Final Blog: Course Reflection

What do you now understand best about Project Based Learning? What do you understand least?

Prior to this course I had only a vague idea of what project based learning was. After working on my own PBL unit, I had to redefine my notion of what a “project” entailed. My pre-EdTech 542 understanding of a project was having students work on a research paper that I would grade and a presentation that students would present to their peers, but which, ultimately again, I would grade. The feature of PBL that struck me the most is its heavy emphasis on reflection, reflection not only on the student's’ part, but also more importantly on the instructor’s. The driving question relies on a reflective process to be effectively constructed, the activities that are deployed during the PBL unit rely on the instructor’s continuous reflection on student progress, and the success of future PBL units relies on the instructor’s reflection on the student products and outcomes of a completed unit.

What I am still a bit unclear about is whether lectures or mini-lectures of any type have a place in a PBL unit. In my teaching context, students are learning skills rather than concepts. Many of these skills such as the proper application of grammar and vocabulary require explanations of grammatical forms, abstract meanings, and examples of use. In addition, in the ESL context, learners may require multiple variations of an explanation of a particular topic. In the effort to be a “guide on the side” is anything that resembles lecturing abandoned in a PBL context?

What did you expect to learn in this course? What did you actually learn? More, less, and why?

I enrolled in this course expecting to learn how to effectively incorporate projects into my teaching context. As I mentioned above I didn’t have a clear picture of what project based instruction looked like. As I progressed through the course I learned the specifics of incorporating an effective PBL unit into my teaching context. I have a clearer understanding of the main features of PBL (e.g. a clear driving question, sub-questions that promote critical thinking, multiple opportunities for student reflection, and a product or service that is presented to an authentic audience). I was also able to clearly see how PBL naturally lends itself to the critical and creative thinking characteristic of the higher order thinking levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

What will you do with what you have learned?

I plan to present the PBL unit that I’ve created in this course to my peers in the ESL department. Since the department is fairly open to new pedagogy, I should have no problem convincing my peers to allow me to pilot the project. After having my students present their projects to the ESL faculty and having my peers rate the in-class essays (summative assessment), I will report on the overall PBL experience, make adjustments to the unit as required, and recommend that other sections implement the same or similar project during future semesters. Although my goal would be to implement Gold Standard PBL a few trails and revisions will probably be required. I might also suggest the PBL format for courses at lower level courses in the credit ESL department, non-credit ESL department, and Intensive English Program.

Post Project Reflection

Who will you involve in the process?

In a perfect world where everyone has an unlimited amount of time and everyone's schedule revolves around my schedule, I would include students, faculty from the ESL department, faculty from other departments, and administrators involved in the PBL project reviewing process. In reality, I would settle for a few of the students who were involved with the project, a few peers from the ESL department, and one or two peers from other departments. I would also invite a few administrators to be involved in the review process knowing that their participation would probably be superficial at best. A diverse group of reviewers would help me further fine tune the PBL process. Students could address any issues that I missed or may have not addressed thoroughly enough. ESL department faculty could critique activities and assessments to ensure that they facilitate mastery of course objectives, are valid measurements of course objectives, and are informed by current applied linguistic research. Feedback from faculty in other departments could guide ESL instructors in what skills should be addressed in more depth by the PBL unit based on their own experience with learners who come through the ESL program. They could also provide suggestions on future PBL units, perhaps geared towards content/problems stemming from other disciplines. 

What will your process look like?

1. I would begin the assessment process at the onset of the PBL unit. I currently keep a teaching journal for the classes that I teach, so I would carry this method over for the PBL unit. 
2. Since I envision the PBL unit being completed well before the end of the semester, I would acquire student feedback immediately after the completion of the unit. The feedback could be obtained in the form of a survey or as a journal-type assignment. 
3. Feed back from ESL faculty, faculty from other departments, and college administration could be obtained any time after the presentation of the final products. 
4. An ESL faculty meeting could be arranged for sometime before the end of semester to compare notes and discuss the future of PBL units in the department.
5. A meeting consisting of interdepartmental faculty and administration could be arranged to discuss various aspects of the PBL process, the success of PBL in the ESL department, and the future of PBL on the campus as a whole.

