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Integrating Wimba Voice Board into a Masters’ distance learning programme in

Applied Linguistics and TESOL

Abstract

This is a case study of incorporating Wimba Voice Board into a MA distance learning programme in

Applied Linguistics and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) provided by the

School of Education, the University of Leicester, UK. Six students studying the Language Discourse

and Society took part in this pilot. The intention was to generate interaction between students and

get them to discuss subject-specific concepts and issues, in the context of the formative assessment

tasks. These tasks had previously been carried out by students individually, in the form of text-based

portfolios. The research was conducted as part of the JISC-funded project called DUCKLING

(Delivering University Curricula: Knowledge, Learning and Innovation Gains,

http://www.le.ac.uk/duckling). Evidence showed added benefits and advantages of voice- over text-

based communication and the potential of the voice board for formative assessment within a

distance learning programme.

The programme

The School of Education at the University of Leicester started delivering a Masters’ distance learning

programme in Applied Linguistics and TESOL in 1995. The programme is aimed at graduate teachers

with at least two years of English Language Teaching (ELT) experience, who want to further their

academic and professional development. This programme involves three 30-credit modules, two

options modules (30 credits in total) and a 60-credit dissertation. This programme attracts about 90

part-time students per year and can be completed within 2.5 to 5 years. Almost all students are in

employment throughout their studies.

In September 2008, the Education course team began to deliver course materials online via

Blackboard, the University of Leicester’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Each module has a

discussion forum where students can raise generic questions and have general discussion regarding

the module. Each discussion board is facilitated by an e-moderator.

Through consultation with staff, students and employers at the beginning of DUCKLING in early

2009, the Education team identified five key challenges in curriculum design and delivery, most of

which are common in distance and work-based learning:

Improving learner engagement with materials by bringing the materials to life and

offering a variety of teaching and assessment approaches

Improving learner support by offering enhanced guidance, support and feedback in a

variety of media formats

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Enhancing flexibility and mobility in programmes aimed primarily at time-poor, work-

based learners

Reducing learner isolation through the provision of additional opportunities for student-

student and student-tutor interactions

Enabling skills development and transferring theory into practice for work-based

learners

The Education team has focused on enhancing the overall learning experience of distance and work-

based learners on this MA programme through appropriate incorporation of four DUCKING

technologies: Podcasting, Second Life (SL), e-book readers and Wimba Voice Board. In this DUCKLING

case study, we focus on the experience of the incorporation of Wimba Voice Board into this MA

programme.

The Wimba Voice Board pilot

From April to June 2010, six Education students studying Module 3 Language Discourse and Society

took part in the Wimba Voice Board pilot over an 11-week period. The six students were recruited

voluntarily.

About the technology platform

Voice boards are low cost, high impact tools for providing a viable alternative to text based

conferencing, and bringing their own special qualities. On an asynchronous voice board, all

participants can post audio messages which are linked together in a discussion thread, just as in a

text-based discussion forum. The difference is that the voice is used rather than text. Most VLEs do

not include voice boards so they need to be set up with a separate password, though some can be

incorporated. One of the more popular voice boards is provided by Wimba.

Purpose of using Wimba Voice Board

The intention of using Wimba Voice Board was to generate interaction between students and get

them to discuss subject-specific concepts and issues, in the context of the formative assessment

tasks. These tasks had previously been carried out by students individually, in the form of text-based

portfolios. Student discussion on the voice board was structured around four structured voice board

activities (v-tivities).

The design of v-tivities

The four v-tivities used in this pilot were designed using Salmon’s 5-stage model (2004) and the

concept of e-tivity (2002). Examples of the four v-tivities were provided in Appendix 1-4. The v-

tivities were made available through the course’s discussion board on Blackboard VLE. Each v-tivity

has at least five components:

1. Spark: a stimulate or a start to the interaction of this v-tivity

2. Purpose: students are explained the purpose of this v-tivity

3. Task: students are asked to conduct some research to complete a task by posting an audio

commentary on the Voice Board

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4. Response: students are required to respond to at least two other people’s postings via the

Voice Board

5. Reflection: students reflect on their experience via the Voice Board

E-moderating

The first v-tivity took place over three weeks, and the second, third and fourth v-tivities took two

weeks each to complete. A schedule of this Voice Board pilot was given in Table 1.

The e-moderators restricted their posts to the beginning of each v-tivity to explaining the task and

the end of each v-tivity to providing feedback, so as not to unduly direct or inhibit the students’

conversations. Input from the e-moderators was both via audio and text. A guide for e-moderating

via voice boards was available http://tinyurl.com/yf7z2bh.

