were several responses to participant comments; however, I got the impression that most of the commenting was done by the lead educator and am thinking that this is probably an indication that strong moderator involvement had not been planned, which again would be in line with the course aims.

Something to keep in mind as I move on to the observations: some of the features I comment on are present in other FutureLearn courses as well. Also, I should stress that this is in no way meant to be a dissection of the instructional design involved; just thoughts that popped into my head – in no particular order – from the viewpoint of having recently helped coordinate MOOC development.

Photo taken from ELTpics by @mk_elt, used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 license.

Videos

• Most were of the length that ensures you won’t drift off. Only one was around 9 minutes (and another one was 7), which I feel is too long although I have included a screencast of similar length in my own online course. This MOOC is heavily video-based and the videos are only occasionally interspersed with some other activities – for instance, one activity required participants to analyze two similar websites in the context of a theoretical framework presented in the previous step. Possibility: add some readings and tests (T/F, MCQs), but this could make the course appear more heavy going (arguably not in line with the course aims).
• There were several presenters in the videos and I liked the fact that for the most part they weren’t reading a prepared script – I thought it made them appear more passionate about their subject. Side note: if you read, you reduce the risk of getting mixed up or forgetting something and your delivery is likely to be smoother. I generally read in my own screencasts, but as the focus is not on me – I’m not on camera – I think I don’t sound too wooden.

Transcripts

• There is a transcript accompanying each video (in addition to subtitles), which is of course necessary for accessibility purposes (screen readers). What I thought wasn’t strictly necessary (but was definitely helpful and I liked it a lot) was that each transcript was broken up into a couple of paragraphs and the time was marked at the beginning of each one so you could navigate it more easily.
• Transcripts can also be downloaded as PDFs but the download isn’t forced – a pet peeve – so definitely thumbs up for this. Side note: I’m not a fan of transcripts because I find that if I read them, I’ll skip parts. If, on the other hand, I watch the video, I’ll force myself to slow down and focus on what the person is saying. This is also why I like audio books; they force me to adapt to the narrator and relax.

Discussions

• Each video is followed up by the option to discuss (as are all other activities). I think I like this – as opposed to, for instance, separate forum activities like in Moodle – because you end up with all the comments neatly sorted by activity. However, I did wonder what happens if you have a question or comment that would be better suited to a sort of general housekeeping forum. For example, if you’re wondering what the official starting date of the course was. 🙂 Or if software you were instructed to use in an activity didn’t work.
• Comments can be sorted by oldest, newest and most liked (my most frequent choice). If I think a comment would be useful to other participants I like it in the hope that this will make it visible to more people. You can also bookmark comments and follow mentors and participants, but I didn’t on this course.

Accessibility

• External links open in the same window, which I understand is a requirement of guidelines for web content accessibility. I think I will now stop advising people to tick the “open in new window” box – which I have sometimes done unsolicited to ELT bloggers, purely for the reason that I personally don’t like having to click back to return to the page I started from (I prefer to close the new window).

Activity completion

• Participants can mark each activity as done when they wish to; there are no requirements, for instance, to post a comment before a discussion activity is considered complete. This seems fair because, well, you may not have that much to say about a subject; however, what happens if someone decides to mark all their activities as done without having even looked at them? I wonder if that is any different if you upgrade – because I understand that you are then entitled to a certificate of completion. On the other hand, there are students – I speak from experience here – who have done the F2F equivalent of marking their activities as done with no engagement whatsoever (suffered through the sessions in silence) and they still got the final mark. But they had to take an exam.

Moderators

• I’ve already noted that as opposed to some MOOCs I’ve done, there wasn’t strong moderator involvement in this one and I assume this was intentional. I liked the way the moderators handled an issue that came up: the participants were asked to analyze a couple of extracts of spoken language. These extracts were almost completely punctuation free. The participants found this confusing and said so in the comments, so a note was added in a prominent place, explaining the thinking behind this. Side note: when I came along, the explanation had already been added, so as soon as I noticed the lack of punctuation I read the explanation and thought it had been there from the start. I found this small detail very helpful and reassuring, as it indicated the moderators’ online presence, even if they were keeping a low profile.
• The moderators’ responses to the participants’ comments were thoughtful and positive, which wasn’t a surprise. The reason I mention it is because I wonder if there’s some kind of bank with (beginnings of) responses to comments, especially if the participant seems to be upset about something and you’d like to set things right as quickly as possible.

Other activities

• A couple of activities were described as articles – as opposed to videos or discussions – but they’re a single paragraph in length, so this seems like a slightly odd choice of word.

