Welcome to another post about my online course development! This time I am going to share with you the teaching context. Finally, I can provide the link to this Google Classroom course as I set up everything there and I am ready to share it with you.
In a course, the teaching context refers to the conditions and all the factors that are considered to shape the delivery of the course and the way how it would be experienced by the teachers and students (Richards and Farrell, 2011). Therefore, it is vital to consider all the conditions for teaching-learning experience to make it successful. The first point that I consider while designing this online course is the level of proficiency of expected students. I chose to design an online course for pre-intermediate level learners, which is B1 level according to CEFR framework. As the course is named "Mastering Everyday English Writing", we can expect it to be for those who want to improve their general writing skills. The linguistic background, cultural and educational settings are not identified since it is available to anyone who wants to improve their writing. However, it is also important to note that the course content that I aim to upload is mostly suitable for those learners who study at high school level.
The next point to consider in teaching context is learning environment. In regards to this, the course is delivered online and I plan to integrate a lot of digital tools to make it more engaging for learners. For instance, I want to include Padlet boards and Kialo for lead-in activities, EdPuzzle platform, Youtube, Google classroom as LMS, Zoom and other platforms to facilitate learning. In addition, I will provide videos and online materials to improve students' writing skills effectively.
When it comes to institutional framework, the course is not being designed based on a particular curriculum or set of standards that are already applied in language classrooms. What about time constraints, the course will not have certain deadlines in lessons. However, if I teach this course to a group of learners in the near future, I will make sure to put time constraints so the students will be engaged with learning materials and tasks certain amount of hours a week. Overall, since the course contains only 4 major topics and one final writing assignment, the course takes about 8 learning hours. Assessment in this online course will take place every lesson with writing project being the last one to be submitted. Hence, the weight of final writing project will be 50%, while all the other assignments will take up the other half divided evenly among them. The course is to be designed as interactive one, integrating different digital tools and having lots of discussion boards. Also, the course is based on the theories of social constructivism and contains elements of connectivism as well. I will be furtherly discussing it in the next post showing the examples of tasks from the online course when I upload them.
The course rationale refers to the basis on which the course is created articulating its relevance and importance (Romiszowski, 2016). First thing that I did is that I identified target audience, which is B1 level learners. Through the course that I am developing, the learners are expected to improve their general writing skills, with the variety of writing being covered (professional and personal emails, social media posts, blog posts, story writing). Hence, all of the content covered is practical and can be applied in real-world scenarios. For instance, the English language learners who completed this course will be able to write clear and structured emails to their colleagues or friends, communicate in social media more confidently, create a blog on their own, and so on. Therefore, this online course aims to consider long-term learning goals and help learners acquire valuable knowledge and skills in English wriying.
References
Richards, J.C. and Farrell, T.S.C. (2011) ‘Understanding the Teaching Context’, in Practice Teaching: A Reflective Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Teacher Training and Development), pp. 31–42.
Romiszowski, A.J., (2016). Designing instructional systems: Decision making in course planning and curriculum design. Routledge.
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