Is it just a one-time assessment?

Just as multiple opportunities for reflection is a salient feature of the PBL unit for students, the assessment for this project would be iterative in nature as well. The assessment process would start shortly after the onset of the PBL unit itself and would continue to the end of the project and carry over to the start of the next PBL unit that is implemented. Initial assessment would be completed solely by the instructor and then involve students, faculty, etc. as the unit progresses. Each time a PBL unit is implemented, whether it is a repeat project unit or a completely novel unit, reflection must include reference to past project successes and failures.  

Moving from Instructor to Facilitator

One of the greatest challenges for an instructor in a PBL unit is to adapt to the role of facilitator. Reflect on the following:

Will my role in the teaching/learning process change?

Adapting to the role of facilitator in a PBL unit will be somewhat challenging for me. As a communicative language instructor my lecturer/facilitator ratio is between 80:20 and 20:80. The range is large because of the fact that my student population largely originates from countries whose educational systems are predominantly based on the "sage on the stage" model. I start a semester at about 80:20 and move slowly toward the goal of 20:80 after certain skills including asking questions and participating in cooperative group tasks are practiced. The implementation of a PBL unit would have to take place during the second half of the semester when students are sufficiently acclimated to the "guide on the side" model. The challenge for me will be giving up that 20% lecturer role. In a language learning classroom, I'm not sure if instruction would be effective if the instructor moved into a 100% facilitator role.

What are the skills of effective facilitation?

• Grouping students according to their language backgrounds and individual skills
• Providing clear guidelines as to the goal of the project or activity
• Guiding students toward asking the "right" questions with adequate schema activation
• Asking students the "right" questions to support critical thinking skills
• Rerouting students in cases where their ideas may be irrelevant to the project's progression
• Modeling effective collaboration skills
• Demonstrating effective organization and time-management skills
• Monitoring collaborative groups to ensure that students are all contributing based on their individual strengths
• Providing support for individual students in the areas where they may need remediation
• Having faith in the learners' abilities

Will the students develop the competencies and skills needed to be successful?

As long as an instructor is always conscious of the fact that the class is made up of individuals rather than a homogeneous group of students coming into a course already prepared with the necessary skills and background knowledge to be successful, and as long as the instructor leverages this fact by individualizing instruction as much as possible, students will be able to develop the competencies and skills needed to be successful. Instructors can also utilize the knowledge and skills of advanced learners to assist in developing the skills of peers who need extra help understanding specific concepts and skills. This in turn develops peer relationships and mentoring skills of the advanced learners.

What changes will you need to make in order to become an effective facilitator in your PBL unit?

• Focusing on the development of effective collaborative group work
• Developing more effective schema building/scaffolding activities
• Providing models of excellent projects
• Reflecting on student reflections and peer evaluations
• Reflecting on my own classroom practices to ensure that I am actually making changes to match PBL

Scaffolding in PBL

Scaffolding is standard practice in the language learning setting. As an ESL instructor every skill from grammar and reading to vocabulary and writing requires scaffolding to ease students into new language learning concepts. Likewise, scaffolding is of great importance in project based learning. In PBL students must be guided towards the creation of a product or service. According to Jamie McKenzie, scaffolding provides that guidance in the following ways:

