MERLOT Ottawa, Canada Using Learning Objects to Design Self-Paced Online Language Courses Delphine Renié Canadian Foreign Service Institute

MERLOT Ottawa, Canada Language Training at CFSI Main language training programs involve full-time and part-time, short-term and long-term classroom teaching Computer-based products are used but mostly offered as self-learning tools Teachers are not sure how to use and integrate them in their teaching

MERLOT Ottawa, Canada Online Language Training at CFSI Still a marginal program, but expanding 8,000 potential learners Over 500 registrations per year 50 online courses in 10 languages Mostly for intermediate to advanced levels Asynchronous, insctructor-led Built with a CMS developed internally 6 years ago

MERLOT Ottawa, Canada Blended Learning Government employees encouraged to be in charge of their learning. Autonomy. Employees are busy travelling or attending meetings. Flexibility. Growing demand for blended learning as well as completely web-based learning (from employees as well as management) Classroom part-time courses for absolute beginners to be replaced with online introductory courses

MERLOT Ottawa, Canada Open Learning Classroom and online learning activities to enrich and complement each other Student-teacher and student-student interaction will continue outside of classroom via use of a forum and other collaborative tools Teachers will monitor learning thanks to LMS like Moodle Ultimately, division in training programs will disappear

MERLOT Ottawa, Canada The Course Development Process Our objective has been to establish a common development process for 7 online beginner courses Courses focus on daily communication Topics are universal: Greetings, Introducing myself and my family, Shopping, Ordering a meal, Asking for directions, Making a phone call

MERLOT Ottawa, Canada A Generic Template Generic template was sent to the teachers, who all work remotely Teachers were also asked to browse through existing online courses (found using MERLOT but also Google) This triggered questions on their parts about the length, depth and interactivity of the courses

MERLOT Ottawa, Canada Good and Bad Surprises Adding audio and video components is easier and faster than ever Even though Moodle is web-based, we cannot expect our teachers to build a course from scratch unless we train them The main question has been to decide which document format to use, since Moodle allows virtually everything.

MERLOT Ottawa, Canada Our First Moodle Courses: Introductions to German / Japanese / Mandarin 7 modules, each about a different topic:  Dialogue  Vocabulary / Glossary  Grammar  Learning Activities Matching sentences. Fill-in-the-blanks. Etc. 1 review module Downloads: All audio and video files grouped here for learner to save

MERLOT Ottawa, Canada PDF Files as Learning Objects PDF files are convenient for learners who like to print learning content. PDF files produce elegant Chinese characters They are easy to create, save and send. They can have embedded sound files in a variety of formats. Audio recording of student classroom performance can be embedded in PDF file and used in e-portfolio.

MERLOT Ottawa, Canada What about re-usability? Why did we not re-use existing beginner courses instead of building new ones?  We aligned our template with existing course plans developed internally  Having teachers design online material triggers their interest for online teaching We can use a same resource with different purposes

MERLOT Ottawa, Canada From Moodle to my video iPod Video segments in Moodle can be downloaded on the teacher’s video iPod and re-used in a classroom setting with a new purpose In this example, the video can have different functions online and offline:  Online, it adds a human touch and triggers curiosity  Offline, the teacher can use it to work on phonetics, vocabulary comprehension, sociolinguistic aspects, etc.

MERLOT Ottawa, Canada Thank You.