I am familiar with teaching English as a second language from my experience in Japan. I would like to build an online experience for high school students (grades 9-11) who are writing and presenting English speeches.
After reading the other students’ examples, the one learning theory that I think would work extremely well with this type of educational context is constructivism. It allows the teacher to become more of a guide or coach to help students explore and discover their own interests and understanding of what they want to pursue (Ally, 2008). This will be achieved through the teacher’s and professional speakers’ videos and the curriculum. There will also be the collaborative aspect with other students and the teacher reading drafts, watching the other students’ video presentations, and giving their own thoughts and feedback in the discussion forums.
Jaime’s post about their online course providing cognitivism and allowing the students to translate materials into 15 different languages would help these students if they are struggling or the teacher is unavailable. They can also do this with a lot of the TED Talk videos in the subtitles’ settings. The cognitivism elements allow the students to build on their own understanding and be inspired by different means like visual aids, videos/presentations, and previous exemplar presentations. Since the students are still learning English, the course would need to be done in a cognitivism way to make it straightforward by having the instruction be organized and sequenced in accordance to their speaking and writing ability and previous knowledge (BlueSofaMedia, 2012).
I do not think this would go well without at least some sort of live interaction between the teacher and student to address their questions or progress. Like this EDDL 5141 course, the teacher would need to implement an optional video meeting to address the students’ concerns or have a live lesson once a week to ensure they are able to communicate face-to-face with their peers or teacher.
References
Ally, M. (2008). Foundations of educational theory for online learning. In Anderson, T. (Ed.). The theory and practice of online learning (pp.15-44). Athabasca, AB: Athabasca University Press. Retrieved from “http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/01_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf”
BlueSofaMedia. (2012). Use a learning theory: Cognitivism [Video file].
