ESOL Students during Covid-19 #InspiredByESOL
By Seima Mahmood, ESOL Lecturer
Seima reflects here on how she, her colleagues, and the ESOL students at her college adapted to the sudden change to online learning earlier this year.
Online Teaching and Learning
Covid-19 changed our methods of teaching instantly. It also pushed us in a corner to think about how millions of students around the world will be educated. At one point, teachers worldwide were either organising interactive activities, discussions or setting assessments in a traditional classroom. The next day, everything switched to online learning. English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students were expected to work remotely using online learning tools – and ESOL lecturers transferred all of their paper-based tasks to using a variety of online educational web platforms.
ESOL students in lockdown
Our ESOL classes are full of lively creative students. In any ESOL classroom, you will find students busy working on all of their four skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening. To consolidate their skills, students will either work on role plays, write stories or short poems, create MP4 or Animoto videos, have discussions and debates on latest topics, and prepare for their high stake summative assessments. ESOL lecturers also make sure that all students are involved in their enrichment activities. Enrichment improves critical thinking skills and helps students to resolve problems theoretically and practically. It also makes learning more meaningful and rewarding as well as fun, which motivates students to become more engaged in their education. Therefore, they organise charity events, talent shows, go on trips and join sport activities and clubs.
Under lockdown, ESOL lecturers wanted to maintain this energy and continue to set exciting tasks to keep students motivated during lockdown. Therefore, tasks were planned around using a range of online learning platforms, according to students’ different levels, abilities and interests. This helped us to accommodate all learners and strengthen their four learning skills. We asked our students to share their own experience during this strange time. As I have mentioned in our Bradford College News:
“During these difficult times, we as ESOL lecturers realise the importance of continuing with our online teaching and learning, using a variety of remote learning tools. It is vital to engage and challenge our ESOL learners in their work; empower them to become autonomous learners; foster remote learning skills; harness the skills of all learners; and keep them motivated during lockdown“.
Showcasing Students’ Lockdown Experiences
ESOL lecturers continued to plan exciting lessons incorporated in using digital technology and a wide range of online educational learning tools. We asked our students to continue with their studies and build on their four learning skills plus Information Technology (IT).
I lead the project idea as I thought it was ideal for students to continue with their studies and let us know of their lockdown experiences and how they were keeping busy. The website became a success as all the ESOL team contributed their students’ work to be showcased to everyone.
As part of their online #InspiredByESOL project, a variety of tasks were set for ESOL adults and our 16-18 students. They worked on blogs, Padlets and Prezis. Some students were asked to create professional looking recipes using Canva or worked either in groups or on a single submission to write their own newsletter – learning skills such as report writing and design. However, the students also continued with their enrichment activities during lockdown. Pictures were taken by students, while going for long walks, cooking, baking, drawing, recording videos, and making crafts. We wanted to bring together all these activities to showcase how each student was experiencing lockdown. Lakshmi Banner from the library and I discussed what platform to use to design our virtual exhibition and collect everything together into one space and showcase not only the different experiences of each student, but also the variety of online learning tools they used to tell their stories.
The Launch of #InspiredByESOL
LibGuides was chosen to showcase our students’ creations and launch our new project. This web platform is designed specifically for libraries to organise course content and enable students to access relevant resources easily. Therefore, having Lakshmi working on our own Bradford College LibGuides page ensures that, not only our ESOL department, but the college as a whole receives recognition through our website link.
The Inspired By ESOL showcase we have created is an attractive looking site. ESOL lecturers were asked to send their students’ completed submissions. The results were phenomenal! We had a moving gallery of images and recipe cards to show what students have been doing during lockdown. The #InspiredByESOL virtual exhibition also included a professional online blog, Padlets and Prezis. You could also listen to mp4s and read diaries or letters of students writing to their friends, describing how their lives had changed due to Covid-19. Students are pleased to have their work on display publicly – the link can be viewed by anyone, so click and share!
If you are interested in trying out a recipe or in search of ideas for free time activities, you can look through our gallery of images and recipes to help you find that perfect choice. Scroll down through the Padlets or click your way through the Prezis, you will find everything you need on one page, one website. The efforts in creating the online project was recognised and praised by our College News, and discussed in an interview with JISC podcast.