Corsica S. L. Kong is originally from Hong Kong. She taught English courses to undergraduates and postgraduates in a Thai university after she obtained her CELTA and TESOL qualifications at Bangkok. Her areas of interests include lesson design and planning, teaching and learning experiences, and teacher professional development.

 

Introduction

How do your students learn during the sudden city lockdown? While a lot of educators have chosen to rely on online tools to deliver their lessons, I designed my own teaching materials and tried out a complete self-study approach to finish the rest of the course under the attack of the Covid-19.

 

New reality

Zoom, MS Teams, Edmodo… What would come up to your mind when it comes to online teaching? For me, “Oh, no…” was my very first reaction.

When the world was suddenly being attacked by the novel coronavirus, Covid-19, many countries made one very difficult decision – to lock down many of their cities. During this period of time, schools were mostly closed. Such closure, however, doesn’t mean that teachers don’t need to teach and students don’t need to study. It just means we are not allowed to be physically in the premise but doing everything online – as simple as that.

The coronavirus outbreak got worse out of the blue in the middle of the semester in my university. In response to this sudden strike, the university needed to strictly follow the country’s emergency decrees to close the campus. So all of a sudden, I couldn’t meet my students right after the mid-term break and our communication immediately needed to be done through social media or emails. As a novice teacher without much technology savvy, an immediate change from traditional classroom-based teaching to completely online teaching was absolutely a great challenge. But somehow we have to realize that under certain circumstances, there is no turning back but just moving on. Therefore, I tried to use the online tools to finish the rest of the semester but in one of the four courses I taught, I chose another strategy to carry on my teaching.

It was a writing course, in which a group of ten postgraduate students studying the skills and techniques on how to write a thesis with me. My students were all studious learners. They were cooperative, easy-going and willing to take part in group activities and discussions during the class. When the lockdown started, I explained to them my proposal on the format of learning and they agreed to give it a try. We didn’t use any types of online platforms or software. Instead, I designed my own self-study materials and used mainly emails and social media to work with my students.

 

Self-study concept

When I designed my materials, I thought about the Flipped Learning approach (FLN 2014). Flipped learning is not completely equivalent to flipped classroom. In this approach, four pillars are incorporated: (1) flexible environment, in which students can choose when and where to learn; (2) learning culture, in which learner-centeredness is emphasized and students go deeper in exploring topics and constructing knowledge; (3) intentional content, in which educators decide what to teach and what materials for their students to explore; and (4) professional educator, in which educators reflect their practice and work with each other to improve their instructions (FLP 2014). Considering that everything became utterly home-based during the city lockdown, I didn’t entirely follow the whole framework but adopted some of the ideas. First of all, I gave my students complete flexibility in learning. As long as they were able to finish their tasks by the stipulated deadline, they could decide when and where to work on the exercises on their own or in small groups. Secondly, the whole self-study process was totally learner-centered. Students were guided by questions, exercises, activities and group discussions to explore the topics. Throughout the process, they could construct deeper knowledge step by step and evaluate their own learning manner. As for the content, we still needed to stick to our course syllabus but it was basically my decision on what to teach and what materials to be used for my students’ learning. Regarding the last element, nevertheless, I couldn’t exactly practice it per se due to that there were no other educators teaching this course in my university. Therefore, no collaboration was involved. During this self-study situation, I tried to make myself available to all students by giving feedback to their coursework and answering enquiries in real time as possible as I could.

 

Design of self-study materials

I like to design my own teaching materials. There are quite a number of advantages, notwithstanding some disadvantages, for teachers to design their own ELT materials (Howard & Major 2004), with some of which being the contextualization and individual needs of learners. When designing my teaching materials, I usually try to overcome the “lack of fit” problem and be responsive to the needs of the particular group of students.

In this set of self-study materials, I created a four-step approach to direct my students to work on various tasks (Table 1). In step one, I include a few guiding questions before introducing my topic and require students to brainstorm ideas first. I emphasize that they have to think without googling any information. This is also something I always remind my students to do in the classroom. In step two, I let them search for information and revisit some of the questions I want them to think in step one. This stage aims to let my students look for answers or knowledge in relation to what they have brainstormed in step one on their own. I encourage them to compare the answers between the online materials and their thoughts. Sometimes I provide specific links or files for them to study in this step instead of asking them to surf the website on their own. In step three, I try to include some exercises or activities for them to work on. Students are expected to finish the practices individually and then compare their answers with their peers. In step four, I require my students to discuss what they have learned in the whole lesson. The students first of all need to have small group discussions and then share their thoughts with the whole class. In the first couple of times, I just let them talk about anything they learned openly but later noticed that students might need more guidance on what to share. So later on, I provided more guidelines or directions so that they could stay more focused on the topic.

 

Table 1. The four-step design

Step	Details
One: Time to THINK	Students are encouraged to brainstorm ideas without googling any information or looking for answers.
Two: Time to SEARCH/STUDY	Students are allowed to search for information/answers or study the materials provided to learn more about the topic.
Three: Time to WORK	Students are provided with some exercises or activities to consolidate what they have learned in step two.
Four: Time to SHARE	Students are required to conduct small group discussions and then share with the whole class their results and thoughts.

