With great joy do we announce that the teachers of the Department of Foreign Languages, in association with the Office for Academic and Digital Innovation, have successfully completed work on the creation of SPOC teaching platform!
The implementation of SPOC mode of teaching was the result of a hard and complex job. The complexity of creation of SPOC was associated with multiple factors. First of all, our teachers were, practically, pioneers in doing this project. Although, SPOC English teaching model has long been popular with many educators and students around the world, in Kazakhstan it is an absolutely new and unknown platform so it took us a lot of time to get into the essence of the problem. The teachers had to acquaint themselves with the literature on this topic, study and internalize the principles, form, content, and techniques of the creation of SPOC teaching model and acknowledge it as a beneficial supplement of the traditional class teaching that to some extent breaks the traditional English teaching paradigm. During preparation period there were several discussions, sharing opinions and ideas on how to do this project successfully in the conditions of our university education reality.
The use of SPOC has a number of advantages over the traditional method of teaching a foreign language and among them in, our opinion, one of the most valuable one is that students are encouraged to be responsible and autonomous since the whole teaching process is based on the student-centered mode of acquisition of the discipline.
SPOC methodology is designed for small academic groups and is an implementation of the “flipped classroom” learning model, when the study materials are given to students in advance, and classroom time is allotted for interaction between the teacher and students in the form of joint activity. In this regard, SPOCs are targeted at certain groups of students who can take the course and are ready to interact with others throughout the learning process.
A brief history of application of the “flipped classroom” learning model. The foundation of his teaching is credited to Bergman and Sams. In 2007 they science teachers at Woodland Park Middle School in Colorado. Due to the remote location of their school, they found that many students had to leave early in the morning to attend sports events or other school related activities. So, they sent video lectures to the students who missed class. Bergman claimed that their absent students loved the recorded lectures. The students who missed the class heard these lectures and they liked them. Video lectures were widely used by all students in preparation for exam.
The task of a teacher is to be able to skillfully select and apply exactly those technologies that fully correspond to the content and objectives of studying the discipline, contribute to the harmonious development of students, taking into consideration their individual characteristics.
SPOC English teaching model includes the following parts:
1. Course construction. The teacher creates the course material directed toward developing 4 skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening) in students. The online course material includes small video instructions of each lesson, mini-lectures, texts, tests, different kinds of exercises, discussion questions, writing tasks, presentations, recordings for listening, etc.
2. Learning period. It includes the pre-class, the class, and the post-class parts. The pre-class part involves uploading the home tasks on the Moodle platform with the teacher’s specific directions on how to perform the tasks and achieve the goals set and students’ logging in the system and doing the tasks. The classroom part is predominantly devoted to the consolidation of what students have learned independently while doing the home tasks. Teachers do not have to focus on every detail of the home task material, they should rather focus on critical points or discuss the questions related to the topic of each lesson to promote the quality of learning. It is recommended that in-classroom time the task of the teacher is to stimulate discussing and debating with peers activities so that students have an opportunity to improve their speaking skills. The post-class part entails doing lexical and grammar tests, writing tasks (essays, reports, emails, reproduction), quizzes, etc. It should be noted that throughout all 3 parts of learning period teachers and students never stop interacting thus ensuring the achievement of maximum learning effect.
With great pleasure do we congratulate our teachers on the successful completion of work on SPOC English teaching platform for Al-Farabi University students. Months of hard work hasn’t gone vain! These are the names of the teachers who we congratulate:
1. Z.A.Tleugabylova, L.M. Makhazhanova ( SPOC:English for Master’s Students in Marketing)
2. G.A. Mussanova ( SPOC: English for Master’s Degree Students in Law).
3. L.M.Aliyarova, K.A.Aisultanova (SPOC: English for Master’s Degree Students in History)
4. G.A. Gaiipova ( SPOC: Bachelor Degree students of the Faculty of Information Technology).
5. M.Zh.Myrzakhmet (SPOC:English for International Students)
6. S.A.Urazgaliyeva, M.B.Tleulinova (SPOC:English for Master’s students in Mathematics and Mechanics)
7. G.K.Kulzhanbekova, A.R.Khalenova (SPOC: English for Master's students in Economics)
8. N.B.Mombekova, M.M.Zhemileva (SPOC:English for Master's Students in Biology)
We believe that the newly developed SPOC English teaching platform will become a new method of instruction, combining the information technology with the teaching resources. It will bring different learning experience to Al-Farabi University students.
DZH.ZH.DOSMAGAMBETOVA,
Head of the Department of Foreign Languages
G.A.MUSSANOVA,
Senior teacher
