Innovative Educational Technologies:

Technology - Enhanced ESP Teaching and Learning Environment

Анисимова Любовь Александровна

Тольяттинская академия управления

Тольятти,

The author of the article shares and generalizes some of the ideas on the problem of using innovative technologies in ESP teaching. Teaching which is possible without a formal environment of a classroom where a teacher is the core and the main source of information. ESP teaching on the basis of such approaches as content-based teaching and teaching with the help of modern communications diversed in the world is quite opposite to traditional ESP teaching. Computer technologies and teaching in on-line regime change the approach to organizational forms of educational process - from a traditional classroom teaching to on-line distances teaching and learning.

At present we are witnessing a great Internet growth which is used now by approximately 20 million people all over the world, including users in Russia. Global networking seems not to be “terra incognita” for many ELT teachers in Russia. “Few years ago, at all network maps a big white space was at the place of Russia. It isn’t a case any more. The area of the former Soviet Union at these maps has now the same color as the USA.”(1) This is very important as Russian higher educational system attempts to integrate into the common European and world educational system.

The most urgent issue with ELT professionals in Russia is to keep abreast with the times and innovations in a global educational area. One of these innovations is to develop and implement on-line distance teaching and learning.

The term “distance education” which is connected with telecommunications, evokes the notion of correspondence teaching among Russian educators. In fact “the former Soviet Union had operated university-level correspondence courses on a large scale long before most western European countries even thought of doing so” (2). An important difference between the Russian system of education and that of western countries was the large number of students enrolled in correspondence programs at almost all ex-Soviet universities. “Out of the total 2,638,000 students in 1992/1993 academic year some 980,000 were registered through correspondence and evening study. During the last years 10% of the total annual budget was being spent for administering correspondence study in Russian universities.”(3) Diplomas granted are the same as those awarded for full-time education. What standards and what organizational structure of such education should be not to be regarded as a “second rate” form of getting knowledge?

According to statistics distance learning courses (about 70%) fall within the general discipline of engineering. In recent times, say 6-10 years there’s a trend to focus on issues of market-oriented economy.

Nothing to say about foreign languages. A very small per cent of young people willing to be specialists in different spheres, dreaming to acquire a good working command of English and ability to use the language in a certain social encounter, can be involved in distance education. The reason is the specificity of the subject – foreign language. Obviously any foreign language is preferably to learn being a full-time student under English teacher supervision.

Little experience with modern forms of distance training in Russia is a significant obstacle to any progress in the area: the lack of proper technical equipment and possibility to utilize Internet by many of ELT teachers are among the most considerable problems. A good solution may lie in a clear understanding that a core of Russian educators for distance teaching should be trained through study visits in western universities, participation in conferences and workshops within Russia for ELT professionals, creation of a job specification for tutors, development of a training program in on-line distance - learning format for tutors, financial support of Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation and considerable practical assistance from western experts. Moreover it is necessary to alter attitude, to accept the innovation and to be ready for changes.

G. Sampson (4) said that an effective teacher is not a cognitive machine. Effective teachers who respond to the teaching situation with their bodies- postures, gestures, and facial expressions are perceived by students as warm and positive. Effective teachers respond to the teaching situations with their belief systems – equality of treatment for all students, and the vision that all students can indeed learn are conveyed through their teaching practices. Teachers’ attitudes and beliefs systems are all linked together with the cognitive consciousness, and that they use in the process of lesson planning and implementation in the classroom. Can a distance education make teachers reconstruct their attitudes, their beliefs, and their bodily stances in the classroom, as well as helping our students to acquire the traditional cognitive knowledge that is conveyed in university – level courses?

Surely many of ELT educators will immediately wonder at the concept of teaching English performed in a distance education format. Where is the observer of the teacher’s behavior in the classroom? Let’s imagine how the English teacher at a provincial educational institution will react to such a perspective, to teach English through electronic devices that prefer to be “silent”?

The solution is in understanding that individuals who enter the workplace are required to use what Aristotle called “practical knowledge”. It is directed to the concrete situation, requires the grasp of the circumstances in their variety, and lies outside the purely rational concept of knowledge. From that point of view English language teaching requires pragmatic reasoning. Thus currently one of the most important principles in teaching English is practicality and pragmatism. Our ESP students learn English to be able to solve their professional problems in future, possessing necessary skills, utilizing the English language as a tool, be able to use the language appropriately in a given social encounter. Such approach is quite opposite to “the proposed idea that knowing a language involves knowing a set of grammatical, lexical, and phonological rules”(5)

It is obvious that distance education certainly changes the functions of a teacher. Teaching with the help of technical means can be solved in combination of different sciences: pedagogics - as a basis of education, cybernetics – to conduct the process of training, psychology and physiology – to estimate the student’s capacity and ability and psychological factors in a training process.

