The Evolution of ALP: An Overview

This website accompanies the conference presentation: No More Pencils, No More Books: A 21st Century Intensive English Program, delivered by Cheryl Allaire, David Brauer, Aaron Faulkner, and Dustin Koehler. The presentation describes the current piloting of a new model in The Ohio State University’s intensive English program, the American Language Program, and focuses on three primary changes, with emphasis on the adoption and creation of digital learning materials. The three primary changes are:

1. Adopting a nearly 100% digital student experience, in lieu of expensive, often incompletely used textbooks.
2. Creating theme-based, integrated skills courses, rather than discrete language skill classes
3. Applying a floating level placement model

 

(Filmed, Edited and Directed by David Brauer.)

 

Digital Student Experience

The US Department of Education and the office of the POTUS have asked every school to accelerate their transition to digital materials. By 2017, the goal is for K-12 learning to look vastly different. With this in mind, we were looking for ways to transition to e-textbooks. We contacted publishers about this, but were disappointed at the offerings. Then, at Ohio State’s Innovate Conference in March of 2013, we learned about open educational resources and heard the term “textbook zero!” from Cable Green. Additionally, we had heard and learned about creating our own proprietary materials, and decided we wanted to do so. In the Summer of 2014, I sat down with my instructors and we talked about the term ahead. All of them agreed to create and/or find their own materials on the internet. We are now building a library of resources and plan to share them widely and freely, keeping with the open education model that originally inspired us.

Before piloting the new model, the program relied greatly upon books. When I began coordinating the program we were using over 47 different books throughout the program’s nine levels. Don’t get me wrong, some of these materials are excellent resources, but they were  used incompletely. Students would spend upwards of $250-$350 on textbooks each semester, or about $750-$1050 annually, and were too frequently using only a portion of the book. Students complained about the expenses and the partial use of the books.

Additionally, ESL Programs had become the department on campus using the most paper on the Ohio State campus. We were encouraged by our supervisors to create a more digital experience.

“Textbook zero” hasn’t been easy. In fact, in Autumn 2014 we added three GTAs to assist the instructors in materials creation. It has been a valuable learning experience and I find that the teachers are more connected with the curricular materials. The program now provides a student-centered, digital experience through a model that is more instructionally purposive and financially sustainable. We’ve adopted (and adapted) open educational resources in lieu of expensive paper textbooks and have integrated collaborative Web 2.0 applications like Google Drive, Quizlet, and WordPress to promote more meaningful language use. The program is now also administered digitally through the university’s professional website platform (u.osu.edu/osualp) and we have recently added our own YouTube channel: OSU Flipped ESL. I am also leading a team to create several iTunes U courses, which with the YouTube channel will extend English learning opportunities globally. Through this process, we have come to understand first-hand the pivotal function of instructional technology and design: it can improve learning and make education available to more people. Technology must not be seen as an add-on or peripheral component of effective pedagogy; it’s integral and essential.

 

Theme-Based Integrated Skills Courses

Before transitioning to an all-integrated skills course structure, we had the very typical skill-based classes: Reading & Writing, Listening & Speaking, and Grammar. We’d also tried various combinations of the skills. The language skills were developed more discretely than they are now. My supervisor and I noticed that there was considerable overlap between what the students were being taught in each class the semester we both ended up teaching classes in the same level of the program. We decided to integrate and streamline the skills into one class, under the tutelage of one teacher.

The result was that students would have one teacher for their one integrated skills class. Each class is 4.5 hours per day, and classes meet 4 days per week (Wednesdays off). Developing English proficiency through integrated skills is not a new concept, and for good reason. Just as students use and encounter English in all its forms outside the classroom, students learn English in classes that integrate the four linguistic domains (i.e., reading, writing, listening, and speaking). There are fewer overlapping objectives when all the skills are taught in one class under one teacher, and we’ve found that this uses limited class time more efficiently and effectively.

Over the next two years, we’ll develop a library of interdisciplinary, theme-based units. So far, the themes have been approached programmatically; every class in the program studies the same themes at about the same time. This allows for collaboration between classes on certain projects. We’ve also been able to provide full-program experiences like guest lectures, field trips, and other outside of the-classroom instructional activities. Discovery themes we’ve used so far include leadership, academia, population, survival, rights, the environment, cultural change, and humor. During the leadership unit, we assembled the classes for two stylistically and contextually different lectures on academia: 1) on the history of higher education, which was appropriately a chalk-and-talk style lecture, and 2) a visually-stunning, fast-moving lecture on the future of higher education using multimedia. Creating a bank of unit materials over the next two years will prevent students from learning in the same theme as our students usually only spend 12-18 months in our program.

 

“Floating” Level Placement Model

In Summer of 2013, I became the coordinator of The Ohio State University’s intensive English program, the American Language Program (ALP). We had 60 students in nine different levels, about 6-7 student per class. This model was not sustainable given the enrollment figures.

The nine-level program model resulted from our conversion from quarters to semesters at Ohio State which started summer semester 2012. At the time, we had over 200 students and the nine-level structure worked well. However, the increased enrollment was short lived, lasting from Autumn 2012 to about Spring 2013. Something had to change; the nine-level program was not sustainable.

Toward a more sustainable unit, we’ve adopted what we call “floating” levels. Instead of forcing students into a rigid level structure, we now form the classes around the students we have during any given term. Using any placement test, we arrange the students in a list from lowest to highest placement test score. Then divide the set of students into groups that reflect your target class enrollment minimum, in our case this is 12-15 students/class. We also look at the range of scores, including placement test sub-scores, grades, and teacher comments to address any students perceived to be misplaced. We’ve aligned our student learning objectives (or curriculum) with the possible test scores on a continuum. Once the lines are drawn between every 12th students, you have your classes. Teachers view the range of scores represented by the students in their class and then know which curricular objectives to cover that term.

 

No More Pencils, No More books! – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
Here’s the PowerPoint file, if that’s what you prefer: No-More-Pencils-No-More-books-1