Week Dates v-tivities

1 13-18 April 2010

v-tivity 1: World Englishes 2 19-25 April 2010

3 26 April - 2 May 2010

4 3-9 May 2010 v-tivity 2: Gender and language

5 10-16 May 2010

6 17-23 May 2010 Break

7 24-30 May 2010 v-tivity 3: Analysing Talk

8 31 May - 6 June 2010

9 7-13 June Break

10 14-20 June v-tivity 4: Critical Discourse Analysis

11 21-27 June

Table 1: Schedule of the Voice Board v-tivities pilot

Technical support

Students were provided with a log-in, a Wimba Voice Board user guide, a link to the voice board

from the VLE and ongoing technical support. Throughout the study, students did not require much

technical support.

Research methods

Data collection methods

Students’ views about the Voice Board were collected via the Voice Board itselt. There is a Reflection

component within each v-tivity (see Appendix 1-4), where students are asked to reflect on their

experiences of using the Voice Board.

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Reflection: Please remember to reflect on the use of Voice Board for the v-tivities. You can click

here to go to the Reflection discussion.

Students were asked to reflect on their experiences of using the Voice Board by answering the four

structured questions:

What do you think of using voice to interact with tutors and peers?

What do you think are the differences between using text-based Blackboard discussion

forum and Voice Board for interacting with tutors and peers?

How do you feel about being assessed on interactive tasks via the Voice Board rather than

the usual portfolio assessment?

Any other comments or feedback about using the Voice Board?

Data analysis methods

Student reflections on the Voice Board were transcribed. The transcriptions was coded using data-

driven (inductive) coding (Boyatzis, 1998) and analysed using thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998; Joffe

and Yardley, 2004) to identify categories and combine categories into themes.

Results

Findings with regard to the potential of the Voice Board for this MA distance learning programme

are reported here.

Increasing the human dimension for remote learners

On many distance learning programmes, students still express feelings of aloneness or isolation.’ The

students who participated in the voice board pilot at Leicester valued the opportunity to have direct

communication with their e-moderators and peers through the voice board. The voice board helped

to add that essential humanising dimension breathed life into the learning programme. Other

studies have noted similar impact with the use of the human voice and podcasting (Nie et al., 2010)

Student feedback:

I thought it was just an excellent way to bring the course to life really. The interactive nature, the

voice, even though it wasn’t in real time (was) very useful. It takes you one step closer to be in a

seminar kind of environment.

I think the main thing is the principle of using something to kind of re-create the seminar environment

over the internet.

Students felt that the use of voice added an element of personalisation that helped to bring them

closer together.

It’s so nice to hear from classmates around the globe…But for me it’s been particularly good this time,

just to be able to hear your tutor’s voice and imagine what you sound like... This is a good course. This

is a good programme. But it does seem very distant at times. When you’re dealing with people’s

emails, you don’t really get a chance of knowing what people look like or what people sound like.

One of the drawbacks about a distance learning course can be the feeling [of being isolated+… When I

was an undergraduate, you could really see where your money is going. I would have lectures and

seminars. But with a distance learning course, I felt just like (I was) reading and doing all the work by

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myself and getting a few points (via e-mail) from my tutor every couple of months. It (the voice board)

is really a good way to personalize the delivery of the degree.

It’s so nice to hear from classmates around the globe. It’s so interesting, but the world does seem

much smaller.

It makes it generally a lot more real, it feels a lot more personal.

The two e-moderators also felt that being able to hear students’ voices added a personal touch and

helped to bridge the remoteness of distance learning. One reflected:

I found this very stimulating. I really enjoyed hearing the voices of the students. Often this distance

course feels quite remote because we are just in communication by writing. [But with the voice

board] it sort of would come to life. We could often measure the degree of emotional involvement of

some of the students.

I like it very much. It brings a personal motivating element to the learning process.

Advantages of voice- over text-based communication

Students identified some advantages of voice compared text-based communication for interacting

with tutors and peers. Some felt that voice was better at conveying emotions than text:

The expression in the voice and emotions and things like that ... rather than having to kind of type

emotions …The emotions [and] tone are better expressed in the voice [through the use of intonation]

than in the text.

The use of voice also provided more clarity:

Messages are a lot clearer in voice communication, whereas they can be misinterpreted when you

use text only.

Some students said that voice was better than text at capturing people’s personal views:

Of course with voice, you get a better idea about people’s attitudes and opinions on things as well.