1. Providing Clear Directions - This is a standard practice in ESL and probably should be in all educational settings. In the ESL setting both small and large scale assignments in many cases must be broken down into small digestible chunks. Directions must be broken down to into component steps and must be given using very simple language. In and ESL+PBL, I assume this skill will be the same but the need for this part of scaffolding will be even greater.
2. Providing a Clear Purpose - In my experience, this is standard practice for teachers of ESL students and at-risk students. Students want to know why they have to complete an activity. They want to know why they should invest their time in learning the skills they are being taught and if the skill will be relevant to their lives. In the ESL+PBL setting, this will be even more important since many students become unmotivated when there is a huge, time and resource consuming task at hand.
3. Keeping Students on Task - This is another issue that is relevant to all teaching settings. Students are easily distracted by "outside" factors such as unrelated conversation topics as well as "inside" factors such as vague directions or inattention by the instructor. The "inside" factor could be considered more serious since students can waste a tremendous amount of time traversing the wrong path. In the ESL setting this is a common issue since it has been found that the thought process varies from culture to culture.
4. Offering Assessments to Clarify Expectations - In the ESL department in which I teach, this is standard practice for writing assignments. Students are provided rubrics for paraphrase writing, paragraph writing, journal writing, threaded discussion, and of course in-class essays. What is expected of students is clear from the beginning. In my own writing classes, students see both good and bad writing models and analyze the models for relevant features again providing students with concrete evidence of what good and bad writing is and what their own writing is expected to look like. In an ESL+PBL unit, this practice would clearly carry over to the evaluation of final products or services.

Effective Assessment in PBL

My PBL unit assessments meet the Key Principles of Assessment criteria in the following ways:

Assessment is for Students

As this project was created specifically for international students at in the community college context, it is clearly relevant to the lives of the intended learner audience - community college international students. The iterative nature of the project allows students to become confident and articulate about the knowledge they acquire and the products that they generate throughout the PBL unit.

Assessment is Faithful to the Work Students Actually Do

This PBL unit include multiple opportunities for self reflection on the progress of the group project. In addition, since the self reflections are written, the students will have ample opportunity to practice the language skills that they need to acquire in order to be successful in the culminating summative assessments (website and essay). The objectives and requirements are clear from the onset of each portion of the project so that students clearly understand what they need to know and what they need to be able to do to be successful in producing an excellent project and in the course.

Assessment is Public

Rubrics and scoring sheets are provided throughout the PBL unit so that students are aware of what is expected of them prior to the completion of the unit tasks. At then end of the unit, the student created resource websites are presented to faculty across the college campus and students present their research in a public presentation or panel discussion. The audience of the public presentation includes both international and resident peers, ESL faculty, faculty from other disciplines, staff, and administrators.

Assessment Promotes Ongoing Self-Reflection and Critical Inquiry

This portion of my PBL unit may need revising. Since ESL is a skills field as opposed to a content field, it may be difficult to adjust to a PBL type of assessment where criteria is open-ended. Students must achieve a certain level of grammaticality and complexity in their writing. These factors are more concrete and objective than content courses. However, the content and organization of say the summative written assessment may allow for some open-ended revision.

Developing a Driving Question

Developing a driving question for this project is far more difficult than I had first thought. The factors that need to be considered in constructing an effective question are numerous and ensuring that I have addressed each key feature is an arduous process. 

Revising and rethinking this single driving question makes revising and preparing a piece for publication seem like a piece of cake! 

A good driving question should

• be answerable but not be easily answerable (ie. not google-able). The driving question for this project is not an easily answered question since it is not a question about international students in general.
• be open-ended in that multiple answers and/or solutions are possible. Multiple answers and solutions are possible for this project. Students will find practical solutions to address the issues that international students face.

• be interesting, engaging, and relevant for learner. Since the topic revolves around international students,  the learners themselves should be more invested in finding an answer(s) to the question. They are not only learners but also stakeholders.
• lend itself to a wide range of subquestions. Learners will have to ask themselves many subquestions to answer the question thoroughly and propose practical solutions.
• lend itself to research, investigation, and reflection. The specific nature of question and subquestions will require that students do both primary and secondary research and investigation.  Given that this project is focused on international students and the issues they face, learners will engage in reflection from the onset of the project. It also requires a written component, so students will engage in reflection during the writing process as well.
• allow learners to demonstrate the mastery of learning objectives. The learners will be able to demonstrate their mastery of the outline learning objectives in both the media artifact and the culminating written paper.