The self-study was conducted once a week. Each time I chose one topic to focus on and students were required to follow the steps and finish the tasks accordingly. After they finished everything, I required them to share their thoughts through emails with the whole class. Then I collected their writings, based on which I responded and provided explanations wherever necessary. I consolidated all the feedback, including theirs and mine, and then sent them back everything for their further study.

My design of the self-study materials mostly followed the PPP framework, i.e. presentation-practice-production. Step one aims at letting my students brainstorm ideas, which is more like a warmer or lead-in session. In step two, students either have to google information to learn the topic or study the materials or weblinks I provided, which resembles the presentation stage. Step three, i.e. the practice, requires students to work on exercises or activities while step four needs them to further discuss the topic and provide feedback, i.e. the production stage. 

 

Feedback from students

To reflect on the self-study materials and the whole self-study process, I designed a simple questionnaire to collect feedback from my ten students. The survey focused on their thoughts about what they liked or disliked and what worked well for them. A Likert scale with five responses was used, namely, 1) strongly agree, 2) agree, 3) neutral, 4) disagree and 5) strongly disagree. A simple quantitative analysis was conducted, in which data was mainly calculated and presented in percentages. The survey was entirely voluntary and nine of my students responded (Note 1).

Table 2. Students’ responses (%) toward the self-study materials and self-study process (1: strongly agree, 2: agree, 3: neutral, 4: disagree, 5: strongly disagree)

Aspects	Statement	1	2	3	4	5
Usefulness of materials	The design of the self-study materials are clear, logical and easy to follow.	33.3	55.6	11.1	0	0
	The self-study materials are relevant to the course and useful for my learning.	33.3	55.6	11.1	0	0
	The self-study materials covered more or less the same content I was supposed to learn in the classroom.	44.4	55.6	0	0	0
	The element that was most inspiring and helped me better understand the topics and content is: guiding questions exercises/activities web links/powerpoint presentations discussion and sharing with peers feedback from teacher	44.4 55.6 44.4 66.7 77.8	44.4 33.3 33.3 22.2 11.1	0 11.1 22.2 0 0	11.1 0 0 11.1 0	0 0 0 0 11.1
Students’ self-directedness	I always followed the steps and finished the assigned tasks in the self-study materials accordingly.	44.4	33.3	11.1	11.1	0
	I learned the topics and understood the content by myself before discussions with my groupmates.	44.4	44.4	0	11.1	0
	I prepared my part and always participated in group discussions.	55.6	33.3	0	11.1	0
	I studied the sharing from peers and feedback from my teacher after each self-study.	44.4	44.4	0	11.1	0

Most of my students agreed that the design of the self-study materials are clear, logical and easy to follow (33.3% strongly agree; 55.6% agree) and thought the materials are relevant to the course and useful for their learning (33.3% strongly agree; 55.6% agree). When I designed the materials, I tried to cover as much as I planned to teach in the classroom. As such, the content pretty much followed the original lesson design, only that some group activities or discussions were indeed unable to be done online. On this, my students seemed to think quite the same (44.5% strongly agree; 55.6 agree).

The major elements I included in the self-study materials are guiding questions, exercises or activities, and study notes or information in the form of web links or powerpoint presentations. These are basically for the receptive part. As for the productive part, students needed to conduct group discussions and share their thoughts with peers. Then they had to email to all of us their discussion results. After all this, I provided feedback which they could further study and revise as many times as they could. Among all these major elements, most students found that my feedback helped them better understand the topics and content (77.8% strongly agree), followed by discussion and sharing with peers (66.7% strongly agree) and exercises/activities (55.6% strongly agree).

 

My reflection

In my point of view, the design of the self-study materials and the overall approach are rather satisfactory, given the very limited time for preparation. I like the way it guides the students from brainstorming to production. The first set was designed in a very rush way but the subsequent ones had been further refined. There was a progressive improvement from self-study 1 to self-study 5. That said, however, this self-study approach requires relatively high students’ self-directedness and self-initiation to learn. If students don’t follow the steps and guidelines, the resultant outcome may not be as expected. I was glad to learn that my students mostly followed the instructions and finished the assigned tasks in the self-study materials accordingly (44.4% strongly agree; 33.3% agree). I hope they were able to see how they were guided to think and learn deeper and deeper. Also, majority of them (44.4% strongly agree; 44.4% agree) learned the topics and understood the content by themselves before group discussions. I think this is important not only when studying online but also in classroom-based teaching because learning can definitely be greatly enhanced if students come to the class with ample preparation. Without making any effort to learn and understand things, students may not be able to contribute or take part in group discussion. Many of my students (55.6% strongly agree; 33.3% agree) did prepare their part and participated in group discussions and I really appreciate their enthusiasm and seriousness. They also studied the sharing from peers and my feedback after each self-study (44.4% strongly agree; 44.4% agree). One student shared that “I think this process helps me to share knowledge with peers more than in the classroom because I studied it before talking to my friends.”