Using voice in real time also challenged students to develop their arguments in ways that would be

easily understood by their peers:

It challenges me to articulate my points. Points that are quite easy to make on paper can be quite

difficult to do in real time by voice.

Some also found that listening to other people’s voices motivated them to read and explore the

topic more.

But I think more importantly, it’s just that other people have made [voice] contributions…they made

such interesting comments, that it actually made me go away and think, ‘That’s quite interesting’, and

I’d actually like to read an article on that, or I would read a chapter of a book. So from talking and

listening to other people on the same course, it’s actually a lot more stimulating. Obviously when

you’re emailing your tutor, they will give you examples of journal articles and books…, but when

you’ve got a whole host of people ...then we’ll be having a lot more input. I just think it’s really good.

It stimulates the discussion it. It stimulates the knowledge. So I do feel that I read a lot more than I

know I did for the regular structured activities in Module 1 and 2.

Challenges of voice-based communication

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There are challenges perceived by students related to using voice for communication in learning

groups.

Participants sometimes became more self-conscious when using voice to communicate than using

text-based discussion boards, as one student reflected:

When I was speaking I found it a bit difficult to know what I was going to say. So I had to keep notes

and try to follow those guided notes to say what I wanted to say.

Others expressed that recording a post on the voice board was more difficult than they expected it

to be.

I had asked Stuart (a respondent for v-tivity 1) to record his part before I had properly had a go and

only realised after how difficult it was. I'm trying to record my thoughts in one go rather than doing a

number of different recordings to get it 'perfect' I feel that this is more natural.

I agree with the natural as compared to prepared speech too. Though if you heard my rambling you

may disagree. It made me realise the difficulty of asking my colleague to speak about her language

use.

An e-moderator commented that “In voice boards, there is less focus on clarity of expression,

brevity, organisation, academic rigour.” For this reason, he suggests that “a mixture of voice and text

would be a good idea, to save time, to ensure that students still write.”

One of the students expressed an initial reluctance in using the voice board. For example, this

student’s learning preference determined that he initially valued text- rather than voice-based

communication.

I guess my first reaction was a bit negative because I’ve got used to writing papers, writing

assignments. And I’ve enjoyed it a lot, researching and referencing. I thought I’d lose that using the

voice board…My learning style is through writing things. [But I found that] it’s enjoyable to listen to

different people. I [also] find that I really like to see a reading copy, what people write also on the

voice board… As for Blackboard, I like to see the written. I’ve gotten used to Blackboard, especially in

its written form.

This student also found that making written notes enabled him to use the voice board more

effectively.

Before I record something, I take notes and try to speak freely, but upon the notes taken…If someone

recorded something, in order to respond, I have to take notes.

However, his views changed as he used the voice board more, and he saw the benefits of using voice

together with text. He still preferred to see the text conference on Blackboard discussion board or

voice board; however he began to enjoy using the voice board more, and viewed it as a different

approach to writing.

I actually have a very positive attitude now towards the voice board because it’s a different

experience. It’s an optimised approach… I would prefer to see written text as well. It’s a new

experience, which is good. It’s a different sort of challenge, which I’m enjoying a lot.

Assessment through interactive tasks

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Through the voice board, it was possible to offer students more feedback (it is quicker by voice) and

a greater variety of feedback from peers compared to text, whereas they received limited written

feedback when assessed though the portfolios.

Students enjoyed being assessed through interactive tasks via the voice board. They liked receiving

constructive feedback from the tutors and peers.

I think it’s much, much better than text. The reason that I do is because for Module 1 and 2…for the

structured v-tivities…the comments we get are limited to one or two sentences, which is ok, but there

could be more. Something like this [voice boards] is great because not only you get constructive

feedback from the tutors, you get it from your classmates too.

Students appreciated the opportunity to exchange views, have in-depth discussions, and receive

quality feedback from peers via the voice board.

It was really cool just listen to people’s views on the things that we are all reading, and some

interesting topics. We had some great discussions, ands some good feedback from each other…It’s a

really useful tool for me to hear people talk about something that I’m interested in…It gives me a lot

of interesting thoughts from other people.

The students considered that the v-tivities enabled discussion around the tasks with peers. Students

appreciated the opportunity to conduct more readings recommended by peers on the voice board.

It’s great to read articles *recommended by peers+ that I generally wouldn’t read. I read a lot of

articles online, but it’s always good to read from papers that I haven’t read. This really opens things

up to me in many ways.

