Opportunities for alternative pre- and in-service teacher education are increasing in Florida and are available from online providers. Teacher educators of methods courses have been challenged with issues related to the instruction of best practices and assessment of student instruction (Ferdig, 2006). These two concepts have been a concern in traditionally offered face-to-face methods courses and they pose challenges in the design, development and implementation of online methods courses (Philips, 2004, NFLRC).

Constructivist pedagogy actively involves the student in the creation of her/his learning drawing upon prior knowledge and integrating this with new information and skills to solve real world problems (Lefoe, 1998). Scaffolding provides temporary assistance to learners as they attempt to understand cognitively challenging concepts, and technologies, used effectively, can scaffold the learning of students in P-12 schools. Video technologies are being used to scaffold the learning of pre-service teachers in face-to-face foreign language methods courses (Chuang and Rosenbusch, 2005).

In the first part of this study, students in an online ESOL methods course were exposed to various video technologies. They viewed web-streamed video clips of ESOL teaching strategies, video clips produced by former FGCU College of Education students, and then produced and viewed video clips of their own teaching. Each student was tasked with demonstrating an ESOL teaching strategy which she/he used in an internship class, having it videotaped, and then designing, developing and producing a five-minute video clip using Windows Movie Maker. The clips were then encoded and uploaded to a video streaming server on campus, links to the clips were provided in a discussion forum in Angel (view screenshot), and students were asked to observe the clips and comment on at least three using a non-threatening and constructively-critical response format. These responses exhibited high levels of engagement (Fertig, Roehler, and Pearson, 2002) and later, in comments in a summative course assessment tool, all students strongly agreed/agreed that the use of student-produced video clips of their own teaching involving feedback from their colleagues and their further reflection was a meaningful learning experience.

In the next part of this study, online ESOL methods course students will once again produce an initial video clip of an ESOL teaching strategy and then implement changes noted by classmates and the course instructor in a second video clip demonstrating the same strategy with different course content. A four-part reflective teaching model (Hiebert, Morris, Berk and Jansen, 2007) will be introduced early in the course which assists teachers with learning from their teaching. Using this model, students will be requested to analyze their own teaching as demonstrated in their video clips. Feedback will also again be provided by colleagues and the instructor using the previous template. One objective is for students to demonstrate ESOL teaching strategy changes based on analytical commentary and reflection. Another is to assess the effectiveness of student-produced video clips in an online methods course and their use in improving student performance. Similar use of video-clip technologies in hybrid methods courses is also occurring and, again, initial feedback has been positive.

Faculty Showcase:  Sample Video Clip Discussion Forum Feedback [.pdf - 36 kb]

Please contact Mark Simpson @ 590-7757 or msimpson@fgcu.edu with questions, comments, suggestions, etc.