David Caulton’s “An Edinburgh Model for Online Teaching” Blog
Hello. My first blog for “An Edinburgh Model for Online Teaching”.
I wanted to do this course because although I have done other online courses I still don’t feel I am achieving what I want my online teaching to be. It’s partly constrained by what it is I teach – language support (what is called English for Academic Purposes, or EAP for short) and academic literacy for mainly PG taught masters students. Much of my teaching is F2F, as you would expect, but because of the ever growing numbers of international students on-campus, for whom English is not their first language, we are increasingly turning to online solutions to reach as many students as possible with the limited resources we have. In the grand scheme of things, online language support is still fairly niche but given the university’s ambitions for growth online (ie off-campus) as well as on-campus, it is set to expand too. Language in this context is a skill, not a content subject, and it is supplementary not core (ie an add-on to Masters programmes for those students who need it but in fact struggle to take advantage of it for a number of reasons, not least time pressure). This presents quite unique challenges in creating online provision that have not – in my experience – really addressed effectively in the courses I have done so far. That may be my fault for not recognising what is available and useful. How can I create a sustainable (in terms of resource use) but dynamic online language support platform that readily engages students who need language and academic literacy support?
That is my challenge, one that I share with my colleagues. This affects both wholly online provision and blended (both currently via LEARN).
As to what teaching online is, these are the words I submitted to the word cloud earlier: accessible flexible engaged limitless and personalised.
I think we do well with the first and last but not so well with the three in the middle. Online learning & teaching offers the chance to be very creative (this was mentioned in the video by the politics academic, Jean Benoit Falisse) and highly individualised in terms of going at your own pace nad having the option to be participate synchronously or asynchronously as fits your time and perhaps character.
Hi David – I enjoyed reading your post! It seems your have a very clear idea about the specific challenges you are up against in terms of your line of work and online teaching. I think some of these are felt across disciplines subjects, but language teaching comes with it’s own set of pedagogical requirements – especially when sitting slightly “beside” the main curriculum (as is the case with EAP).
My background too is in languages/literature but I now work with learning technology – precisely trying to help with creative solutions to these challenges.
Let’s look for inspiration in this course!
We keep bumping into each other! I look forward to your reflections over this course.
Hi David,
Stuart Nicol here, one of the course tutors. Great to see you have got up and running with the blog so quickly … and great first post.
It sounds like your course potentially sits across much of what we do. By putting courses online we make them available to a global audience, and therefore the issue of language and language support comes more to the fore. I’m not sure this course will solve all your problems, but it will hopefully give some introductions to new ways of teaching online and, more inmportantly, introduce you to other online teachers.
Beyond the couse I would be really keen to discuss how we can support you to improve the course that you deliver (I manage the Educational Design and Engagement team in ISG), so would encourage you to get in touch.
All the best,
Stuart