I feel I’m actually doing more reading than I was actually doing for Module 1 or 2 just because there

are added inputs to require more information… I think because you have a chance to interact with

people on the course as well, it does give you a bit more added input. I mean I try to read as much as

possible.

Rapid exposure to peer review is encouraging for many students.

In Module 1 and 2 I read quite a bit. But this module, I read a lot more. Because I think partly I don’t

want to come across not having read material on the voice board… I don’t know whether it’s a case of

not wanting to look stupid because your voice is on the voice board.

Students appreciate the interactive element of the v-tivities and are happy about their formative

assessment being done this way. “From my point of view, the v-tivities have been a great success.”

There is a tip from the e-moderators for assessment on voice boards:

The clearer the assessment criteria for v-tivities on the voice board, the better our students

performed. It was necessary to stipulate maximum length of contributions (four minutes seemed

about right for the v-tivities we used, although some students struggled to stay within this limit), and

to state the scope of the content areas we expected students to cover in their commentaries. After

the first few v-tivities, we also realised that the use of voice seemed to encourage more subjective

commentaries from students than they might have given in writing, and sometimes less rigorously

considered statements. We therefore took pains to remind them to justify their comments with

reference to the literature or their research – as well as to prepare what they were going to say in

advance, so that they did not use up too much of their talk-time in ‘rambling’.

Student performance

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Comments from tutors about student performance throughout the pilot are mixed.

I think that students have done a very good job on the whole. They kept to guidelines, include

academic references, and they have certainly kept in task, and include some interesting points about

the language that is being used.

Variable. If you look at my feedback to v-tivity 4 you can see what I thought went well and what

didn’t. Some students followed the instructions carefully and produced more satisfactory responses.

The best responses included references to models relating to the topic, mentioned appropriate

references, cross-referred their statements to other students’ statements, backed up assertions with

careful evidence. The worst responses rambled, did none or only few of the above and asserted their

beliefs/opinions without providing evidence.

Summary of advantages

A summary of the advantages of Wimba Voice Board for this distance learning programme was given

in Table 2.

Findings Key points

Adding a human dimension

Reduces isolation, remoteness

Creates a feeling of ‘real’ and ‘personal’

Draws people closer, builds relationship

Brings distance learning programme to life

Enables a feeling of being in a seminar environment similar to campus learning

Advantages of voice- over

text-based communication

Expresses emotions, tones and intonations better than in text

Clarifies messages to avoid misinterpretation

Captures participants’ attitudes and topical stands

Stimulates and invites to read and participate more

Encourages to articulate points

Assessment through

interactive tasks

Enables feedback from tutors and peers

Generates additional discussions around the tasks

Encourages to study readings recommended by peers

Motivates to study more and perform better (to avoid ‘sound stupid’)

Table 2: Summary of the potential of Wimba Voice Board for distance learning

Limitations

Limitations with the technology

Students identified limitations with the technology, mainly with the interface and lack of certain

functionalities.

The interface:

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The bad point is: I think it has a quite sophisticated platform… When you’re listening to one recording,

if you accidentally or even intentionally click on another title, and then it stops the recording. The

platform could definitely use some work, as people mentioned, uploading files, etc.

It would be nice if we could navigate more easily from one voice board to another.

… it strikes me that the voice board only takes up 1/3 of my screen. I’d like it to take up the whole of

the screen, then I could read the whole of the accompany text.

Lack of functionalities in editing posts:

I think the inability to edit. You can’t edit messages, which can be very handy. G [the tutor] said if we

want messaged being taken out, she can do that. But I think to be able to edit myself would be good.

I don’t like the fact that you can’t edit recording as you go along. You made a mistake for instance,

you have to start again.

It would be good if recording was easy to download. It would be good to edit them.

Lack of functionality in adding attachments:

The inability of not be able to upload anything, any forms of voice, which could be quite handy for the

first activity we did. I guess not being able to upload pictures, anything like that could limit its overall

success.

Lack of functionality in subscription and notification of new messages:

Another thing which I think is really lacking is, there was no formal notification… we can’t subscribe it,

but when we log on, there is no way of instantly recognising whether there is a new message. It

doesn’t show whether there are any messages…I think would be very helpful, just like on Blackboard.

…when you get onto the Voice Board, you cannot identify which posts were new, which posts were

old. You’ve got to do it manually just by checking the dates… At the moment, especially as people are

getting more and more used to the Voice Board, there are more and more posts. People are getting

more and more confident, as they’re getting to know each other better. People are more willing to

put multiple posts that applied to a large number of people. As they’re doing it now, it does make it

very crowded and there is no way to identify which are new posts and which are old posts. But I think

it’s something that needs to be fixed, if it’s gonna be user-friendly for hopefully a great number of

people will use it in the future.

