Wording/Design blueprint

Elements of the 'design blueprint'

Admin / Metadata

• Level: postgraduate (level 9) / HDR
• Discipline(s): any
• Notional learning hours 20 hours
• Credits 2 (the course comprises one of three modules within a 6 credit course at UOW)
• Credential(s): PhD-Integrated
• Hashtag: e4rw

Intended target audience

This course is designed for researchers using English as a second language (EasL2). The intended target audience for this course includes:

• HDR students who are using E as L2
• supervisors of HDR students using E as L2
• Educators in HE with a special interest in the teaching and assessment of English language proficiency (eg Academic Language & Learning Developers)
• developers of resources for English language learning (wherever positioned across or outside institutions of HE)

Prerequisites

• intermediate/upper intermediate level English
• ability to quickly source published academic literature in digital format
• working knowledge of office software, file management, and web browsing
• current engagement in academic writing for a genuine research project (so that the writing students develop is authentic and students' own work)

Course aims

1. To familiarise learners and teachers of academic English with corpus-based approaches to language development
2. To build and learn to use a personal repertoire of reference resources to consult on aspects of academic and professional writing

Objectives / outcomes of learning

By the end of this short course, students will be able to:

1. search large reference corpora (such as the BNC) for specific features of English (collocations, frequency patterns, grammatical structures)
2. use AntConc software to create their own discipline-specific corpus of readings relevant to their ongoing research writing
3. use feedback and corpus searching to improve draft academic writing
4. distinguish between legitimate corpus-based language learning and plagiarism
5. participate in open peer review and collaborative corpus development activities
6. use social media for academic purposes
7. critically reflect on the process of rewriting and the role of language in learning

Development and delivery approach

This online module (micro course) is being developed as a trial of open online delivery of one module within an existing course. It will run in parallel to the classroom-based delivery in the first instance. It will function to facilitate a more 'flipped' classroom approach, so that those using it will have more capacity and time in classes to discuss with and learn from peers and teachers. If all goes well, further modules will be moved online in subsequent sessions.

This unit of study is the third of three modules comprising the course RESH900: Fundamentals for HDR Writing, a compulsory course for students enrolled in the PhD-Integrated program at UOW. The three modules are closely inter-related in this course, but could be used independently, or within other courses (hence the modular structure)

The three modules comprising the RESH900 course are:

1. Writing: which focuses on finding and using academic literature, annotating a bibliography and drafting a research paper
2. Speaking: which focuses on presenting the research project as an illustrated talk to a mixed audience, including sourcing and selecting images
3. Wording: which focuses on the use of corpora as reference tools in the development of academic writing in English

The modules are entirely 'task-based' in approach and design, encouraging students to learn-by-doing and to analyse and address their own personal linguistic challenges in using English for research purposes.

This online micro course will be developed from the existing in-class module on Wording, and some existing OERs.

Participants will be given guidance and links to freely available software needed for corpus building, as well as templates to guide their reflections, but the texts needed for the development of their corpus will be sourced by students themselves, according to their personal research interests.

The online module will comprise a series of learning pathways designed to achieve the stated learning outcomes, incorporating learning challenges for each pathway where learners practice and refine their understanding of and ability to resolve specific problems.

There will be ample opportunities for discussion and peer-review throughout the module and ongoing interaction, using students' own blogs, Twitter, Facebook and/or Google+ groups, as well as Googledocs and a discussion forum embedded in the WordPress course platform.

The course presumes average computer literacy using standard office applications, web-navigation, and the ability to register accounts for open web services. The teaching of digital and social media literacy relevant to the learning pathways will be embedded in the course, and corresponding self-study support tutorials to promote capability development in these areas will be part of the course design.

Assessment strategy

To demonstrate mastery of corpus tools for language learning, there are three inter-related assignments to be completed in this short course. Grades will not recorded in the first online version of the course, but students will evaluate their own (and peers') performance in the tasks, according to the criteria shared via a rubric.

Corpus creation

• Each student will create and share a machine-readable (txt format) collection of published academic journal articles, sourced from open, peer-reviewed academic journals

Pattern recognition / error correction

• Each student will use feedback on their own draft academic writing to identify at least 10 significant linguistic problems, and correct these with reference to specific corpora. The table of error examples and brief comments will be openly shared with other students in the course, to facilitate peer learning

Portfolio-based reflective writing

• Each student will create a portfolio of their draft and edited academic writing, and produce a critical reflection (in any media) on the challenges they have experienced in using English, and the language learning they have achieved by using corpus and concordancing tools in this course. The final artefact (critical reflection in writing or spoken voice or multimedia) will be shared openly with other students in the course, to faciliatte peer learning and contribute to the resource pool to be recycled in the ongoing development of this course

Using an open model, learners will be able to refine and improve their contributions before final assignment submission.

For students enrolled in RESH 900, the learning challenges are designed in relation to other modules in the larger course (Writing and Speaking). The linguistic problems that students are to use their corpus to overcome are mainly those evidenced in students' own work for the other modules. The final reflective writing assignment in this module will therefore be focused on student's work across all three modules.

Interaction strategies

Student-resource interactions

• Each learning pathway (lesson) within this online course will incorporate a short video to orient students to the topic and activity sequence
• Learners will then work through a series of learning pathways independently
• Each learning pathway will incorporate some simple learning challenges, the outputs of which they can / should then share with fellow participants
• These learning challenges function as building blocks for the final course assessment
• Learners will engage in authentic development of a corpus and a means of openly sharing their work

Student-student interactions

• Students will be able to interact via various technologies, and an aggregator will harvest their contributions using the course hashtag, including:
  • Twitter posts and retweets
  • discussion forum posts
  • personal blog posts and comments
  • Q&As posted to a community-based forum

Student-teacher interactions

• Students will be encouraged to use a question-and-answer forum for peer support
• Teachers will be present through video lectures/ tutorials, where they instruct in how to use corpus and concordancing technologies, and through some participation in the Q&A forum
• Subject to availability of funding, additional tutors will also be employed to interact with student in the online Q&A forum

Collaboration strategies

As this is an experimental trial, the first iteration of this online course will solicit much discussion and collaboration around its development process and documentation of effects

On campus

• colleagues in the Learning Development unit will be invited to review and contribute to the module in the context of normal staff meetings and project discussions
• colleagues in other academic and support units will be invited to review and contribute to the module as part of normal collaborative work and also within a promotion-related peer observation/evaluation process

Online

• colleagues at other institutions will be invited to review and contribute to the module, via formal and informal professional networks and events, open connected courses and social media

Research

• supervisors of current research project related to the development of this course will be consulted for critical feedback
• colleagues connected with online education will be invited to collaborate on follow-up research projects related to the course development and experience of students