Two grade 10 classes from Canada and Israel collaborated in an online distance learning environment on a WebQuest Nellie Deutsch created for the initiative. The WebQuest, or The Perfect Society,  is based on The Giver by Lois Lowry. The two teachers who moderated the Moodle course and whose students worked on the WebQuest were Sharon Peters from LCC, Montreal, Canada and Nellie Deutsch from Rabin High in Tel Mond, Israel. Sharon Peters presented the project at the IOC

        

Sharon Peters       

Greetings from Montreal! I teach middle and high school English at Lower Canada College, a university prep school. As well, I am completing my M.A. in Educational Technology at Concordia University. My thesis explores online collaborative learning for high school students and, while my progress on my final thesis is glacial, I do hope to graduate soon.

My own positive experiences as a student in distance education courses fostered my desire to create online collaborative learning opportunities for my students. This is my fourth year of online learning design for my students and every year just keeps getting better with the rapid development of social computing tools available and the ubiquitous speed of bandwidth.

My students throughout these years have enjoyed using Internet-based forums and email to meet and communicate with other students from around the world. The goal, however, is much more than to just exchange information between teenagers, but to engage in collaborative knowledge building and learning. This requires attention, focus, clear communication skills, questioning, analyzing, negotiation, and flexibility. In short, these collaborative projects provide opportunities for our students to employ higher order and critical thinking skills in a manner that cannot be duplicated in a classroom setting. And, I am proud to say, on many occasions I have witnessed my students rise to this challenge and perform beyond my expectations.

This year I have been particularly pleased with the moodle software that was used to support these projects. Moodle rocks! As one who does not want to learn or use code, moodle has been very easy to use and has been exceptionally well-supported by those lads, mostly in Australia, but around the world who offer their time and expertise in a selfless manner. The moodle LMS has been stable, mostly reliable, quite flexible and the students have no difficulty navigating through the course areas. In fact, the students have been much more facile in their use of the environment than many of the adults!

My new endeavour with a webquest and a collaborative learning approach with our partners at Rabin High School was very challenging. While I have participated in many collaborative projects as an adult learner, it became apparent that high school students are a different breed of learners and need additional scaffolded support for a project such as this. The students from both schools very much enjoyed the social interaction; however, when it came down to depending on other team members from a different school to produce work of a good quality, many of the students balked. This was a new learning approach for them. It was a profound learning experience for the teachers, too. Nellie and I spent many hours discussing solutions to problems that arose and seeking resolutions to unanticipated difficulties. It was hard work! And while it is true that I would do things differently next time, it is often only through making mistakes that we learn better and more efficient ways in our instructional approaches.

LCC - Rabin design:

A collaborative learning approach was used for this project. That is, students from both schools formed the teams that worked on the webquest assignment together.

Dr. Nellie Deutsch and Mrs. Sharon Peters met in early September to discuss their approach to this project. Nellie had created a webquest based on the novel The Giver, by Lois Lowry, for her students the year before. This short novel explores the concepts of utopia and societal expectations which fit in quite well with LCC's grade 10 English course theme of self-maturation and independence. The assignment for each team can be found on the webquest website as well as the rubrics used for assessment.

The students introduced themselves on the Moodle web site in October and responded to the satirical essay Nacirema as a way of exploring viewpoint and cultural differences.

While our students initially seemed to enjoy the social exchange back and forth between schools and students, they experienced a great deal of difficulty coping with the degree of collaboration that this project required. Both sets of students were frustrated at times when team members did not respond to requests for help or when there was a significant time lag between responses. This was discouraging for them and affected the amount of trust that is necessary when relying on other team members to complete tasks. Because of time issues, I finally had to gather my students’ work and email it to the other teacher for her students to collect and work with rather than wait any longer for students to either take responsibility for group work or respond to requests for help. I have spent a good deal of time reflecting and trying to analyze why things did not go well with this particular exchange; however, overall it was a probably quite a few factors that contributed to its lack of success. One major factor that I observed had also emerged in my own thesis research. Academically successfully students who have mastered our current system of education are not always comfortable switching approaches to learning especially when it comes to using technology as a tool to communicate and collaborate. It is difficult for them to trust in the abilities of someone they have not really met face-to-face. At times these students felt threatened and lacked the motivation to try and overcome the hurdles that this kind of communication could raise. This has been an immense learning experience for us and I hope my students and I will benefit from it in the future.

Technologies Used

Nellie and I communicated through Skype, Talking Communities and Google Talk. In early January, we were also able to arrange a one-hour online synchronous conference called hotconference between the two sets of classes using audio and an interactive whiteboard. Nellie had created a PowerPoint presentation and we presented the assignment to both classes simultaneously in real time. This way the students could ask questions of each other and of the teachers.

                                Click here for an audio recording.                                        

Nellie Deutsch

My professional interests include updating my website, writing lesson plans, evaluation rubrics, creating WebQuests, teaching online, working on my doctoral thesis, and integrating technology into the English classroom. I have been presenting and conducting teacher training workshops on WebQuests for the past 2 years.

Feedback:

I have had very positive experiences with collaborative learning as an MA and Doctoral student. I learned a great deal about myself as a learner and my relationship with others. I learned to share ideas and accept ideas from others. I became aware of the advantages of team work. As a result of my positive experiences, I decided to try it with my students.

The English Inspectorate added new ideas to its curriculum. One of the innovations was that students develop lifelong learning skills, social skills, higher order thinking, and teamwork. This would be done by means of a project to be written and presented for the Oral Bagrut (Final Exam). The project would be carried out in teams of 4 using technology and creative means of presentations. The students would talk about the process they experienced on the final Oral Bagrut. I decided to develop two WebQuests for the Project. I based them on the literature studied: The Last Spin and The Giver.

I created The Perfect Society for Rabin's grade 12 ESL students.  It was done in preparation for their collaborative English Oral Bagrut (National Exam). The WebQuest was based on The Giver by Lois Lowry. Since the WebQuest project was such a success, I decided to use it for the international collaborative literature project.

I presumed that my students would see the value of online teamwork immediately. I was mistaken. Initially, many of them felt threatened as they entered this unfamiliar online learning environment. They were not used to this kind of online communication. This did not discourage me. I was determined to make it work. I conducted several class discussions on the issues and problems they were facing. They learned to express themselves in a quiet and constructive manner by focusing on the difficulties they were having instead of blaming others for their fears. Most of their problems centered around how they were going to be evaluated and grades. The atmosphere in the classroom was improving as students realized that they were not alone. Everyone felt the same. Most of them were skeptical about using technology as a learning tool. They had never learned that way before and were afraid of getting lower grades. Once they understood that they were actually preparing their final Bagrut Project for next year, they began to relax.

Using technology (Internet) for learning is new for most students and their parents. It takes time to accept new ways. I am convinced that this kind of international collaborative learning model is an important step to better communication.

Mrs. Peters and I collaborated online at all hours day and night. I hope we will continue collaborating in the future. I am grateful to have met such a professional and dedicated teacher.

Finally, I wish to thank both our school principals and the Leora Cohen of the Israeli Ministry of Education for supporting the project.