Transforming practice: Student perceptions of blended academic writing learning

Abstract

'Blended learning' (BL) has been touted as an effective methodology for delivering content in the digital age. However, BL and online learning have at times been confused. This has led to dumping of content online and expecting learners to complete tasks in their own time with little or no instruction. True BL involves a fine balance between the online and face to face environments.

This seminar provides an update to an ongoing project which seeks to transform the teaching of academic writing in an intensive pre-sessional EAP programme. Traditionally, teaching of this subject has been reliant on face-to-face delivery. However, for learners to make significant gains in a short period of time, there are significant practice and feedback requirements. In the past, this led to significant demands on the time of instructors to provide feedback during out-of-class time. This BL project sought to extend practice and feedback opportunities to a Moodle-based university website, which would also provide instructors with access to more focused feedback on learner issues.

This BL project employs a transformative practice cycle (Kalantzis & Cope, 2005) to enable leaners to progressively become more aware of problems in their own writing. Learners have access to a range of topics, pitched at three different levels. Currently, the available tasks focus on raising awareness of structure, coherence and cohesion.

In this seminar, attendees will lean about the project so far, get an update on significant changes, and hear about challenges faced in terms of implementation. In addition, the authors will provide data on student perceptions of the online component of the teaching of academic writing.