Dr. Min Liu Brown Bag Lunch Write-Up

A big thank you to Dr. Min Liu in the Learning Technologies Department for kicking off the Fall 2013 Brown Bag Lunch series with her talk, "Leveraging Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning." Thank you also to all of the FLE students who were in attendance.

You can find the content of the talk here.

In addition to the presentation, there was some time for a Q & A, including the topics discussed below:

MOOCs:

Question: What is a MOOC?

Dr. Liu: "MOOC" stands for "massive open online course." They are courses available online with thousands (or tens of thousands) of students. Often, there is one professor who teaches using prerecorded videos. Many students take MOOCs to obtain a certificate.
MOOCs are still in their early stages and there are some issues surrounding their use. One is how to assess learners' performance. Another is outside recognition. In other words, which organizations will recognize an individual's completion of a MOOC? In general, there is still some degree of confusion about how MOOCs should be used.

Study on social networking sites for language learning:

The study was conducted with UT Austin ESL Services students (see the PowerPoint for more information). Students used different social networking sites to perform a number of tasks.

Q: Did the fact that the learners were in an SL (as opposed to FL) setting, where they could interact in the target language in their daily lives, have an effect on the benefit they could get from using social networking sites to study a language?

Dr. Liu: The ESL learners appreciated the opportunity to use these sites precisely because they often lack opportunities to use the target language outside of their ESL classes. Even though they are in Austin, they lack opportunities to interact with native speakers.

Question: What were the tasks?

Dr. Liu: All of the tasks were written by teachers and included the following: 

• contact a friend
• contact a stranger
• have someone correct your writing

Question: Which site was the most popular?

Dr. Liu: Lang-8 was ranked the highest based on triangulation of data. Lang-8 was the easiest to use. LinQ was ranked the lowest.

Question: Who designs these language-focused social networking sites?

Dr. Liu: They are all designed by companies.

Comment: If they were designed by educators, they might be different.

Dr. Liu: That's true. We have no idea about the companies' understanding of pedagogy.

Question: On these sites, native speakers give feedback to learners. But can they necessarily give good feedback just because they are native speakers?

Dr. Liu: All of the sites are built according to Web 2.0 - they are user-centered and anyone has the right to contribute. However, just because someone is a native speaker of English, it doesn't mean that they can give good feedback. A non-native speaker with TOEFL training, for example, might be able to give better feedback than a native speaker of English. When a learner uses this site and gets feedback, they don't know if the person giving the feedback has formal training or not. Sometimes, students have doubts when they receive feedback that contradicts what their teacher said.

Comment: From the point of view of motivation, these sites are revolutionary. Social networking can give learners a reason to communicate and can increase their integrative motivation. So while social networking might not necessarily always be good for grammatical accuracy, it can be a good motivational tool.

Dr. Liu: That's right.

Other discussions:

Question: How do we know what topics or popular trends to research?

Dr. Liu: Know the journals in your field. Skim them to see what has been published. Conference papers are generally not as good as journals, but it is a good idea to look at them to see what is being talked about.

Question: When teachers receive new technological tools to use in the classroom, is it better for them to receive training or to discover how to use the tools on their own?

Dr. Liu: With iPads, for example, teachers really need targeted training. This is something that must be provided by the school district.

Comment: Technology can facilitate customized learning. This can lead to more effective learning.

Dr. Liu: Technology can indeed be good for customized learning, but it depends on how you use it. Mobile technology is a good example. Properly used, it can offer scaffolding. For students, it is good to give them some basic, common instructions and then let them discover how to use the tools on their own. But teachers need knowledge and training to really understand how the tools should be used.

Photo credit: JuHee Lee