My online course structure

         Hello my fellow teachers! I am back posting another time about the development of online course on everyday English writing. This time I will be sharing my online course' structure. There are 5 modules overall with two lessons each (Pic 1). The last lesson (lesson 5) does not have divided structure as it is for final writing project assignment. Overall, each lesson covers a particular topic. For instance, lessons 1.1 and 1.2 are dedicated to Email structure and writing email for different purposes. Lesson 2 is focused on improving writing skills in messengers and choosing the tone in informal context. Meanwhile, lesson 3 is designed for writing on social media and blogs. Last but not least, lessons 4.1 and 4.2 are focused on writing stories and personal narratives.

Pic. 1

       There is also a clear outline of each lesson that I decided to follow (Pic 2). 

        

Pic 2

        

        Each lesson will have lesson overview first. I will include it before lead-in in every lesson to set clear expectations for students to refer to while completing the tasks. Lesson overviews are particularly good in activating learners' prior knowledge and anticipation of the lesson flow, which in turn increases student engagement (Richards, 2015). After that, there is lead-in activity to activate students' schemata. Schemata is the way students can activate their prior knowledge in writing by answering the questions based on what they have read, experienced, or observed (Dang, 2018). Thus, I plan to develop lead-in activities as discussion boards, or brainstorming boards to encourage learners think about the topic being taught. This activity will be followed by Input, which I think will be provided as variety of materials in different forms of multimedia - videos, infographics, articles, worksheets. After Input, I decided to put guided practice and free practice. Guided practice will be in the form of assignments to be completed with the help of different digital tools and Google Classroom submissions as well. Meanwhile, free practice will be provided as a form of assignment, or home assignment, that should be submitted exclusively through Google Classroom as Google Docs document. Finally, some of the topics may include discussion forums, peer feedback forums, or quizzes made with Google Forms. 

        When it comes to the feedback from the teacher, I think as the course goes on, the teacher may give feedback either orally or in a written form. The written form will be visible to learners on Google Classroom alongside with grades, while oral feedback can be given through different ways. First way is conducting a Zoom meeting to share personalized feedback to each student so they understand exactly what they should improve in their works and what they should focus on (Carby, 2023). In addition to this, the teacher may give video feedback, or so-called veedback, so the students get more information from the teacher about their writing in the form of a video, which also increases rapport between students and the teacher (Ali, 2016). Therefore, feedback will be given in different forms once the students enroll and start submitting their works.

        References

    Ali, A.D., (2016). Effectiveness of Using Screencast Feedback on EFL Students' Writing and Perception. English Language Teaching, 9(8), pp.106-121.        

    Carby, N., (2023). Personalized feedback in a virtual learning environment. Journal of Educational Supervision, 6(1), p.36. 

    Dang, U., (2018). Activating schemata in ESL writing. University of Arkansas.

    Richards, J.C., (2015). Key issues in language teaching. Cambridge University Press.