Desværre måtte Mirjam Hauck melde forfald til dette foredrag, så det blev i stedet Leslie Shield som overtog fremlæggelsen. Og det gjorde hun godt!!

Som tidligere nævnt er dette et af de emner som har min absolutte interesse på grund af mit FoU projekt om påbygning i forbindelse med den ny erhvervsuddannelsesreform (EUD 2000).

Der er for mig at se ingen tvivl om at netop online konferencer er en af de muligheder vi kommer til at benytte os af når elever skal bringes op på gymnasialt niveau i valgte fag samtidigt med en almindelig erhvervsuddannelse.

Dette foredrag var en del af en række foredrag på EuroCall om forskellige facetter af online undervisning gennem Open University.

Efter foredraget fik jeg en god debat med Leslie om hendes erfaringer

Abstract/Résumé

Traditionally, it has been difficult to provide home-based language learners with extensive speaking and listening practice. Some Open University language learners are even unable to attend the 18 hours of face-to-face tutorials offered to them each year. For this reason, the Centre for Modern Languages has been investigating the potential of various on-line tools as alternatives for those learners who cannot attend face-to-face meetings. These have included telephone conferencing and telephone conferencing and email.
Although telephone conferencing allows learners increased synchronous aural/oral practice and the addition of email to this learning environment encourages planning and rehearsal before participation in scheduled learning events (Stevens 1998, Stevens & Hewer 1998), synchronous collaboration via voice outside fixed meeting times is precluded because of the relative inflexibility and cost of telephone conferencing systems. With the increased robustness of Internet audio technology, however, it has now become possible to offer learners a virtual online learning environment which is more flexible (in terms of time, frequency and group composition) than telephone conferencing.
In this paper, we examine the results of recent trials with first level Open University German learners using Internet-based, synchronous voice conferencing, and discuss how learner autonomy and the role of the tutor are affected by such a learning environment.
Learners, who were distributed throughout the United Kingdom and who had never met each other in person, spent two weeks working on activities specifically designed to help them get to know each other and to familiarise themselves with the audio-conferencing client's features. Learning activities were then spread over one, two and, eventually, three weeks in order to develop and increase learners' ability to take responsibility for their own learning and thus to develop their autonomy. These longer periods were broken down into smaller chunks during which learners were invited to report back to their facilitator about their progress; they could seek advice, obtain feedback, and were provided with new stimuli, such as additional information relevant to their work. The tutor became a 'co-ordinator or manager of learning events' rather than a tutor in the 'traditional' sense; learners worked alone in groups or teams (Schneiderman 1997), sometimes asking the tutor to join them if they needed help.
After initial hesitations most learners very quickly engaged in the activities and used the audio-client to meet regularly outside online events at times they negotiated in their groups. Those additional meetings were supported by information provided on a web-page and via learners' use of email.
Analysis of learner responses to the activities suggests that provision of a successful framework for supporting and developing autonomous language learning via Internet-based audio-conferencing - that is, one which encourages learners to take responsibility for their own learning - is dependent upon several factors including:
- initial activities should be linguistically undemanding but engaging in terms of community-building
- activities based on team-work encourage groups to take responsibility for completing tasks and thus for their own learning
- activities based on small group work to allow autonomous organisation of extra group meetings without too many logistical constraints.
- tools such as email and website support enable learners to inform themselves about the activity without the need to contact the tutor
- good technical support and training in using the tools is required initially
- facilitators should be competent in the use of the tools, since this appears to improve overall learner confidence.

References
Schneiderman, B. (1997) Relate-Create-Donate: A teaching/learning philosophy for the cyber-generation, Computers & Education 31, 1 (1998), 25-39.
Available: ftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/hcil/Reports-Abstracts-Bibliography/97-17html/97-17.html
Stevens, A. (1998) Speak up - you're online!, Paper presented at EuroCALL 98, Leuven, Belgium
Stevens, A. & Hewer, S. (1998) From Policy to Practice and Back, Paper presented at the 1st Leverage Conference, Cambridge.
Available: https://greco.dit.upm.es/~leverage/conf1/hewer.htm

About the speaker/Sur le conférencier

Se også Lesley Shield andetsteds, da det faktisk på grund af afbud afholdt dette foredrag!