From the nine responses I collected, one respondent gave rather negative comments towards everything (Note 2). When I looked at the data, I tried to figure out what the possible explanations were. One of which might be that the student accidentally treated “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” and vice versa. Such phenomenon always happens in surveys using Likert scale. Despite this high possibility, I tried to look at that particular set of data and found that the respondent was relatively less self-directed in learning, assuming that nothing really went wrong when he/she responded to the survey. Considering the nature of the self-study process, it would be indeed very likely that students could find it hard to follow or to learn if he/she preferred more teacher-centeredness. If that student really didn’t study the topic, get himself/herself prepared and take part in group discussion, none of the elements in the self-study materials could help. Unfortunately, that respondent didn’t write down any comments in the open-ended questions. Neither did he/she voice out his/her learning problems during the whole course of self-study. Otherwise, we could have sorted out the problem earlier and found a better way to facilitate his/her learning process.

As for the rest of the respondents, most of them were relatively positive about the self-study. When asked what they liked about the learning process, one student said that it was interesting while another enjoyed searching answers by himself/herself and then exchanging ideas with the peers. One commented: “I can learn self-study many times when I don't understand it with self-study materials and communication. I can understand more when I discuss and sharing with peers and teacher.” Regarding the downsides, one student said that “There is no direct supervision on self-study process.” while another commented that “There is no unsatisfactory things when studying as this way.” Indeed, when studying online or at home alone, students may wonder whether they are on the right tract or not. Although we were keeping in touch through social media and emails, teacher’s direct supervision and observation were very insufficient in this self-study process. Students’ satisfaction could also come from teachers’ reaction. When I gave feedback to students, I always showed my appreciation and encouragement (plus smiley faces) in addition to commenting on their feedback. Nevertheless, that could not totally replace the satisfaction students might get directly from teachers during face-to-face interaction. On top of that, technical problem was also one of the things the students didn’t like. This could be a major issue for online learning. When I asked for their opinions on how to facilitate their learning, one mentioned that more time was needed while two thought that internet would help. This is entirely understandable because some students may find it more difficult and time-consuming when they need to read and comprehend everything on their own without any verbal explanations from teachers. An addition of video chats might definitely help.

 

Some final thoughts

I strongly believe that no matter it’s online learning or classroom-based teaching, teachers still play a very important role in supporting the students in various ways (e.g. giving feedback and providing guidance). I was lucky to have a group of relatively self-directed students who were willing to try out this self-study with me. That said, however, even for highly self-directed students, they would still want to know whether they were doing the right things and long for teachers’ direct support in times of isolation. On this, teachers should definitely need to take the initiative to check on their students’ progress. During the self-study process, I might have relied too much on my students’ self-directedness and self-initiation and neglected that I could have also taken my initiative to decide things for them. For example, I arranged two times of individual consultations (about two weeks’ time each), in which each student could make an appointment and talk to me about the course or any learning obstacles. However, none of them did it. On one hand it could mean that they were doing fine so that they didn’t have anything to say. On the other hand, it could be that they were still a bit reserved and passive and might want to wait for my call instead. Looking back now, I think I should have made the consultation sessions a must so that I could have talked to my students individually and learned about their possible problems. Another thing is that I told my students that I was happy to have group video chats if needs be and let them decide and handle the arrangement but in the end, nobody did it. I believe they might as well want me to arrange for them instead. So at some point, teacher-centeredness may not be entirely undesirable and teachers perhaps still play a significant part in making decisions for their students and telling them what to do in certain circumstances.

All in all, I think it was a very good opportunity to explore new ways to facilitate teaching and learning, especially during difficult times like this pandemic outbreak. Given that there is no perfect teaching method and one-size-fits-all thing in this world, I would definitely expect some room for improvement in the future. Nonetheless, I believe both my students and I had already learned something from the self-study process during this lockdown.

 

Notes

1. A total of ten responses were collected but two were exactly the same (based on all data input and answers for all open-ended questions). Therefore, one of them was taken out.
2. In the data set, there were originally two negative respondents. However, one of them was contradictory to the answers provided in the open-ended question section, which were all very positive. It was thus believed that data was wrongly input in the survey. The other set without answering any open-ended questions was kept instead.

 

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to my students for their participation and cooperation throughout the whole study process. They are Bank, Boom, Can, Giebo, Ice, Khun, Mai, Mana, Pang and Whan (nicknames in an alphabetical order). I wholeheartedly wish them all the best in their study and research.

 

References

Flipped Learning Network (FLN). (2014) The Four Pillars of F-L-I-P™. Retrieved at http://www.flippedlearning.org/definition.

Howard, J. and Major, J. (2004) Guidelines for designing effective English language teaching materials. The TESOLANZ Journal. Retrieved at http://www.paaljapan.org/resources/proceedings/PAAL9/pdf/Howard.pdf

 

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