Lack of functionality in leaving private messages:

… the ability to leave a private message for somebody else would be very useful as well. That’s

something for Wimba to think about, to be able to leave a private recorded message to one of your

classmate if you want to talk about any specific activity or specific problem you have with your study

on your own. That could also be a better way to discussion things with your tutor as well.

Technical and access problems

One student in Saudi Arabia reported long delays when using the Voice Board. His experience was

reported below:

But with my voice board, there were really long delays to open threads or open messages. And once

the voice board is open, the browser, all the other windows on my browser, they are just very very

slow. It’s a sluggish programme, and no one else mentioned that. I’m not sure it’s just because I’m in

the Kingdom and there is something with the internet connection or not. If the programme was

speedier, it would certainly be a bit more inviting.

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This is the third time that I try to record it and post it. The previous two times, it’s just crashed. So

hopefully this time is gonna work. I’m using Fire Fox. It’s a new computer. I just purchased this year. I

think the reasons there has been some difficulties are, one is sometimes I use a wireless connection,

and that seems really slow down the speed. I plug in a landline. I think maybe the Saudi government

has got a really good firewall for blocking website, and generally it just slows down traffic. It does

affect the speed when the Voice Board opens. It makes sometimes a rather time consuming affair. It

seems that as long as I’m using a landline, maybe in certain time of the day, the speed is a bit faster.

Certainly the wireless connection makes it a lot slower.

Several possible reasons might account for the sluggish of the Voice Board, as he mentioned in his

post: the internet connection, wireless connection and firewall.

The same student also reported an access problem that he cannot access YouTube or the BBC Voices

website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/), because these websites are blocked by the government

firewall. The tutors have had to make alternative arrangements for him regarding the assessment.

Summary of limitations

A summary of limitations with the Wimba Voice Board and challenges encountered that might affect

the overall success of this tool was given in Table 3.

Findings Key points

Lack of functionalities

Difficulty in navigation

Unable to edit and delete posts

Unable to add attachments

No subscription

Unable to identify new and old posts

Unable to leave private messages

Technical and access

problems

Long delays that cause sluggish of the programme due to the

internet connection, wireless and firewall.

Students in Saudi Arabia are unable to access YouTube or the

BBC Voices website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/) due to

websites blocked by the government firewall

Table 3: Limitations of the Wimba Voice Board pilot

Suggestions for improvement and future use

Duration of the v-tivity

One suggestion is about the duration of each v-tivity. One student thought that as time-poor

students, they were not given enough time to respond to each v-tivity properly.

Number one is, in general, I don’t feel that I have enough time to research a topic before I make a

post. I think for quite a few of us, the main periods of time we have are the weekends, which is my

case. Thursday and Friday, that’s when I actually sit down and study. And that’s pretty much the only

time I have to listen to all the posts on the Voice board and respond. The time that we were given for

each v-tivity gives me a couple of days to find an article and make a respond. There is not really

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enough time to do a serious job. It might be worth thinking about future and for student entering

future modules. It’s just increasing the time, maybe one month for each v-tivity. I’m not sure if it’s

feasible enough.

Another student expressed a similar opinion. He felt time pressured when he had to conduct

reading, listening and replying others within two weeks.

I suppose one of the key differences is the amount of time it takes. It does take quite a bit of valuable

time unnecessarily to listen to people’s comments, especially as people are putting reply upon reply.

..A little bit weaker in terms of the time, it’s really difficult to use your time effectively, having enough

time to be able to do all of these, especially listening to a lot of different replies and a lot of different

ideas.

Length of the post

Another suggestion is to give students more flexibility in terms of the total length of a post.

The other point is, maybe be less rigid about the recommended time of it, like maximum or X minutes

of it. It maybe better just to say, ‘well, if you could make about X minutes’. It just allows us to be more

comfortable when we speak to the post.

I know that I, as well as other members, have gone over the 4 minute limit. I feel that it is probably a

little short and restricted to be able to say everything we need, especially as, in my case at least, I've

tried to keep the speech as natural as possible rather than preparing something and simply reading it.

I think if I were to write down all my thoughts in 500 words and read that I would be able to do it in

under 4 minutes, but with hesitation and repetition in my speech I think it is difficult. I hope that this

is okay. Obviously if the 4 minute limit is to be strictly enforced I will attempt to keep it shorter next

time.

