The organisation and teaching involved in online language courses
requires particular skills.
Only an internet-based learning environment can train these skills
effectively, as trainee tutors must experience themselves the processes
typically encountered in internet-based learning.
·
PEDAGOGIC/DIDACTIC APPROACH
The trainee tutors are sensitised to internet-based learning
processes through
-
the completion of tasks and exercises,
-
through the critical review of basic as well as advanced literature
on the subject
-
through finding, trying out and evaluating relevant links.
·
ICTs used
·
DESCRIPTION OF CASE
An initial one-day face-face session is compulsory.
In this session trainees get to know the other course participants and
are shown how to use the learning management system and gain experience of
this in small groups with the help of the trainers.
They are shown the different ways in which the work during the course
will be carried out and are given the necessary information for the use of
the course material, the teaching material and the learning management
system vhs-kampus.
Contact is established for help with problems, which may arise during the
course.
This is followed by 10 to 14 weeks of online work in the group,
accompanied and guided by the trainers.
During this time the course participants
§ read
the basic literature on the subject
§ complete
the exercises and tasks (individually or in small groups) and make the
results available to the others in the discussion forums.
§ engage
in discussion with other course participants and trainers
·
Course topics
§ Online
learning
§ Learning
management systems
§ Internet
interaction and communication
§ The
role of the online tutor, tasks and opportunities
§ Managing
chat and discussion forums
§ Cultural
and intercultural issues
§ Time
management and course organisation
§ Practical
help with tutoring
§ Bibliography
and webography
The course also has an obligatory final
phase (in exceptional cases also possible as a chat session) in which the
following topics are dealt with:
·
Course
evaluation, open questions
·
Exchange
of experience and information
·
Additional
material, introduction and evaluation
A certificate of participation can only be
granted to those participants who have attended the introductory and the
final phase and have also completed 4 of the 6 tasks during the online
phase.
·
EXAMPLES for approach and material
An example:
|
Kapitel 6 Kursleitende und
Gruppe
|
|
1.
Kursleitende und Gruppe
2.
Netikette (inkl. Übung)
3.
Kommunikation im Unterricht
4.
Häufige Abkürzungen in Chat und Email
5.
Aufgabe zur Lerneinheit: Kursleitende und Gruppe
|
|
2.
Material to be used
·
ANALYSIS
o
affordances and constraints
The internet-based training course offers future online tutors a
first insight into the processes, possibilities and constraints of
web-based language learning.
It prepares the tutors to assist
language-learners espcially in a VOLL-background in their efforts not to
just learn a foreign languge on a self-study bases but by using the
langage in interaction with other learners.
Since the trainee-tutors experience the
same situation their future learners will have ”to endure”, they are sensitised to internet-based learning processes.
Up till now, the use of
language learning material on the platform http://www.vhs-kampus.de/
is limited exclusively to the programs furnished by the Hueber-Verlag.
Thus the trainee-tutors only gather exemplary experience with preselected
material.
o
subject matter encountered
