Findings of the language teachers’ in-service training session

In January 2016, 26 upper secondary school language teachers gathered to the in-service training session in order to learn how to utilize online materials in language teaching. Two of the participants were men and 24 were women. During the two-hour session the train-er/researcher, first, lay the foundations for the topic by introducing the instructions given by the Matriculation Examination Board, the example tasks on the Digabi project site, the upper secondary school core curriculum from the point of view of online materials, and the main findings of the online survey conducted in the first design cycle. After this, different types of online material examples were introduced and the teachers were encouraged to comment on the materials. At the end of the in-service training session, the teachers were further encouraged to give comments on the materials and describe their own experiences on using online materials. The following two subchapters introduce the teachers’ feedback and the researcher’s observations made during the in-service training session.

6.5.1 Teachers’ feedback

The teachers were asked to give feedback on the materials and ideas presented in the in-service training session orally and in writing both during and after the in-in-service training session. The teachers did not comment on the trainer/researcher’s presentation that much spontaneously but when the trainer/researcher asked for comments, for example, from teachers of a particular language or concerning the feasibility of a particular online materi-al they provided answers. The widest comment was from a teacher of German who ex-plained how she had used a video to encourage writing. This lead to discussion about the differences of material and giving students possibilities to choose materials which they find appealing to themselves. Thus the same task could have, for example, text, pictures, and a

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video as material and the students could choose which material they use according to their own preferences.

The trainer/researcher’s questions were planned to challenge the teachers’ original thoughts and encourage them to think about the benefits of online materials in their own teaching and solutions to the challenges they might encounter. The teachers were asked, for example, if they think that statistics is necessary material only for mathematics teach-ers, how often their students scream of joy when they are introduced to tasks during les-sons, could the textbook be left out completely, and if they think that online materials need to be flawless before they can be used in teaching.

The textbook and its dominion as teaching material stirred discussion and the teachers were strongly in favor of using textbooks. The mistakes found in online materials, on the other hand, seemed to be a double-edged question. One teacher stated without any doubts that mistakes are natural and they just need to be dealt with if they are found whereas an-other teacher thought that the mistakes which are not found and influence students lan-guage use may be problematic.

There were altogether five written comments by the teachers. Three comments were about the quality of the example materials. One material had links which did not work properly, another material example had videos whose sound and subtitles were not perfectly syn-chronized, and a third material example was seen entertaining but not beneficial for lan-guage learning. Two comments were teachers’ own examples of online materials. One teacher also described an example of an online material orally.

6.5.2 Researcher’s observations

The teachers were instructed to comment on the online materials during the in-service training session. The amount of comments might have been larger if they had been given a specific time for commenting, for example, at the end of the in-service training session or at two or three natural points of transition during the session. All the written comments were, however, made during the in-service training session and the teachers did not return to give feedback to the Peda.net learning environment after the in-service training session.

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After listening to the recording made of the in-service training session, it became surpris-ingly clear, how many different types of concrete examples and reasons for utilizing online materials in language teaching the trainer/researcher’s presentation actually included and how universal the examples and reasons were in relation to different languages. Thus, it may be that the teachers did not give that much feedback during the in-service training session as they focused on listening to the different types of examples, and the possibilities of applying the examples to their own subject(s) and teaching.

All in all, the teachers seemed to be interested in hearing about the topic. Especially, when some less traditional teaching materials such as a website Preserve articles¹⁴ which con-tained native speakers’ essays collected online, or Visuwords¹⁵, which is a visual diction-ary online, were introduced, the teachers were eager to make notes and ask for additional details.

It also became clear that when the trainer/researcher was able to give concrete examples of using the materials in her own teaching, the teachers seemed more convinced that the online materials actually were usable. The teachers wrote down the Internet addresses of many of the sites which were introduced, and they were especially interested in recording the names of the different Facebook groups which were listed as tips for forming networks of language experts, and finding good online materials which other teachers have already tried out in their own teaching.

When the trainer/researcher presented that the textbook could be completely replaced with online materials the teachers were clearly somewhat puzzled and incredulous. When this statement was toned down to online materials complementing the textbook and making the outdated textbook more current with the help of online materials, the teachers clearly re-laxed.

14 http://www.preservearticles.com/essay-for-high-school-students/

15 http://visuwords.com

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6.6 The revised framework for utilizing online materials in language