Effective and Engaging Language Teaching: An Interactive Checklist
This eLearning performance aid was developed as a lesson planning resource for new graduate student language instructors in the Spanish and Portuguese department of a public university. The performance aid presents a series of steps and recommendations based on best practices in adult learning and language teaching, which instructors can reference as they create plans for their classes.
Overview
Audience: New graduate student foreign language instructors
Responsibilities: Instructional design, eLearning development
Tools used: Articulate Rise 360, Canva, Qualtrics, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel
Problem and Solution
New graduate student language instructors often begin teaching without much teaching experience or an education-related degree. Aside from taking a one-semester course on language teaching, they have few resources that can help them adjust to their new role as university language instructors. This can have negative consequences for both the instructors themselves (e.g., stress, lack of confidence, low motivation) as well as the students they teach (e.g., poorer learning outcomes, dissatisfaction with the course).
To gain a better understanding of instructor needs and gauge whether a learning experience was needed, I created a survey using Qualtrics XM and distributed it to all graduate student language instructors and their course coordinators. Analysis of the data indicated a need for greater preparation and support for instructors. All respondents expressed support for a supplementary learning experience for new instructors. The most frequently cited areas for support included effective language teaching methods. Others included organization, time and classroom management, presentation techniques, and confronting academic dishonesty.
To gain a greater qualitative understanding of the data, I met with various stakeholders to discuss their needs: two graduate student instructors, the head of the Spanish and Portuguese department, and the professor for the language teaching course that new instructors are required to take. Through these conversation, it was determined that effective language teaching methods and presentation techniques would be the most useful and practical components to include in the learning experience.
Considering my conversations with stakeholders and the survey results, I proposed a performance aid to the department head that would provide instructors with on-the-spot lesson planning support. Responding to the needs analysis, the content of the performance aid would address best practices in language teaching and adult learning with an emphasis on presentation techniques.
Process
I created the performance aid by defining learning outcomes and objectives, designing and organizing the experience, creating a text storyboard, and consulting stakeholders for feedback. Then, I developed the end product in Articulate Rise 360 and incorporated more stakeholder feedback.
Learning Outcome and Objectives
To determine my learning objectives, I relied on Bloom’s taxonomy. First, I defined the terminal learning objective: With the support of this performance aid, language instructors will be able to create lesson plans that incorporate best practices from adult learning and language teaching.
Then, I defined three enabling objectives to guide my creation of the learning experience: With the support of the performance aid, instructors will be able to 1) apply relevant Gagne learning events to lesson plan design, 2) incorporate techniques for effective language practices into lesson plan design, and 3) incorporate techniques for student engagement into lesson plan design.
Design and Organization
I reviewed literature on best practices in language teaching and adult learning then selected and compiled information that addressed my learning objectives. I relied on sources such as the “Guiding Principles for Language Learning'“ by the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Language Teaching Research and Language Pedagogy by Rod Ellis, and Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen (2012).
I decided to organize the learning experience by an adapted version of Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction so that learners could follow along with the performance aid as they created their lesson plans. Each section would correspond to an instructional event, such as sharing lesson objectives, getting students’ attention, recalling prior knowledge, presenting new material, and providing practice opportunities.
Text-Based Storyboard and Feedback
Next, using the relevant content I had selected and my design plans, I created the text storyboard in Microsoft Word. After presenting the first draft of the storyboard to the department head, we went through two rounds of iterative feedback through which I made several changes. I changed the titles of each section to be more learner-centered (e.g., "engage students with new information” instead of “present new information”), added more examples of activities for instructors to use, added a suggested amount of time for each step (e.g., 1-2 minutes for getting students’ attention), and included mention that flipped classrooms may follow a different process. Since this was my first time using Articulate Rise and I planned to develop the end product myself, I did not include a visual storyboard or graphic/animation notes.
Development
I developed the product in Articulate Rise 360. I first developed a prototype of two of the sections for stakeholder review and feedback. Minor changes were suggested to the organization within each section. Considering this feedback, I decided to organize the information by two key questions: Why do we do it? How do we do it? Since the experience is learner-led and not necessarily linear, I wanted to make sure that each section was explicit in the information it provided and not contingent on prior sections. After making these changes, I developed the rest of the product according to the storyboard and new organization. Another round of feedback addressed some typing errors and suggested a stronger conclusion that included resources for further learning. Finally, I published the course and tested it for errors on both desktop and mobile devices.
After finalizing the product in Articulate Rise, I created a supplementary infographic using Canva to reinforce the main concepts.
Takeaways and Reflection
The process of creating the instructor performance aid left me with several key takeaways. Firstly, the project allowed me to use Articulate Rise for the very first time. I learned how to use specific features like accordion blocks, interactive checklists, tables, button stacks, and disclaimer statements. Secondly, the project also gave me further experience with survey data. One obstacle I encountered was the wording of some questions. Specifically, the following question was sometimes misinterpreted: What do graduate student TAs need to be able to do to be successful in the area(s) that you selected? What would improvement look like? Some respondents understood the question as asking what kind of training do new instructors (i.e., TAs) need to do, when I was trying to target what skills instructors should develop in order to be successful. In the future, I will be sure to pilot my survey questions before distribution.
Considering effectiveness, the performance aid will be distributed to new language instructors at the beginning of the next academic year. Its effectiveness can be evaluated with a post-semester, self report survey that addresses the following questions: Considering language instructors that used the performance aid at least once, did they incorporate best practices from adult learning and language teaching into their lesson plans? Which practices? How often? Post-semester student evaluations may also be considered.