polling and chat in the foreign language classroom, higher ed

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I'm always looking for ways to improve teaching and enhance learning, especially through technology. Recently, I used chat and polling in the classroom. That experiment resulted in a conference paper, presented at the international conference ICT for Language Learning, Nov 2011, Florence, Italy. These slides are from the conference.

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Interactice technology in the FL classroom: Using

polling and chat to promote student participation in

campus education

Elisabeth Wulff SahlénMälardalen University

Sweden

ICT for Language LearningFlorence, 20-21 Oct 2011

The traditional classroom

The traditional classroom

What are you thinking?

Did you understand?

WHAT did you understand?

What about YOU?

And you?

The traditional classroom

If students wrote their answers in a chat, I would be able to access everyone’s understanding…

Communication and participationHrastinski 2007

Communication and participationHrastinski 2007

Students were more motivated to

participate in chat discussions because of direct response.

Chat in education

administrative information rather than supporting cognitive aspects of learning

communication in FL with native speakers and other learners

students are often more focused, thoughtful and honest in discussions online than F2F– even if in the same room!

The Twitter experiment – Twitter in the classroom to get students involved in discussion

Polling and chat in the classroom – a pedagogical experiment

Setting and technologyOn-campus course in grammar and translation for advanced learners of EnglishAdobe Connect Pro to enable polling and chatSeminars in computer rooms, 3 students/computerVideo projector to display student contributions for oral discussion

Polling and chat in the classroom – a pedagogical experiment

Aimspromote wider student participationtap into everyone’s understanding in order to provide feedback where it is needed the most

Adobe Connect Pro (ACP)

A web-conferencing solution where you can◦communicate through audio, video and chat◦show power point presentations◦share your screen, whiteboard and files◦create interactive quizzes◦let students collaborate in small groups◦record the meeting and distribute the URL

through e-mail or on your LMS◦etc… etc…

add functionality through pods

pods may be moved and resized

switch between different layouts (”rooms”)

requires Flash player +internet connection

An example of ACP

app for iphone and android

Polling in ACP

Which of these sentences contain an agreement error? Check all that apply!

Chat in ACP

Teacher experience

no technical problemsparticipation was remarkably wide throughoutreduced waiting time led to active participationopen channel between teacher and studentsinformal and friendly atmosphere

What did the students think?

funmodernworked wellefficient use of class timewe liked the starslightly chaotic when everyone started to correct

themselves

Challenges

Shifting between written and oral communication.

Chat is informal. This will affect the atmosphere in the classroom.

Managing large chunks of text in the chat.

Traditional computer rooms are not ideal for face-to-face discussion.

In conclusion

Using polling and chat in the classroom creates a blend of oral and written interaction that caters to different learning styles while promoting wide student participation. Chat, in particular, has the potential to build a bridge between teacher assumptions and student understanding.

Thank you for your attention!

elisabeth.wulff-sahlen@mdh.se

References Clyde, William & Delohery, Andrew. (2004). Using Technology in Teaching.

Yale University Press. Gonzalez, Dafne. (2003) Teaching and Learning Through Chat. A Taxonomy

of Educational Chat for EFL/ESL. Teaching English with Technology. Vol.3, nr. 4:57-69.

Hrastinski, Stefan. (2007). Participating in synchronous online education. Akademisk avhandling. Lund: Studies in Informatics No. 6.

Hrastinski, Stefan. (2009). Nätbaserad utbildning: en introduktion. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Mitchell, Rosamund & Myles, Florence. (1998). Second Language Learning Theories. London & New York: Arnold

Prensky, Marc. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon. 2001, Vol. 9,5.

Reynard, Ruth. (2008). Using Chat to Move the Thinking Process Forward. Campus Technology. (Retrieved 5/9 2011) http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/10/using-chat-to-move-the-thinking-process-forward.aspx

The Twitter Experiment. (Retrieved 5/9 2011). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WPVWDkF7U8

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