Last summer, I received a call from Washington DC, asking me
to create a beginners French course on line using the Captretz's
method "French in Action". The project was part of the
African Virtual University curriculum, and was sponsored by the
World Bank. I was not familiar with "Distance Education",
but out of sheer curiosity I accepted the challenge.
The students were from Anglophone African universities in Ghana,
Kenya, Mauritania, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. The task was
new to me and at first felt overwhelming. However confident in
my expertise in information technology, I went ahead and created
a very successful course. I personally taught the first third
of the course (nine lessons), and passed the baton for the rest
of the year to a colleague who teaches French at Georgetown University. She uses the Washington studios of AVU which
simplifies some of the procedure.
- What was the infrastucture of the course?
- In the US:
A broadcasting studio in Washington, with a coordinator, Sidiki
Traore, member of the AVU administration, who was supervising
the project, in charge of the feedback after each show.
A broadcasting studio in Amherst, at the UMass School of Engeneering
with a team of cameramen and sound technicians, a project supervisor,
a studio director, and a content specialist, myself.
- The live sessions were first broadcast from the studio in
Umass and uploaded to the AVU" s studio in Washington using
satellite technology or via telephone lines which is cheaper.
The studio in Washington in turn broadcast the live session to
the different AVU sites in East Africa.
- In Africa:
At the different sites of AVU, there were regular classes with
students and teachers meeting 5 times a week. Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday and Thursday classes were conducted by local instructors
called "moderators," while the Friday sessions were
live and entirely taught by me from the US.
Depending on the time zone of each countries, there were from
5 to 7 hours difference, which is why I had to teach first thing
in the morning so that they could catch me as their last class
in the afternoon
- What are the pitfalls?
In traditional teaching, instructors work individually, and are
entirely involved in there performance
In distance Education you work as a tea, and you have to establish
contat and understanding with each technician. Your cameraman
follows what you say, understand what you are talking about and
makes sure that images always coincide with words. Well, none
of the Umass technicians understood French, I had to give verbal
direction, and keep an eye on the TV screen to see if they were
following. My attention was divided between the accuracy of what
I was saying, my physical style, and checking the camera work
to see if images and words coincided. This is a multitask performance
and it is not a surprise that most teachers freeze in front of
a camera.
Course Content:
- What did the Friday sessions consist of?
Every Friday mornings, I would get up at 6, dress and make
up (!), then drive to the School of Engineering at Umass to meet
the members of the broadcasting team. The live sessions went
from 8 to 10. Class content was similar to any traditional language
class. First, for 1/2 hour I presented the material of the lesson
of the week, and proceeded into interrogating students on a one
to one basis.
-
- Indispensability of the Net :
Communication with individual teachers was done via e-mail;
management and coordination of the course was done via the web.
Syllabus, course material, and grammar were posted on the web.
Culture and phonetics were reserved for the live sessions. However
to my surprise and delight, after a while students told me that
they preferred grammar to "cultural stuff". They were
interested in learning French, and could not care less about
France" So much for the sacrosanct "language in context"
theory !
-
- "Distance learning" demand that you be a webmaster.
You have to create your own pages, present your material in a
coherent, attractive and easy to interpret format, and this implies
fluency in Information Technology. Computer literacy which require
the mastery of word processor, e-mail, and web browsers is not
enough. Fluency is requested, it involves using desktop publishing
tools such as Photoshop, PageMaker, DreamWeaver, or GoLive, to
create documents and web pages. It takes time, lots of time and
I recommend it only to those who are already addicted to the
hypnotic power of their computer screen.