TLC: Creating Oral Opportunities in the Online Language Class

Presented by Lisa Blair, Instructor, French and Spanish

This presentation is part of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) at Durham Tech. The program creates the structure for faculty to research a pedagogical area of interest and apply it to their classes. For more information, including how to apply, visit www.durhamtech.edu/tlc/sotl.

With the advent of online education in foreign languages, it has become even more necessary to create and offer opportunities for students to develop and practice their oral as well as their aural skills. This SoTL project set out to find more opportunities to allow students in the online language class to practice and use their developing oral skills. The goal was to see marked improvement in student performance and attitudes toward speaking activities. Lisa will share her SoTL process, research and findings during the presentation. She will show how she implemented various speaking activities in her online French class with the goal of increasing student performance in speaking tasks. She will also share results of qualitative feedback from student surveys and quantitative data regarding grades and overall course performance.