In this webinar, teacher-trainer Deirdre Cijffers and experienced teacher and Laureate vice president Gordon Lewis explored the problem of supporting students on online courses. When learners don’t get to meet their teacher face-to-face, how can we make sure that they’re happy and engaged with their learning, and stick with the course through to the end?
Deirdre began by exploding some of the myths about online-only courses, revealing that they’re not necessarily easier or cheaper to run – successful online courses require a great deal of work and training. Though we may assume that the generation of learners known as ‘digital natives’ are immediately able to grasp everything digital, they’ll still need training on how to learn online. And teachers still need to manage students’ learning, ensuring that there are opportunities for feedback, and collaborative learning. But with thought, planning, and careful organisation, Deirdre insisted, online-only courses can be a powerful option for learning English.
Gordon Lewis shared his experiences – and some of the lessons learned – at the Laureate Universities, a chain of universities with around three million students worldwide. Two of the Laureate institutions ran trials of almost entirely online courses, using Cambridge’s Touchstone course, which has been designed to support a range of learning environments from entirely classroom-based to 100% online, and everything in-between.
To find out more about the lessons Gordon learned, why not watch the recording below?