More commentary from tutors

One student would like to see more commentary from the tutors on the topics if the Voice Board is

used again in future.

It would be great to hear a lot of tutors talk about these things as well. I really like to see a lot more

audio comments from the tutors. But I didn’t any audio comments from the tutors or moderators, or

even introductory thoughts on the topic itself. I think it’s all text-based.

Tutor-tutee groups

One student suggested that the Voice Board can be used within small tutor-tutee groups in future.

I’m not sure logistically it would be possible to run this for all future MA programmes. But if we only

use it for a small scale, for tutees to speak to tutors, and for tutors, you can just have your own

students talking to you. Every tutor has their own Voice Board. This is maybe something Leicester

wants to think about in the future rather than all the students coming together to one Voice Board.

You can separate it tutor by tutor.

One-on-one discussion

Another student recommended using the Voice Board for one-on-one guided discussion between a

tutor and student in future.

Real time discussion between a tutor and a student. If people have a one-on-one discussion which can

be guided, I think this might be useful as well.

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Impact and sustainability

Voice boards across modules

The Education team considers the Wimba Voice Board another self-sustainable technology. The

approach was very well received by the six Educations students studying Module 3 who volunteered

for the pilot. The team considers the voice board to be the most successful trial of the four

DUCKLING technologies. The use of voice boards is spreading across other modules of the TESOL

programme. The team will start using voice boards for the first-year students studying Module 1 and

2 in September 2010.

The team is convinced that interactive v-tivities are the best way to structure student discussion on

the voice board. The team members attended a two-day Carpe Diem workshop provided by Beyond

Distance in July 2010 to help convert parts of the materials in Module 1 into four e-tivities, one of

them will be run via the voice board from September 2010.

In summary, the voice board pilot enabled significantly more interaction between students than had

been the norm, and has been used as a model for rolling out v-tivities across modules on the

programme in the future.

Implications for technical support

The voice boards were not supported by the university’s IT Services when our pilot took place.

Because of DUCKLING evidence, voice boards are now being considered for inclusion in the group of

centrally-supported learning technologies by the university.

Role of e-moderators

The support system for distance learners is being developed and enhanced as a direct result of

DUCKLING interventions, particularly the voice board pilot, which provided a model for the e-

moderator’s role in formative assessment, and raised questions about the overlap between tutors’

and e-moderators’ roles. The allocation of duties between tutors and e-moderators is currently

under discussion, with the aim of providing richer support for distance students throughout the MA.

Conclusions

This case study demonstrated an example of integrating Wimba Voice Board into a masters’ distance

work-based programme in Applied Linguistics and TESOL. The evidence showed the potential of the

Voice Board for distance learning in ways of adding a human dimension, advantages of voice- over

text-based communication, and assessment through interactive tasks. Evidence also showed the lack

of functionalities that comes with the Wimba Voice board.

In conclusion, the Wimba Voice Board is considered a low cost, high impact tool for a distance

learning course. Table 4 summaries how Wimba Voice Board addressed the challenges faced in

curriculum design and delivery that were identified by the Education team at the beginning of

DUCKLING.

Challenges How Wimba Voice Board addressed the challenges?

Lack of interaction Enabling directly communication and interaction with tutors and peers

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Challenges How Wimba Voice Board addressed the challenges?

Dry material Bringing the course to life

Lack of variety in teaching and

assessment approaches Enriching teaching and assessment approaches

Need for mobility -

Need for flexibility -

Need for transferring theories

into practice -

Table 4: How Wimba Voice Board addressed the challenges in curriculum design and deliver

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effective curriculum renewal. ALT-J, 18 (2): 105-118.

Salmon, G. (2002). E-tivities: The key to active online learning. London: Routledge Falmer.

Salmon, G.K. (2000, 2004). E-moderating: the key to teaching and learning online. London and New

York: Routledge Falmer.

15

Appendix 1: V-tivity 1

Voice Board Pilot: V-tivity 1 – World Englishes

Spark

Listen to one of the following World Englishes podcasts in the Module Materials section

of Blackboard:

· Module 3, Part A. Unit 3: Matt, Jai or Sandra

· Module 3, Part A, Unit 4: Sahm (Note: this podcast has been placed here as an

illustration of bilingualism, but is also highly relevant to World Englishes)

Purpose To show your understanding of the concept of World Englishes and related issues.

Step 1:

The task

Ask an Inner, Outer or Expanding Circle speaker you know to talk about their use of

English for approximately 5 minutes. Record the speaker onto the V-tivity 1 Voice Board.