In this article the author wants to share experience of cooperation with the University of Michigan at Flint, U.S. We experimented mutual project during 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 academic years. In frames of cooperation between School of Management (The University of Michigan at Flint-UMF) and Togliatti Academy of Management (TAM) the ultimate goal was to create joint courses for both American and Russian students. UMF provided our students with two ESP on-line distance courses “Marketing Management” and “Operations Management” which were included into the Academy’s curriculum. I was appointed instructor for “Marketing Managemet” course.

My goal was to help students 1) properly understand international marketing concepts and theory; 2) acquire practical skills in marketing; 3) develop critical thinking and be able to evaluate positive and negative effects of the classical international marketing concept on a Russian consumer and society; 4) distinguish Russian peculiarities of marketing management; 5)improve their ESP language; 6)be successfully certified by University of Michigan at Flint; 7) develop analytical skills.

Certainly, the UMF on-line course was a base, and gave background knowledge about international marketing and management in marketing. To achieve the goals the decision was made to add some “Russian” content in the project course. The idea was that American experience was only one aspect of international ESP on-line distance class.

All Russian students were divided into groups of 5. Eventually all in all 120 Russian students from Togliatti Academy of Management were certified by UMF for the whole period as all of them successfully completed all the courses requirements. Russian participants were the 3d and 4th year students - future economists, bankers and financiers. They have come across some real problems in the field of marketing, and possessed a definite level of theoretical knowledge. That is why they brought up some real cases of Russian companies with marketing problems. In addition to ESP on-line classes the workshops conducted in English were organized for Russian stuens. At the workshops students analyzed cases with Russian companies, finding the solution for the companies in international marketing management theory and shared the situations from their work experience. Thus students had a truly meaningful experience, and became fully engaged in the activities of the classes. So our students studied classical international marketing through participation in ESP on-line distance course, and at the same time analyzed the situation with the Russian marketing, illustrating it with the cases.

The Russian part within the course consisted of four seminars: 1) Peculiarities of Russian marketing system; 2) Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning of Russian companies on local and global markets; 3)Marketing research, Advertising, Promotion; 4) Marketing programs. Students were supposed to make a research, write a topical paper and to present the information about marketing programs of some Russian companies demonstrating all presentation techniques. Each discussion resulted in a list of situations or cases where the instruments of international marketing could be applied for a particular Russian case. Participating in seminars students could review again, reconsider and revalue some aspects of theoretical material, express their opinions and attitudes to the problem more precisely showing knowledge on the topic. As for the English language they extended vocabulary and fluency. All the workshops and seminars were video-recorded, and thus, the analysis of content, techniques of presentation, level (accuracy and fluency) of English used was made by both an instructor and the whole group of students. After reflexive analysis the most interesting cases were chosen and e-mailed to UMF faculty and UMF students, so that to focus on a cross-cultural component of a topic. It was equally important that American students were exposed to the Russian experience. The whole idea was to add Russian realities in UMF course in order to make it more analytical and practical for both parties. The reflexive analyses benefited the understanding of the content and cultural diversity in marketing concepts. As a result students managed to cope theory with real Russian cases, and applied this material as a support to solve some actual marketing problems in home environment. We understood that we should put our efforts in training the globally- oriented students

According to course requirements students were to complete the on-line distance course with a marketing plan group project. Some of our students made decisions to become members of mixed groups (American-Russian) for marketing plan projects. These students were given extra credits. The expectation for a mixed group was a collaborative effort between all team members and an enriching international learning experience for all involved. While the logistics of location could prevent a barrier, the convenience of electronic communication minimized that barrier, and in fact, enhanced communication because of its any time and any where feature. The requirements for marketing plan group project were to select a product or service of the students’ choice which could be an entirely new product or service, or it could be an existing product or service. In case students chose an existing product or service, they were to enhance their plan with recommendations beyond what the company was already doing, based on the research and SWOT analysis. Besides, it was necessary to make situational analysis, opportunity and issue analysis, set up objectives - financial and marketing, think of a marketing strategy and action program: What will be done? Who will do it? When will it be done? How much will it cost? (6)

