Building a Model for Online Distance Courses Through Social Media and Networks

This article describes the affordances of social media and networks for online Elementary German courses that have been taught at the University of Pennsylvania since 2010. These online courses were created to provide students the opportunity to take Elementary German as part of the language requirement for Penn credit during the summer months when students are away from campus. Like their face-to-face counterparts, the online courses are grounded on the principles of communicative language teaching and learning but clearly reveal the potential of these principles to maximize participation, promote learner autonomy and influence student outcomes when applied to collaborative online learning spaces. This paper explains the pedagogy behind the online courses, outlines their relationship to the face-to-face language classroom, and describes how student interactions are key to the learning process. It considers the importance of electronic and digital literacy (Warschauer, 2006) to the growth of new methodologies, materials development, assessment, articulation, intercultural competence, and student progress. This paper also compares the instructor’s experiences of teaching in the online environment with those of the face-to-face classroom and discusses how these distinct and separate learning spaces are in many ways related and can inform each other. Finally, the author considers new possibilities for language learning through emerging technologies. DOI: 10.4018/jvple.2012070105 82 International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 3(3), 81-94, July-September 2012 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. a web conferencing or videoconferencing session, or it can be as high tech as online gaming, in which multi-players interact with each other in a self-directed virtual world for achieving a specific goal. The German online courses @ Penn fell between the two extremes in which the instructor strove to create a learning environment, in which students were able to develop their language competency through meaningful social interactions in the target language and in a pedagogy-driven course design that was congruent with the practices, goals, and expected outcomes of the face-to-face-classroom. It is important to also note that the German online courses were not correspondence courses, nor were they conducted by videoteleconferencing, which uses the physical setting of the traditional face-to-face classroom. In videoteleconferencing sessions, the physical classroom can be communicated simultaneously to two or more classroom locations in two-way video and audio transmissions. By contrast, the German online courses utilized social media and networks, which can incorporate visual collaboration but are not dependent upon it. Furthermore, students do not need to be sitting in a classroom equipped with videoconferencing equipment but rather can participate from home or from any remote site through a dependable Internet connection. In this case, classroom participation is replaced by participatory networking. As Garrido (2005) maintains, the design and implementation of any language course, especially online courses, constitutes a complexity of issues ranging from learning theories, teaching methods to the various stakeholders involved in the teaching and learning process. Teaching online distance courses effectively with social media and networks depends on tackling these issues and on teachers who understand the use of the Internet to achieve the learning objectives and goals they establish for their students during the conceptualization process.