Project Information
This ESOL Global Learning Project is designed and planned carefully to allow three colleges, from across the globe, to work together and take advantage of the amazing opportunities this afford. Students from Bradford College ESOL 16-18 (England), Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. P. Stalmacha (Poland), Mircea cel Bătrân Secondary School (Romania) and Bağlica Şehit Kalener Özdemir Anatolian Religious High School (Turkey) joined forces to participate in this project.
The six sessions we designed for our Global Learning curriculum combined the hybrid model, flip learning and both online and face to face learning. All sessions were set on MS Teams to give all students around the world access to a high standard of teaching and learning, online resources, use of digital tools and apps and an opportunity to cooperate and communicate via break out rooms on Teams.
The four ESOL lecturers meet regularly online to plan the Global Learning course to deliver six-monthly sessions, which are an hour and thirty minutes long and incorporate topics based on real life skills. The staff members working as ESOL Lecturers are; Seima Mahmood and Monika Worthington (Bradford College, England), TBC staff in other colleges. In terms of number of students, we have a fantastic cohort of 79 students enrolled onto our Global Learning Project.
The main reasons for designing and delivering this Global Learning project were to raise awareness about being part of a global community of ESOL learners; to build confidence for students; to discuss issues, share opinions and concerns on various topics which affect real life problems; and finally, to use digital technology to create engaging resources. The ultimate purpose is that all students are motivated to learn and have access to similar high quality learning resources while based in different locations.
Course Aims
- To share good teaching and learning practice between teachers and students
- To encourage collaboration between students across geographical borders
- To use blended learning and flip learning models in an online teaching context
- To enhance students’ four skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening
- To contextualise learning to real-life skills and topics thereby making it more meaningful to students
- To increase students’ digital skills and introduce them to a variety of new digital tools and apps
Teaching Resources, Tools and Apps
A selection of digital tools was used to promote students’ engagement in learning. Those were MS Teams, Breakout Rooms, Wakelet, Padlet, YouTube videos, MS Forms and Assignments, Kahoot, Adobe Spark – now known as – Adobe Creative Cloud Express, Google Drive to access PDF’s and a wide range of appropriate website links. Homework was also planned, prepared and presented at the end of each session, so students consolidated their learning and had sufficient time to complete their work before the next session.
Finally, an MS Form for feedback was also devised for students to complete, in order to offer their thoughts, opinions and reflections about how to improve sessions, including making requests for future topics.