Week4Group1

Your task
Come up with a blended learning solution to Dr. Smith’s problem. Specify the blends (media) and how each medium will be used.

Backgrounds
Dr Smith teaches in Law Faculty of a university. Every year, he has about two dozen international students whose first languages are not English. Dr. Smith is interested in exploring effective ways to improve the linguistic skills of ESL law students while introducing them to Australian law and the legal system. Recently, the faculty granted Dr Smith a teaching improvement grant of $10,000.

Purpose
As instructional designer, design a blended learning module to teach ESL students contract drafting skills while improving linguistic skills (with focus on word choice, sentence structure, and paragraph structure).

Suggesting solution
**1. Face-to-Face Meeting **

First meeting
 * 1) Introducing entire learning objective, course structure, learning activities, and technologies to be use in the course.
 * 2) Lecturer will announce pair of groups

Second meeting onwards
 * 1) Starting with any issues of the last week activity
 * 2) Comparing each group’s contract draft and provide the opportunities to discuss further such as experience of challenges, achievements, and reflections
 * 3) Introducing next learning objective, online activities, and logistics

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2. Online Discussion **
 * 1) <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">//<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Blog //
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A pair of student will create team blog for collection of contract drafts
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Groups are encouraged to comment on other groups blogs
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Team will come up with one question to share with others
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Monitoring collaboration and engangement
 * 1) <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">//<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Twitter //
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Student use twitter to inform other students on new draft update
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Students can share the ideas or questions simultaneously
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Individual’s opinion is respected outside of group work
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Opportunity to build Personal Learning Network (PLN)
 * 1) <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">//<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">email //
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Lecturer will consolidate important discussions of the week and provide advice
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Brief summary of next session will be introduced

==<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">J ****<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">ustification ** ==


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">1. Blending solution for ESL student **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Only with weekly two-hours of face-to-face class, students have not enough time to discuss each other’s writing as well as lecturer cannot afford to feed back on two dozen drafts. Online activities allow students and lecturer to achieve learning as continuous communication process without limitation of time and location.


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2. Importance of face-to-face meeting **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Without good understanding on how online activities can help students to interrogate, reflect on and revise their ideas, students tended not to approach either face-to-face or online discussions in ways likely to improve their understanding or their levels of achievement (Ellis, Goodyear, O’Hara, and Prosser, 2007). Face-to-face session will provide students clear vision of the learning objective, structure of online activities, and expected outcome.


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">3. e-Feedback as improving ESL students’ linguistic skills **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Study shows that e-feedback retains some of the best features of traditional written feedback, including a text-only environment that pushes students to write balanced comments with an awareness of the audience's needs while eliminating the logistical problms of carrying papers around (Guardado & Shi, 2007). However, as Guardado & Shi concerned, ESL students might have little confidence in peer commenting and avoid the demand to express and clarify meaning. This can be result to online blog as one-way communication rather than exchange their comments or further discussion. So that lecturer need to guide students to clarify comments in question during face-to-face meeting.


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">4. Collaborative writing for ESL students **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Collaboration in the context yields significant benefits in the development of ESL students’ sense of efficacy, literacy, and critical thinking skills (Kasper & Weiss, 2005). While students share ideas, they can come up with new idea which they couldn’t think of by themselves.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">References
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ellis, R. A., Goodyear, P., O’Hara, A., & Prosser, M. (2007). The university student experience of face-to-face and online discussions: Coherence, reflection and meaning. Research in Learning Technology, 15(1) doi:10.3402/rlt.v15i1.10927

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Kasper, L. F., & Weiss, S. T. (2005). Building ESL students' linguistic and academic literacy through content-based interclass collaboration. Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 32(3), 282-297.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Guardado, M., & Shi, L. (2007). ESL students’ experiences of online peer feedback. Computers and Composition, 24(4), 443-461. doi:10.1016/j.compcom.2007.03.002