The driving question and subquestions can form the basis for a unit since they require a great deal of research, reflection, and application of specific language skills. Students will perform both primary research using interviews and secondary source research. This will require the development of effective question composition and interviewing etiquette as well as information competency. In addition, since the ESL department in which I teach employs content-based language learning pedagogy, all language skills such as vocabulary learning skills, grammar, skills, and summarizing skills can be taught with sustained content that is guided by and related to the driving question. This material could include general interest articles and peer-reviewed academic journal articles. 

Drake, R. J. (n.d.) Driving Questions [Weblog]. Retrieved from http://www.jetspost.com/eportfolio/pbl/driving_questions.htm

Technology Supported Project Based Learning

Over the past few days, I have been thinking about the final topic or project I would like to develop for an intermediate/advanced ESL academic writing course. The learning objectives that students must meet were developed to facilitate the successful transition of international students into mainstream freshman composition and all other undergraduate general education courses. A few of the course objectives on which I would like to focus include:

1. Paraphrasing and summarizing ideas from texts using correct citation format
2. Integrating appropriate quotes into essays in order to support claims
3. Demonstrating the appropriate use of lexical items on Coxhead’s (2000) academic word list
4. Interpreting information from readings and other media to select and evaluate ideas for writing

There are three factors that need to be considered when approaching the implementation of PBL in this ESL course:

1. Students come into this writing course with no previous experience with the skills mentioned in the course objectives, so they are learning these skills as they progress through the course
2. I would have to implement PBL during the last half to last third of the course after students have been introduced to these skills and have had ample opportunity to practice them.
3. Content-based language learning is the preferred method of instruction so unit themes can be varied (This is a positive aspect . . . I think.)

One theme around which this project may revolve is discrimination and racism. I touched on this theme briefly in Ed Tech 502 but I would like to develop it into something with more substance. I thought this topic might be relevant because of random conversations among some of my students, my own interactions with friends who were brought up in other countries, and anecdotes from other ESL instructors. It seems that many international students

1. have a very cursory understanding about discrimination and racism in general
2. believe that discrimination and racism is a problem unique to the U.S.
3. believe that there is no discrimination and racism in their own cultures.

A second theme I am considering is academic integrity/plagiarism and intellectual property. I thought this might be relevant as this issue is an already major concern in institutions of higher education across the U.S.

I am not sure what the final project would be in either case; however, I do know that whatever it is will be used in conjunction with the final exam in the course, so this is an additional factor I would have to consider.

Final Blog: Course Reflection

Part One: Course Reflection

What I Have Learned

Although this course has taught me a great deal of technology integration methodology, the most significant takeaway for me has been the idea of the relative advantage of technology. This is most significant for me because I’ve always been skeptical about using technology in my classroom. This skepticism stems from the fact that technology use in the classroom sometimes simply seems like a “bells-and-whistles” type distraction for both students and teachers rather than relevant, pedagogical tools. The concept of relative advantage has made it clear for me that, in fact, not all technology is pertinent in the classroom and that my skepticism was warranted in some ways. The ideas that a technological tool has to clearly solve a problem in the classroom or curriculum and that the benefits of its implementation have to outweigh the cost of not implementing it seem to be common sense but were codified for me during the course of this class.

Theory

One of the major reasons why I was initially skeptical about technology integration was what seemed to me the lack of any clear theories underlying the use of technology in the classroom. This presumption was obviously erroneous since both objectivist and constructivist learning theories have informed the development and implementation of technology for education. For each of my course projects, I made an attempt to create each lesson with either objectivist or constructivist theories or both in mind. I also tried to apply current theories of second language acquisition so that each activity was firmly grounded in both general learning theories and theories that are specifically relevant to the ESL courses that I teach.

AECT Standards Mastery as Demonstrated by Coursework

The projects produced during this course targeted five of the standards adopted by the AECT. These standards include 1.2 Using Content Knowledge, 1.3 Assessing/Evaluating Content Knowledge, 2.1 Creating Content Pedagogy, 2.2 Using Content Pedagogy, and 5.1 Theoretical Foundation in Research.

