Today I listened to a Webinar that was previously given on August 11th 2011 and had for topic ''Distinguished lecture series (An Australian university uses collaboration to teach students across the Globe)''. I found this webinar pretty interesting by the fact that it involved Chinese and Australian university students interacting within the same platform (Elluminate) in order to improve the English language of Chinese students. I will use this post to explain the project itself in its various areas.
It firstly came from Victoria University in Melbourne, Au. that decided to hire students in order to manage a 4 one-hour Global English Corner with 4 different students from Chinese universities(Sishuan, Liaoning and Henan Universities) that lasted for 9 weeks. The idea was to show that ESL learning can be something motivating, that you can use it to discover new cultures and make new friends. In order to do so, they used a platform called Elluminate which gave them many advantages to make this project work. By having the possibility to interact either in a formal or in an informal way, they could also rely on many of their senses. For the Chinese student, it was very interesting because while having a discussion with an Australian peer, he could see the image of a word at the same time as he heard it with special features that are included in Elluminate. Having learners using all their senses or at least a majority of them you have their brain works harder creating new links that totally helps the learners of the language.
Each week a different topic was brought to the table in order to give to the students interesting subjects that would help them investing themselves in the project. In the webinar, it says that food was definitely the most popular subject of all. Intercultural sharing triggers the links that are created between students from different countries. The Australians even sent products to the Chinese students for them to try.
The project even incorporated a blog with which students could write their thoughts as well as summarizing their meetings and write questions. Asian pupils said that it greatly increased the level of experience as they could keep on practising their English even outside of the meeting shcedule. This type of media, in my opinion, if the perfect balance between intensive and self-regulated learning. It is important to reach every students when creating this type of projects and some of them may be more shy that others and allowing them to comment in a blog was definitely a good way to interact with them.
The project offered many benefits as stated in the webinar such as Administrative support, Learning Support, Global Collaboration, Professional development, Improving students outcomes and Attracting & retaining New students. Some of the Chinese students were inclined to study in Australia and this project gave confident to a majority of them in regards to their level of English but also to the way they can interact with others in a real life context.
However, this project showed some limitations because of technology. Some of the Asian students had slow connections and Java was difficult to download. The audio connection was sometimes difficult and students didn't always used headphones which was echoing the audio. There is also a big time gap between students and the study schedule makes it hard for the pupils to meet. It was mentioned that some of the Chinese students would have liked to have a bigger range of person with whom to interact. All of these were constructive feedback and will help the project manager to ameliorate his way of doing things.
To conclude, I learned that those kinds of project are feasible even with students from other countries. I realized that when you work with a certain platform that is reliable for everybody, you can use this tool to create many projects linked with ESL. I really appreciated this webinar and it encouraged me do be creative in my future career.
