Building Teaching Skills Through
the Interactive Web
Name: Muhamad Suhaili Country: Indonesia
Overall
project goal: Plan and conduct action research, which involves a change related
to technology use in your classroom.
I.
Background
·
Who are the learners?
All of the students at IKIP Mataram
especially at English Department consist of 26000 students. They come from
different background such as: 1) Prior schooling; it can determine their
ability in speaking English. Some of them graduate from Senior High School at
small villages and some of them are from city. Normally, most of the students
who come from small village have not good ability in learning English, vice
versa. 2) Motivation; it will affect to their endurance or dealing with
optimist and pessimist thought in learning English. They are at fifth semester
now, three semesters again they will pass from the institution. However, they
are not motivated to learn more, it can be seen throughout their English
ability. They are not well enough as the lecturer expects from them 3)
Financial support; it will determine how long they will study and to what
extent they can study at IKIP Mataram. It is dealing with living cost at the
small city and school fee as well assignments and final projects. So far, 90 %
of them can graduate from IKIP Mataram and 10 % go way which is caused by those
aspects.
In this semester, the students at
fifth semester are learning Teaching Media. Their ages are about 20 years old.
They are learning English as Foreign Language. They have Sasak language for
Sasaknese, Sumbawa language for Sumbawanese, Bali Language for Balinese, and
Mbojo Language for Bimanese as their mother tongue meanwhile Bahasa Indonesia
is our national language that include as second language. In teaching and
learning process the learners use both Bahasa Indonesia and English. It is hard
for them to understand English totally. Almost of the learners are shy to speak
English because they worry to make mistakes as the effect their classmate will
laugh their mistakes.
·
What is the setting?
The setting always takes place in
the classroom. It starts from morning to evening. They learn 2 x 45 minutes a
week. The class is very noisy and crowded because it consist of 40s students.
The desk consists of 50 and it is heavy and difficult to move it. It means that
the desk cannot be arranged like making circle, square, or other style during
the learning process. We also have one LCD and Computer to support learning
process. The classroom is hot as well because it is not facilitated by air conditioner.
The learners sit in line facing the lecturer like watching the movie. Sometime
they laugh if they find something funny and sometime they feel asleep when they
get bored.
·
What are the course goals?
In
a semester, the learners have 16 meetings in achieving the material. They are
many goals that can be expected throughout this subject. i.e;
1. They
are expected to be able to speak English, it is the most important thing
because the teacher should be able to speak English much better than learners.
It seems funny when the learners’’ English much better than teacher.
2. They
are expected to be able to teach by using some media. In this matter, they do
not have to teach their students by the old method, i.e. speech from the first
to the end of the class. In the other hand, they have to teach in many ways by
having some media.
3. They
are expected to be able to create media by using technology. It means that they
have to create something good to make the learners active and interested in
learning. For instance, they make good PowerPoint Presentation by using
interesting templates; create a Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Skip, etc.
·
What are the student needs?
1. To
become more self-motivated and take ownership of their work
2. New
strategies and techniques for incorporating media and technology into their
teaching
3. Examples
of different types of media that can be used to teach the four skills
4. Increased
levels of confidence in their ability to speak English
·
Describe anything else that is
significant or relevant about the course that related to your project
Prior
to this current course with the University of Oregon, I rarely used technology with
my class. Rather I relied on more
traditional types of media, such as printed media, photographs, etc. The primary reason was due to the poor
Internet connection at my school.
II.
Issue or problem that started your project
This
can be in the form of a research question or a less formal statement, like
"students were not very motivated."
Based
on the background above, the main problem that can be seen in this course is
students’ motivation. In the teaching and learning process, I think the most
important thing comes from the student’s motivation itself. It can said that
everything cannot go well without having good motivation.
III.
Initial solution and expected response
Describe what you thought would
happen (this may be quite different from what actually happened). Describe
what you tried, when, and where. Make sure you explain how what you tried
is different from what you have done before.
Before
taking this course at University of Oregon, I never used a PowerPoint
presentation to present information. Rather I spoke to my students the entire
class. Sometimes I asked them to discuss the information in a whole group
setting. So, for my project I tried to
use a PowerPoint presentation in my class as the main solution to the problem
regarding motivation. I chose the use of
a PowerPoint because my classroom doesn’t have internet access. By including
the PowerPoint, I thought that the class would be more interesting for my students.
If it was more interesting, I thought the students would be more motivated.
On November 17th I
decided to present my students the course content through the use of a
PowerPoint presentation. I made a
PowerPoint that included all the course content for the day and I thought it
was an interactive PowerPoint. I presented the PowerPoint for 20 minutes,
during a 90 minutes class. I presented the PowerPoint in the same classroom
where I usually teach my Teaching Media
course.
IV.
Response and reflection
What
happened? Feel free to attach a course syllabus where you have noted what you
tried and when. What did you think about what happened?
On
November 17th I presented the PowerPoint. The students reacted in
different ways. Some students seemed
more motivated. Other students did
not. They were watching the slides like
watching a movie. They became passive learners in my class. I knew they weren’t
motivated because at the end of the presentation, they didn’t give any comments
or questions. I wanted to know why some
students still were not motivated. They
still seemed bored.
V.
Changes made
As
a result of what happened and your reflection, what did you try next? What
happened?
I asked a friend to look at my
PowerPoint. My friend suggested that I
add some slides to make the PowerPoint more interactive. I remembered how we
talked about this in class. I decided to
change my PowerPoint by adding a Concept Test. I think these additions made the
PowerPoint more interactive. I would like to try using the modified PowerPoint
with a different group of students to see if they reactive more positively. I
have not been able to try the new PowerPoint yet because the students have
midterms right now. However, I believe that the modified version will be more
interesting and create more interaction.
VI.
Conclusion
How
will what you observed affect the way that you teach? What are the overall
suggestions you would give others as a result of your project?
·
Some students were more motivated by the
PP alone. So it seems like a good idea
to included PPs. I should include more
PPs
·
A PP that is not interactive can be very
boring for some students. So my PPs must be interactive.
·
Even if you don’t have internet access
in your classroom, you can find other ways to include technology in the
classroom.
·
The visual media and presentation of
information helps to keep students more focused. It is helpful to visual learners.
Based
on the explanation above, it can be inferred that Teaching and Learning process
must be connected between learner and lecturer. In this way, the teacher should
provide good way in teaching and the learner can adopt the lecturer’s way in
teaching. Independent learners are encouraged to enhance the quality of
learners. It means that teaching and learning process happen in both learner
and lecturer. At least, it is not in student center or teacher center.
VII.
Resources
Brajcich, J. (2000). Encouraging
Learner Autonomy in Your Classes.