Standard 1.2, Using Content Knowledge, focuses on the ability of the candidate to effectively select and use technology that will support learning and enhance pedagogy (AECT Standards, 2012). For each of the projects that I developed for my ESL courses I had to choose relevant technology, and I had to develop a lesson plan that could be implemented in an actual learning environment.

Standard 1.3, Assessing/Evaluating Content Knowledge, emphasizes the candidate’s ability to assess effective technology and instructional material integration (AECT Standards, 2012). For each project, I first had to determine the relative advantage of the technology that I was planning to utilize. After determining that the use of the technology was worth the time and effort needed for implementation, I developed a lesson plan that effectively leveraged its features. For example, for the Social Networking and Community Building project, I chose Voice Thread as a tool to facilitate peer editing in an online learning environment. I determined that Voice Thread would allow students to collaborate even though face-to-face meetings were not possible.

Standard 2.1, Creating Content Pedagogy, focuses on the candidate’s ability to apply technology which will improve learning and performance outcomes and which is informed by content pedagogy (AECT Standards, 2012). Since my content area is ESL, all of my coursework demonstrates the application of technology in the context of college-level ESL writing courses. All of my lessons were informed by ESL pedagogy, and all of the technology was selected based on the needs of the ESL student population. For example, currently, content-based language learning is the favored mode of teaching/learning in ESL. For my video integration project, I selected videos that presented gerunds/infinitives (the language aspect) and videos about non-human primates (the content aspect). In this way, I selected the technology (Youtube videos) based on one of the currently accepted ESL pedagogical methods.

Standard 2.2, Using Content Pedagogy, focuses on the ability of the candidate to “implement appropriate educational technologies based on appropriate content pedagogy” (AECT Standards, 2012). Although all of my projects were geared toward the ESL writing course, the English Language Lesson content project allowed me to select educational technology that was specifically created for English learners.

Standard 5.1, Theoretical Foundations in Research, is concerned with the candidate having “functional knowledge” of the research that has informed educational technologies (AECT Standards, 2012). All of the lesson activities created for the course projects were informed by either objectivist or constructivist learning theories.

Professional Growth

Before enrolling in this course, I was using some technology in the classroom (Kahoo! and PollEv for example), but I didn’t even have a cursory knowledge of general learning theories that supported the use of technology. During this course, I began to see that technology integration did indeed  have a theoretical basis. Knowing this has made it clear that there are many ways to effectively integrate technology into the classroom. In addition, I have also had the chance to share some of the activities that I have created during this semester with colleagues. I shared these materials with the confidence knowing that they were backed by sound learning theory.

Impact on My Pedagogy

The greatest impact this course has had on my own teaching is that now I use technology in the classroom knowing that it is based in sound educational theory. As an ESL teacher, theories of second language acquisition (SLA) have always informed my teaching and materials creation. However, when it came to technology, although I could apply SLA theories when developing technology based lessons,  I wasn’t sure if the delivery method (technology) was actually effective, and with this uncertainty came skepticism. Now, although the skepticism isn’t completely gone, I know that with the wider variety of theories that clearly support technology use and the concept of relative advantage as a method to weed out irrelevant technology, my own technology integration is more pedagogically sound.

Part II: Assess Your Performance

Criteria	Comments	Numerical Grade
Content (70 points)	I think that the content of my blogs met the criteria for at least a proficient rating. In each post I tried to make connections between both new and previous content and real life teaching situations. I think that most of my blogs gave specific examples relevant to the topic as well.	60/70
Reading and  Resources (20 points)	I used both the course textbook and peer-reviewed articles relevant to both educational technology and applied linguistics/teaching English as a second language. I made sure to cite and reference using the current APA format guidelines from the 6th edition of the APA Publication Manual.	20/20
Timeliness (20 points)	For the most part, I submitted my blogs early in the week to allow for my peers to comment on them. I did, however, turn in a few blogs (ie.the video blog) on the due date.	17/20
Responses  to Other Students  (30 points)	I did reply to two of my peer’s blogs for all but one weekly blog assignment. I gave in-depth responses on the blog topics that interested me, but I know I could have been more thoughtful about some of the other blog topics.	22/30
Total (140 points)	Overall, although I think I gave complete and thoughtful answers to most of the blog prompts, I was not as invested in certain topics as I should have/could have been, and this clearly shows in both my own blog responses and in the responses to my peers.	119/140