Participants

• In already noted this in a response to Marc’s comment on my last post, but thought I would include it here as well because I was quite taken aback by the critical attitude of some of the participants. One of my firmer beliefs – not just related to course design – is that Croatians on the whole are more likely to criticize than offer unsolicited praise. You can imagine my surprise when I saw critical comments directed at some aspects of the course – and they hadn’t been posted by Croatians! I’m sure the course designers and/or moderators did not expect universal agreement and praise but I think disagreement or doubt can be expressed in a neutral tone, leaving room for the possibility that you’ve overlooked something. If nothing else, whoever it is you’re engaging with is more likely to offer a constructive response. (But that’s just me; I don’t have any research evidence to back this up.) For instance, if you notice that there is a spelling error, I think it’s more productive to simply point this out, rather than suggest that no one bothered to check the spelling. (This example from participant contributions has been modified to protect the overly direct). Anyway, I suppose this is my message to all course participants everywhere – if you think something has been overlooked, could’ve been explained more clearly or is unnecessary/incorrect, etc., please try to point this out in a constructive fashion. Thanks from course designers and moderators everywhere. 🙂

That’s it for this run of the course. A final observation I’m going to add is that FutureLearn has a very extensive FAQ bank, so some of the questions that participants may have and aren’t sure where to post them might already have been addressed there.

Although this topic isn’t related to language teaching, I hope it’s still useful to some extent. I’m hoping to be able to do another MOOC via a different provider, and possibly add to the observations here.

I’m curious what your perspective is on MOOC moderation. Are you happy to just get on with things, with only occasional moderator involvement, or do you prefer a stronger moderator presence? Thanks for reading!

Wandering down empty hallways

This is a very unusual summer for me: it’s August and I haven’t been to the coast yet. As a teacher (and language school owner) I’ve sometimes wondered what it would be like to be able to go on holiday whenever I chose to as opposed to having to go when there were no students willing to pay for classes. Still, I guess because so many people go in August, things are more relaxed if you choose to stay in the office. For one, I finally have time to explore MOOCs a bit. Since part of my job over the past year has involved coordinating MOOC creation, I think I could be justified in thinking of this as work – at least in part.

Photo taken from ELTpics by @ChrisCattaneo, used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 license.

I haven’t done many MOOCs because I’m the kind of learner who, if they know they’re about to embark on a structured type of training, wants to do more or less everything the course designer has planned for them, trusting that there must have been sound reasons the course was designed in a particular way. And if I know I’m not going to have enough time to do it properly, I’d rather not even start – I’m still disappointed, for instance, that I wasn’t able to keep up with the TESOL EVO course Teaching Listening: Principles, techniques and technologies earlier this year. The couple of MOOCs I *have* completed I felt I got quite a bit out of – I blogged about the one on corpus linguistics and the one on how to get started with Moodle (tangentially) – so overall my experience with this type of course has been positive.

About two weeks ago I started on Introduction to Linguistics on Futurelearn. The choice of topic was prompted by the idea that I should be vaguely familiar with the content so that I could better focus on how the course was set up and see if I could pick up any tips in terms of course design that I could apply at work.

It was clear that the course had already started by the time I joined, but I couldn’t find info on when that was. Perhaps I’m not being entirely fair; maybe the start date was visible before I joined but subsequently I was unable to find it. My assumption was that it couldn’t have been too long before because otherwise they wouldn’t have kept letting people join.

A few days into the course I came across this interesting EdSurge article on Twitter: A Proposal to Put the ‘M’ Back in MOOCs and with a somewhat sinking feeling read the opening sentence:

MOOCs have evolved over the past five years from a virtual version of a classroom course to an experience that feels more like a Netflix library of teaching videos.

The fact is, since joining I felt a bit like I was wandering through a deserted building (a school, why not), hence the title. The content is predominantly videos. Discussions accompanying each video seemed to be long over, even though people were still posting sporadically, but I feel it’s unlikely they’ll ever get a response from another participant. I feel even more certain they won’t be getting a response from the online mentor (Lead Educator in Futurlearnese) because the course is officially over – although it doesn’t actually say so anywhere.

There is a prominent message every time I log on that the course content will remain available until a certain date, after which I’ll only be able to access it if I upgrade. However, I’m not sure that ensuring access to videos and discussions of other people is tempting enough for me to upgrade. Granted, I can’t guarantee that I would upgrade even if I had started on the course along with everyone else and taken part in the discussions, but that way I would have at least felt partial ownership. This way I feel like I’m entering empty classrooms, leafing through books left on the shelves and occasionally sensing someone else is in the building – not a feeling I would pay to sustain.

My plan was to keep a record of any interesting design features I come across on the course; then it occured to me I could write these up in a post. But as has been known to happen when I haven’t blogged in a while – which is, now I think of it, my customary blogging state – the introduction has turned into a post of its own, so I’ll leave the design observations for another post.

Have you done any MOOCs lately? What was your experience like – have you noticed any differences compared to MOOCs a couple of years ago? I’m especially curious about iTDi courses, which I keep hearing good things about.