Computers and English Language Teaching - Essay Example

Thus students in one country can and do take classes in another. Before dealing with the details of computer aided teaching of English as a foreign language and teacher training, it will be useful to consider briefly the online education environment in general. The online teaching environment may be divided into two basic different types: synchronous courses and asynchronous courses. A synchronous course occurs in "real time", i.e. the instructor and the students are logged on to the internet at the same time and are within the online course, perhaps exchanging IM's or with a lecture occurring on a live whiteboard program.

However, the best use of online education is in the asynchronous mode, in which lectures are available on the course website as P.Points and/or audio-visual files, students take part in threaded discussions and assignments are submitted to a digital drop-box (Kearsley, 1999). Some of the major advantages of online teaching are the ability of students in remote geographical areas to take classes, introduce new types of pedagogy to the 'classroom' and create a more reflective atmosphere for students.

One major feature of online classes is that the dominant personalities that are found in all physical classrooms can no longer dominate all class discussions. More shy students who are likely to be silent and even unnoticed in the live classroom are 'heard from' in the online situation. Thus there is an equalization and a democratization of the student learning system that cannot occur in the actual classroom. This sense of equality comes at what some have seen as a considerable price. Bender (2003) poses a question that is difficult to answer, but which the online teacher (and especially the online teacher instructing language) must consider: Students generally like to have a sense of belonging.

When they attend a class on campus, they become familiar with the room in which the class is held . . feeling included in a group is an important factor for encouraging the true potential for learning taking place . . . but is it possible for a class that does not occupy spatial coordinates to still generate a feeling of place . . . does the association of "distance" and "learning" constitute an oxymoron After all, education is surely about the meeting of minds, not their separation. (Bender, 2003) These are difficult questions that have yet to be answered because online teaching is still in its embryonic stage.

As the Internet itself develops, and as bandwidth speeds increase to the point where real-time teaching and complex audio-visual materials will be available as easily as television is today, then a real test of whether there is a "place" within the online teaching environment will be set. As it is, all the signs seem to be that a sense of place can occur, as long as the teacher has a sound knowledge, both of her subject and also of the special opportunities and challenges of the online teaching environment.

The Blackboard online platform is currently one of the most utilized within the world of online teaching. It offers the teacher a number of different teaching possibilities and strategies. These include the inclusion of lecture notes (often Power Point