(Click here to access it.) Then give a short commentary on what the speaker says,

relating it to any of the issues covered in this unit. Your commentary can either be

spoken (as a separate Voice Board message) or written (in the Voice Board text box).

Your commentary should be a maximum of 500 words (if written) or 4 minutes in length

(if spoken).

Timing: To be posted before 25 April

Step 2:

The response

Respond to at least two other people’s postings, adding any additional insights you can

think of to their commentary. Your response can be spoken or written. Please start by

responding to someone who has not yet received any other responses.

Timing: To be posted before 2 May

Step 3:

Reflection

Please remember to reflect on the use of Voice Board for the v-tivities. You can click

here to go to the Reflection discussion. This discussion board will be available

throughout the pilot.

16

Appendix 2: V-tivity 2

Voice Board Pilot: V-tivity 2 – Gender and Language

Spark Read the article, ‘Cross-dressing seen as a serious menace to society’ from the Qatar Gulf

Times at www.tinyurl.com/cross-dressing-menace.

Purpose To show your understanding of issues related to gender and language

Step 1:

The task

Find another text of your own choice related to fashion amongst the youth of any particular

society. Post an audio commentary on the Wimba Voice Board for v-tivity 2, looking at how

gender is discursively constructed, e.g. through word choice, style and tone. In the Qatar

article one obvious word to pick out would be ‘deviation’ or ‘deviance’, since this tells us

about the norms of behaviour against which cross-dressing is being negatively judged. In

other words, when we look at gender and language, we need to know that it isn’t enough

merely to discuss the apparent views of the writer of a text; we must also expose the

linguistic choices made to get those views across in a way that the target reader might be

persuaded of them. So, pick a text where you have something to say about the linguistic

choices that construct gender issues.

Remember to tell us where we can find the article – you can either give us the disabled-URL

(web link) in the text box accompanying your voice message, or post an attachment to the

discussion forum in Blackboard. (Unfortunately Voice Board does not allow us to post

attachments to messages.)

You are also free to choose a multimedia text, such as a YouTube video or an item from a

news site, a recorded conversation between teenagers, etc.

Your commentary should be approximately 4 to 5 minutes in length.

Timing: To be posted before 9 May

Step 2:

The response

Respond to at least two other people’s postings, adding any additional insights you can think

of to their commentary. Your response can be spoken or written. Please start by responding

to someone who has not yet received any other responses.

Timing: To be posted before 17 May

Step 3:

Reflection

Please remember to reflect on the use of Voice Board for the v-tivities. You can click here to

go to the Reflection discussion. This discussion board will be available throughout the pilot.

17

Guidelines

The activities are designed for you to show engagement with the content of the module and

show the development of your thinking as you progress through the module units. Any

contributions you make, either written or spoken should be well prepared and clearly

presented. They should show evidence of your ability to provide critical comment on a

specified topic and to be able to support this with reference(s) to relevant research literature.

The activities may also give you the opportunity to show your ability to relate theoretical

issues to professional contexts.

Contributions to activities should be long enough to answer the question while completing

the task, bearing in mind that there should be an upper limit of approximately 500 written

words or 2-3 minutes recorded speech - some contributions may be much shorter than this.

18

Appendix 3: V-tivity 3

Voice Board Pilot: V-tivity 3 – Analysing talk

Spark

Listen to the conversation between Maureen and Roger called ‘Voice Clip 1’ at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/recordings/group/kent-boughton.shtml.

Voice clip 1

Maureen and Roger share some colourful expressions for bad weather - "siding it

down", "raining stair rods" and "black over Wilf's mother's".

Purpose To show your understanding of issues related to analysing talk

Step 1:

The task

Find or create another short audio (or video) piece of your own choice in which a

conversation is taking place between two or more people. The conversation should be

less than two minutes[1] in duration and unscripted. You will find many more

conversations on the BBC site mentioned above

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/recordings); you may also find suitable material on

YouTube or other web sites.

Post an audio commentary on the Voice Board for v-tivity 3, analysing the

conversation in terms of the aspects discussed in Unit 11, such as topic control, turn-

taking, interruptions, conversational routines and conversational management skills.

For example, in the conversation between Maureen and Roger, turn-taking seems to

involve a series of ‘collaborative’ interruptions, where one partner jumps in during a

pause to complete the other’s sentence, or simply to repeat information provided by

the other, perhaps to indicate agreement. This is done so seamlessly and apparently

without friction that it seems to be the result of a conversational pattern developed

over years. Maureen also uses tag questions, probably to include Roger, when she

wants to change the topic. (We could discuss gender and language here too but I’ll

resist the temptation!)

