While self-access may work extremely well with students who are self-motivated to learn, we are often faced with classes of 30 or more students whose main objective is to obtain credit for the course rather than to learn English. Certainly they wouldn't mind if they did learn something during the course, but hopefully whatever they learn will happen by osmosis, while sitting in the classroom rather than through any overt effort on their part.
It has long been my contention that the best place to use computers is NOT in the classroom. The time with the teacher can be better spent on things which require a teacher. At Kyoto Sangyo, the Eibeigo Gakka has nearly 20 classes per week in a computer lab, but with few exceptions, these are writing classes, where the teacher can individually counsel students on their writing while the rest of the students are busily working.
We have a newly established "Intensive English Program." For one portion of this program the students meet three times a week for 90 minutes per class using a 4-skills based text, New Interchange II (Cambridge University Press). The students have all purchased a CD-ROM which contains additional practice materials created with Macromedia Director, as well as Quicktime movies of all of the video material that is presented in the classroom.
We require the students to use the CD-ROM, either in one of the school labs or at home, and maintain of record of what portions they have used and when they used them. We also require them to do a web-based cloze activity based on the quicktime videos.
In addition, we require the students to read books outside the classroom, and, in order to prove that they have read them, to take a brief 10-item quiz on the book using the "Accelerated Reader Program" (Renaissance Learning).
While there are clearly SOME students who enthusiastically do the required work, we are always amazed at the number of students who try to pass with the minimum work.
Which brings me to my point:
When dealing with less-motivated learners, there must be a way for the instructor to verify that the students have, indeed, done the work.
In the three tech-based outside activities in our program, our ability to monitor the students' performance varies considerably from one task to the other:
Here, the students log on with a password. All activity is recorded in a database -- how long they spent watching the video, how many times they repeated each segment, how many points they attained, and at which point they checked their answers or peeked at the model answers.
Video Practice Web PageThe students are told that they should do the web activity for each unit within one week of that particular unit being completed in class. (There are 8 units per term.)
We prepare summary reports of the students activity which are then brought into class so that the teachers can encourage those falling behind to do the work
Furthermore, points are taken off the students grade for each video activity not done.
The result is virtually 100% "cooperation".
With the other activities on the CD-ROM, we have no method of checking beyond a self-report. There is a form which the students paste into their notebooks on which they are supposed to keep track of when they do the various activities. Unfortunately, the teachers did not have time to periodically check the form for completeness, and the result was the fully 70% of the students didn't fill it in. In most cases this was probably not a merely a problem of forgetting to fill in the form, but rather an indication of the fact that they did not do the assignment.
As one countermeasure to this problem, we intend to place some of the content of the CD-ROM on the final examination. This will ensure that at least SOME of the students take the CD-ROM more seriously.
This software has been designed as an educational aid for elementary and junior high school level native speakers. Schools purchase the basic software plus quizzes for each book in their library. The AR program currently has quizzes available for over 25,000 books.
Upon completion of a book, the student logs on to the program with a password and takes the 10-item multiple-choice quiz. They are then awarded points based on the length and the reading level of the book. Our goal for the past term was a minimum of 10 points, which corresponds to approximately 3 200-page books.
Even with this system however, we find students trying to circumvent it. There are rules against looking at the book while you are taking the test, or discussing the contents of the quizzes with others. Nevertheless, we have found it necessary to monitor the quiz-taking by allowing it only for a 30-minute period during the lunch hour and assigning a different teacher to monitor the computer room each day. Unfortunately, on the last day of the term two weeks ago, we found three students taking tests for their lazy friends and have sadly had to fail all 6 students, which means that they have to repeat this mandatory course next year.
Nevertheless, thanks to the program we believe that most of our 180 students have actually done the required reading. The system provides an easy way for the staff to monitor the reading program without the necessity of having the students write long reports or summaries which would then have to be reviewed by the instructor. So in summary, thanks to the efficient databased record-keeping system, technology has helped to make our students better readers, whether they want to or not!
Accelerated Reader (Renaissance Learning)