It is clear that such a project may be initiated at the stage when students are able to communicate on some professional practical level in English. It was necessary to inform the American coordinator in advance about our students’ level of English. I, as a teacher of English, realized that the requirements to participate in the project were 1) at least intermediate level of English, otherwise students wouldn’t be able to cover from a computer screen a big amount of authentic specialty texts within a session time- limit; 2) well-developed fast reading skills and strategies in mother tongue; 3) ability to apply these reading - based skills in English . At the same time I had a wonderful chance to check what kind of a reading teacher I was. What I was teaching in my English classes-whether I used reading – based activities as a means to practice and consolidate language and to contextualize language items in the texts, or whether I was aimed at improving my students’ actual ability to obtain information , and thus, I was working on the actual skills and strategies involved in reading development. Really that was a challenging and useful experience!

Information exchange between a distant student and the American instructor consisted of the following parts (7):

  1. Fast communication to get consultations;
  2. Regular sending of assignments for submission;
  3. Participation in threaded discussions and chat sessions with the instructor;
  4. Responding to mid-term evaluation results;
  5. Feedback after exam;

Information exchange among distant students both Russian and American consisted of the following:

  1. Discussion of information for a group project with the members of the group;
  2. E-mailing to both Russian and American participants, when needed;
  3. Exchanging opinions during chat sessions;

All discussion postings as well as assignments were graded. The majority of Russian students received full credits, and American instructor was pleased with their interactions and thoughtful postings. Only in case some students haven’t answered all the components of the topic the results were lower. Everyone did well on threaded discussions. One of the reasons for positive results was high motivation of all the students.

Certainly there were some difficulties: first of all, difference in time, secondly, some students experienced technical difficulty with the exam, and finally there was uncertainty how properly to operate Blackboard system, and how to find quickly the results of the evaluations on the instructor’s control panel. The fact is several tools to help instructors build and maintain the Blackboard courses were available to us. We have been enrolled in the new faculty orientation course of UMF for Blackboard. We understood it later that this was much more than orientation course, it was more a reference tool, that we could refer to when we ran into problems or questions about a certain aspect of the Blackboard system.

My implications about ESP distance learning which are the result of being involved in the mutual on-line distance project:

  • On-line learning becomes effective if it contains an element of question- answer – question activity as well as feedback on the result, i.e. it must contain an element of a dialogue in a threaded discussion and chat sessions. It is by using a dialogue that you can be sure that the understanding is correct.
  • On-line distance teaching and learning is quite different from a classroom activity. A successful distance education involves the learner in a more direct way then in the case with a classroom teaching, especially if we mean lecturing for a large group of students.
  • Such type of teaching/learning should be organized as problem solving and content-based using exploratory learning methods when trying to solve problems.
  • On-line distance teaching/learning is a collaborative activity where different people have access to the same application or document at the same time, this allows interaction between learners located at different sites, thus it becomes more a question of pedagogy and administration than a question of technology.
  • On-line learning includes two main activities: firstly, individual activities, self-studies, self-organization involving access to different learning materials followed by reflection analysis and synthesis, secondly interaction with peers and tutors.
  • Time is a strategic factor in many ways in e-teaching/ learning. It is because the time gap from action to feedback is the most important for the quality of teaching and learning. This is especially the case when a learner has a problem that does not allow him to proceed in the studies. In other situations, e.g. feedback on a test, a time gap of days can be acceptable.
  • There may be some problems at the examination. One of them, unfortunately, is the element of cheating. The only way to prevent the possibility when one student uses the ID and the password of another student is deep interpersonal relations between the teacher/instructor/tutor and the student, thus making it possible for the teacher to decide the accuracy of the examination reports sent.

To sum up, on-line distance education format in teaching ESP can be taken into consideration as a means to provide students not only with knowledge but with conceptually-oriented experience, that gives a sound foundation for their future career development. Besides, it gives us important possibility to change forms and methods of teaching/learning activities, as we can use the best achievements of modern education research and educational technology based on technical/electronic means of education.What we as potential e-educators have to do is to realize content, to define the forms of material presentation, to think about forms of learning activities’, motivation and stimulation, to choose and realize the methods of monitoring, rating and control, to amplify special methodological instructions