Assistive Technology

Ease of access on PCs and laptops is essential for learners with both sensory and cognitive disabilities. Assistive technology facilitates ease of access, and as Edyburn and Robyler (2016) explain, allows disabled individuals “to complete tasks more efficiently, effectively, and independently than otherwise possible” (p. 408). All operating systems on the market today offer built-in ease of access features. The Microsoft Windows 10 operating system includes a wide array of options that can be enabled to make the use of the Windows interface possible for disabled learners.

Most of the features that function to increase accessibility on the Windows OS are aimed at assisting learners with sensory impairments. The following features are available for learners who are partially sighted:

• Audio Description - An on-screen narrator describes the action that is occurring in a video. (Not available for all videos.)
• Background Image Removal - This feature removes unnecessary images and any overlapping content to increase readability.
• High Contrast - This feature increases contrast to make text and images easier to read and see.
• Keyboard Shortcuts - This feature allows the user to navigate through windows using alt key and ctrl key command combinations rather than using a mouse.
• Mouse Cursor Enlargement - The mouse cursor can be enlarged to make navigating through menus and multiple windows easier.
• Narrator - This feature can be turned on so that all onscreen text is narrated.
• Screen Magnifier - This allows any part of the screen to be enlarged, making text and images easier to read.
• Speech Recognition - This allows the user to control the PC using only voice commands.

The following features are available for learners who are blind:

• Audio Description - An on-screen narrator describes the action that is occurring in a video. (Not available for all videos.)
• Narrator - This feature can be turned on so that all onscreen text is narrated.
• Speech Recognition - This allows the user to control the PC using only voice commands.

The following features available for learners who are hearing impaired or deaf:

• Replace Sound with Visuals - This feature replaces sounds with visual cues. Visual cues include a flashing active caption bar, flashing active window, and flashing desktop. Also, spoken dialogue is text captioned.

The following features are available for learners who are physically impaired:

• Keyboard Shortcuts - This feature allows the user to navigate through windows using alt key and ctrl key command combinations rather than using a mouse.
• Mouse Keys - This feature allows the user to navigate the screen using the number keypad rather than a mouse.
• On-screen Keyboard - This feature replaces the traditional keyboard with a visual keyboard which is manipulated using the mouse cursor. No touchscreen is needed.
• Speech Recognition - This allows the user to control the PC using only voice commands.

The following feature is available for learners who have reading difficulties

• Narrator - This feature can be turned on so that all onscreen text is narrated.

References

Robyler, M. D. (2016). Integrating educational technology into teaching. Upper Saddle 
River, NJ: Pearson.

Obstacles and Suggested Solutions for Integrating Technology into ESL Instruction

“Just shoot me.” This was my response just the other day to the news that next semester the ESL department I teach for is going to be adopting a new textbook for the level I teach even though we’ve used our current textbook for just one semester.

One of the aspects of teaching that is not my favorite even though I know it’s necessary is just this, the thought of adopting a new course textbook. For a teacher it’s either a fantastic chance to be creative with new material or something short of a major life crisis. Sitting and contemplating for hours about how to make a new textbook work is, as we all  know, simply a part of the teaching profession. Once a plan for implementing the new textbook is laid out, it’s only a matter of piloting it in an actual class. While piloting the text, kinks are worked out, and post-pilot, the decision of whether to treasure it or trash it has to be made. This is no different for educational technology. When new technology is introduced, instructors may want to integrate it into their instruction, but a multitude of complications can arise.