Remember to tell us where we can find your chosen audio or video conversation –

you can either give us the disabled-URL (web link) in the text box accompanying your

voice message, or post an attachment to the discussion forum in Blackboard.

(Unfortunately Voice Board does not allow us to post attachments to messages.)

Your commentary should be approximately 4 to 5 minutes in length.

Timing: To be posted before 30 May

Step 2:

The response

Respond to at least two other people’s postings, adding any additional insights you

can think of to their commentary. Your response can be spoken or written. Please

start by responding to someone who has not yet received any other responses.

Timing: To be posted before 6 June

Step 3:

Reflection (Optional)

If you have not yet reflected on the use of Voice Board for the v-tivities, or if you have

any further reflections to add, please go to the reflection Voice Board here and post

your thoughts. This discussion board will be available throughout the pilot.

19

Guidelines The activities are designed for you to show engagement with the content of the

module and show the development of your thinking as you progress through the

module units. Any contributions you make, either written or spoken should be well

prepared and clearly presented. They should show evidence of your ability to provide

critical comment on a specified topic and to be able to support this with reference(s)

to relevant research literature. The activities may also give you the opportunity to

show your ability to relate theoretical issues to professional contexts.

Contributions to activities should be long enough to answer the question while

completing the task, bearing in mind that there should be an upper limit of

approximately 500 written words or 2-3 minutes recorded speech - some

contributions may be much shorter than this.

20

Appendix 4: V-tivity 4

Voice Board Pilot: V-tivity 4 – Critical Discourse Analysis

Spark

How would you analyse the newspaper headline below ‘critically’? What assumptions

does it make? What kind of ideology informs the text?

“Rioting Blacks shot dead by Police as ANC[1] leaders meet”

Trew (1979: 94)

If you need some ideas, have a look at the key to Activity 2 at the end of Unit 14. (If

you google this headline, you will also find several commentaries on it on the Web.)

Purpose To show your understanding of issues related to critical discourse analysis.

Step 1:

The task

Find a short written text of your own choice which you think lends itself to a critical

analysis, considering ideology, how power relations and implicit assumptions in the

text are made explicit through linguistic choices.

Post an audio commentary on the Voice Board for v-tivity 4, analysing the text in

terms of some of the aspects discussed in Unit 14, such as:

Routinisation of language dominance – the routine use of certain linguistic

devices to create or maintain power distances between individuals, or

individuals and institutions, e.g. nominalization and the use of the passive

voice (Ng 1990, Lackoff 1990) or pronoun choice (Fairclough 1989, Brown

and Gilman 1960) and use of metaphor (Alvesson 1994)

Conversationalisation (Fairclough 1989)

Utilitarian Discourse System (Scollon and Scollon (1995))

Rhetorical devices such as “three-part lists” and “two-part contrasts”

(Atkinson 1984)

Share your insights as to how the linguistic choices in your chosen text demonstrate

‘powerful’ or ‘powerless’ speech styles, how they may be used to influence or control

others, or how they reflect particular political and ideological assumptions.

Remember to tell us where we can find your text – you can either give us the

disabled-URL (web link) in the text box accompanying your voice message, or post an

attachment to the discussion forum in Blackboard.

Please make it clear which framework you are using to analyse the text, and justify

your analysis with reference to the literature (rather than personal/ subjective views).

Your commentary should be approximately 4 to 5 minutes in length.

Timing: To be posted before 20 June

21

Step 2:

The response

Respond to at least two other people’s postings, adding any additional insights you

can think of to their commentary. Your response can be spoken or written. Please

start by responding to someone who has not yet received any other responses.

Timing: To be posted before 27 June

Step 3: Reflection

(Optional if you have

already done this)

If you have not yet reflected on the use of Voice Board for the v-tivities, or if you have

any further reflections to add, please go to the reflection Voice Board here and post

your thoughts. This discussion board will be available throughout the pilot.

Guidelines The activities are designed for you to show engagement with the content of the

module and show the development of your thinking as you progress through the

module units. Any contributions you make, either written or spoken should be well

prepared and clearly presented. They should show evidence of your ability to provide

critical comment on a specified topic and to be able to support this with reference(s)

to relevant research literature. The activities may also give you the opportunity to

show your ability to relate theoretical issues to professional contexts.

Contributions to activities should be long enough to answer the question while

completing the task, bearing in mind that there should be an upper limit of

approximately 500 written words or 2-3 minutes recorded speech - some

contributions may be much shorter than this.