A presentation on what online teaching involves for teachers in terms of reconsidering their role and how effective training should help teachers do this rather than being limited to skills (learning to use the technology).

1. Blended teaching and the
changing role of the
language tutor
Anna Comas-Quinn
Department of Languages
4 May 2012

2. • How does blended/online language
teaching differ from traditional language
teaching?
• How does language teaching at the OU
differ from language teaching elsewhere?

3. What‟s good about online
teaching and learning?

4. …besides being able to do it in your pyjamas…

5. What‟s good about „online‟?
• Access to a wider range of views
• Access to a larger pool of potential
communication partners
• Time and location independent
• Collaboration and community
• …

6. “The supposed benefits of online
interaction are just not obvious to many
learners” (Goodfellow, 2007:6).
both teachers and learners need to know
not only how to use new technologies but
also why they should use them
(Kirkwood & Price, 2005).

7. Pedagogical
understanding
Skills pyramid (Hampel & Stickler, 2005:312)

8. Is blogging a good thing for language
learning….
if it‟s not compulsory?
if not many students write on their
blog?
if the teacher does not mark it?

9. • Dörnyei‟s L2 Motivational Self System
(Dörnyei, 2009): Ideal Self, Ought-To Self
and Feared Self.
„understanding how experienced language teachers
engage with a new learning and teaching domain, and
the ways in which they create, contribute to or resist
opportunities for workplace learning‟ (White & Ding,
2009:346).

10. • effective training must both destabilise teachers‟
existing views of their role and identity and
support them in building new perspectives which
match the training outcomes (Kubanyiova,
2009). Wenger (1998) calls this „learning as
becoming‟.
• the learning process entails an element of
identity formation as the teacher engages with
the process in order to become „a certain person
or to avoid becoming a certain person‟ (Wenger,
1998:215).

11. “I am not convinced about the pedagogic value
of blogs and revision exercises that are not
properly marked”
„the face to face mode is much better as
learning a language is a lot to do with social
interaction and communication‟
What are the assumptions and
underlying values?

12. • teachers‟ willingness to change is
powerfully influenced by learners‟
expectations.
• the fear that „by adopting a new approach
to teaching they would fail to meet the
students‟ expectations‟ (Kubanyiova,
2009:326) particularly in a strongly
learner-centred institution.

13. • teacher self and teacher identity > the core
of teacher training
• easier for those who already aspire to
become online teachers, but for those who
do not see themselves as online teachers,
the training has to persuade them of the
value of online teaching and the
desirability of becoming online teachers.

14. • Comas-Quinn, Anna (2011). Learning to teach online or learning to become an online
teacher: an exploration of teachers' experiences in a blended learning course.
ReCALL, 23(03), pp. 218–232. at http://oro.open.ac.uk/32111/
• Dörnyei, Z. (2009) „The L2 Motivational Self System‟, in Dörnyei, Z and Ushioda, E
(eds) Motivation, Language Identity and the L2 Self, Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
• Goodfellow (2007) Rethinking Educational Technologies in the Age of Social Media:
from „tools for interaction‟ to „sites of practice‟ Keynote presentation for Echanger
Pour Apprendre en Ligne (EPAL) conference, Universite Standhal, Grenoble, 9 June
2007. Available online at: http://w3.u-grenoble3.fr/epal/pdf/goodfellow.pdf (accessed
5 December 2007)
• Hampel, R. and Stickler, U. (2005) „New skills for new classrooms: Training tutors to
teach languages online‟, Computer Assisted Language Learning, 18 (4): 311-326.
• Kirkwood, A. and Price, L. (2005) „Learners and learning in the twenty-first century:
what do we know about students‟ attitudes towards and experiences of information
and communication technologies that will help us design courses?‟, Studies in Higher
Education, 30 (3): 257-274.
• Kubanyiova, M. (2009) „Possible Selves in Language Teacher Development‟, in
Dörnyei, Z and Ushioda, E (eds) Motivation, Language Identity and the L2 Self,
Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 314-332.
• Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• White, C. and Ding, A. (2009) „Identity and Self in E-Language Teaching‟, in Dörnyei,
Z and Ushioda, E (eds) Motivation, Language Identity and the L2 Self, Bristol,
Multilingual Matters, 333-349.