Problem 1. Finding Level-Appropriate Videos Lectures

One of the most significant issues in regards to finding and integrating technology into the academic ESL classroom is the availability of accurate and level appropriate grammar and writing instruction videos. In advanced level ESL composition courses, grammar and writing instruction usually needs to focus on making writers aware of the more subtle elements of academic writing such as pronoun clarity, the use of cleft sentences, cohesion, and the known-new contract. If an instructor looks to Youtube as a source for freely available videos the information provided is sometimes inaccurate. If the instructor persuses Teachertube, the videos are often professionally produced and accurate but not level appropriate for the college level ESL student.

One source that an instructor can find video sources to meet the needs of college ESL writing students is Khan Academy. Khan academy provides a wide array of videos for ESL instruction including materials for lower level and advanced, academic level ESL. In addition to the already-made videos of Khan Academy, instructors may opt to create their own instructional videos designed for the specific needs of their student population. Video creation tools such as Camtasia, Screencast-O-Matic, and Snagit allow instructors to create their own videos and publish them to Youtube or simply send their students their video lessons.

Problem 2. Addressing Plagiarism from Online Sources

Plagiarism is a challenge that faces colleges and universities across globe. In the United States and other countries where there has been an influx of international students entering the higher education system, this problem is most noticeable. In an article discussing the ever-growing problem of plagiarism in the U.K., Brendan O’Malley (2016) reports that at Staffordshire University, international students who constitute only five percent of the total student population comprised over half of the reported incidences of academic dishonesty. This is not to say that international students are the only perpetrators of academic dishonesty; however, it is most noticeable in this student population. This phenomena has been attributed to many factors but most particularly the idea that notions of intellectual property vary from culture to culture. That being said, this issue is exacerbated by the ease of access to the Internet and other advances in digital technology. The Internet along with other programs and devices including text messaging and online essay writing services have play major roles in many cases of academic dishonesty.

Vigilance on the part of instructors, student peers, and academic departments is probably still the best defense against academic dishonesty that is facilitated by technology. However, technology itself can be used to prevent and identify instances of plagiarism and cheating. For example, online resources such as ESL blogger, Larry Ferlazzo’s, The Best Online Resources to Teach about Plagiarism provide extensive lesson materials for teaching students how to avoid plagiarism. Most colleges and universities also have their own plagiarism resource pages for their students. Lycoming University has even created a free online plagiarism identification game in which students try to find and dispatch plagiarism goblins. As for the identification of plagiarism, instructors can use a simple Google search by typing a piece of text thought to have been plagiarized in the search field with quotation marks around it. If in fact the text has been lifted from an online source, the Google search is frequently successful in finding it. In addition, most instructors can utilize Turn-It-In.com for a more thorough originality check. Many institutions have accounts for all faculty so this is a convenient way to address suspected plagiarism.

Problem 3. Selecting Appropriate Apps to Support ESL Instruction

With the multitude of apps being developed for anything and everything, instructors have the monumental task of determining which apps are educationally sound and which apps are . . . “in-app-propriate”. ESL is no different. Apps created to support ELLs range in quality from “the new standard” to “uhhhhh . . . ”. In addition to the sometimes questionable quality of some apps, the issue of utilizing a selected app in a variety of ways in order to make implementation worthwhile is one that instructors should all consider.

One way to address these issues is for the instructor to vet a potentially useful app him or herself. This maybe the best way to ensure quality apps are selected and leveraged most effectively, but the amount of time that must be invested in a thorough vetting process is a resource that most educators lack. An alternative to self-vetting is using online references provided by other educators who have already successfully used a particular app. Robyler (2016) suggests language instructors refer to Top Ten Must-Have Apps lists or conduct Internet searches using “language learning X”, where X is the name of an app, to find links to novel ways to integrate the app into language instruction.

References

O’Malley, Brendan. (2016). Cheating by international students rampant at British 

universities, says newspaper. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 

from http://chronicle.com/article/Cheating-by-International/234904

Robyler, M. D. (2016). Integrating educational technology into teaching. Upper Saddle 
River, NJ: Pearson.