TAFESTART+ESL+Case+Study+1

Certificate in English Language Proficiency (ESL) Lecturers – Denine Maddaford & Jodie Young Mentor – Karen Middleton **
 * TAFEStart Program

My own work in delivering basic computing competencies to English as a Second Language (ESL) students had given me the opportunity to experiment with some e-learning tools. I had run several moodle classrooms with Certificate 3 and 4 students and I had trialled the use of Audacity for the development of oral language. Denine Maddaford and Jodie Young are lecturers in the ESL program at the Tea Tree Gully Campus and expressed an interest in being mentored in the use of technology within their ESL classrooms.

Denine, Jodie and I work in the same office and our desks are just a few metres away from each other. Term 4 was a very busy time for all of us – the ESL curriculum was undergoing a rewrite in readiness for delivery at the beginning of 2010, our entire TAFE//Start// team was being reorganised with some lecturers going to Elizabeth, some staying at Tea Tree Gully but in other accommodation, and some working across two campuses. We agreed that short meetings with small goals would be best as neither Jodie nor Denine could see their way clear to set aside a longer block of time. As an interim strategy I enrolled both lecturers in my moodle classrooms so that they could see the type of work that can be done in the online environment. After many false starts and cancellations of the short meetings we decided that we just had to make the effort to find a longer block of time. An afternoon was set aside and we looked at the ways in which moodle, wikispaces and blogs could be used with the ESL students. Both set up a moodle classroom and a wiki in readiness for development and use with classes at the beginning of 2010.
 * Stage 1 – Identifying the e-learning tools **

Once classes had been allocated for 2010 both Jodie and Denine were able to identify the particular classes that they would take the e-learning path with. Jodie felt more comfortable trying out the use of Wikispaces with her Certificate 3 Reading and Writing class and Denine had begun building up her resources in a moodle classroom for Certificate 4 Preparation for Field Experience. The logistics of setting up registrations and accounts for these students for the different online environments is time consuming and labour intensive. Network logins, email accounts, wiki registrations, moodle logins, responding to emails to confirm registrations – initially this is very confusing and intimidating for ESL students and frustrating for the lecturers who want to get on with the delivery of their programs. It became clear that the best way that I could support Denine and Jodie with this process was to be in their classrooms and work with the students, one or two at a time, to get them set up with all of the usernames and passwords that they needed. They agreed that this would not only make it easier for them and the students, but they could, through observation, learn about the processes, the sorts of things that go wrong and how to troubleshoot the problems. By the time Denine and Jodie were ready to go ‘live’ with the e-learning tools, over forty ESL students had wiki and moodle accounts and knew how to access the online environments. By this stage I was well and truly immersed in the whole process and so I continued to attend classes to assist, to observe and to learn about how the tools were working, and how we could improve our practice.
 * Stage 2 – Developing Technical Expertise**


 * Stage 3 - Going 'Live' with Wikis and Moodle (photostory)**

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