Countless problems arise in the classroom that responsible instructors observe and address. Students might not be motivated to learn a subject, students might have a difficult time with a particular topic, or students might just be too shy to interact with each other. Teaching online during a pandemic is no different—though the problems may seem significantly harder or even impossible to solve at times. However, regardless of the problem, regardless of the situation, carefully planned tasks that address the perceived issue are the key.

Problem 1: Making students interact online to practice language learning without Zoom

 Early in the spring semester, there were many uncertainties about the trajectory of COVID 19. I was told that I would be teaching face-to-face by April. Thus, investing in live-streaming software, like Zoom, was considered impractical. My solution to this issue was using pre-recorded videos uploaded onto Google Classroom and releasing scheduled tasks that I watched over and interacted in as the students were working. However, without Zoom, I could not easily promote classroom interactions that would normally take place in a language classroom.  Role play activities become difficult without conferencing software. They become tedious if students have to type out the role play in a shared document or a chat window. They become inefficient if students do them through applications like Flipgrid, where they have long waiting periods between turns as their partner is recording.

 Google Docs and Google Slides, programs that easily link to Google Classroom, have a chatting option—though not on the mobile version. Simply putting students in a document and expecting them to use the chatting feature without a reason to do so rarely leads to communication. However, if a task requires communication to be completed, then they will communicate for the sake of the task.

Implemented Solution: Tasks that force group collaboration

To encourage my students to interact with each other during my online university credit courses, I designed a travel itinerary task. Students in groups of four or five had to plan a single day of a vacation together using a shared Google Doc. There were multiple phases to this task—some required collaboration between classmates, some did not. First, students needed to agree on a location to visit. Then each student needed to brainstorm at least three activities for one day of travel. This resulted in a list of 12 to 15 activities. After brainstorming, the students worked together to choose only 10 of the activities from their brainstorm (The number can be changed as necessary to fit the class and group size).  It was usually at this point that even students who were reluctant to communicate with others realised that they had no choice but to start talking.

Having observed this task multiple times, I noticed that the most commonly occurring communications were making compromises. Students would take two ideas and propose that they could be done as a single activity rather than deleting one person’s idea.  For example, if one idea was to go for a walk and another idea was to see flowers in a famous garden, students would argue that these two activities could be done at the same time. Upon agreeing, they would write the combined idea into the final itinerary.

Alternative Topics

Different topics other than my vacation itinerary example work just as well. It is entirely possible to make a money-centric version where the limiting factor is a budget cap. This version would be especially powerful if each student in the group is given a role. For example, if the objective is to plan a school festival, each student could represent different committees that make up a festival planning team. The students would individually calculate the desired amount of budget required to successfully complete their role. Then the group would meet and find out they have spent more than their total budget. At that point, the communication and compromise would begin. The task would end when the group has successfully allocated the budget to each of the committees. If you want to make more competition, the students could compete against classmates from different groups who hold the same role to see which person secures the most money for their role.

Using Zoom

Collaborative tasks benefit from Zoom, but it is not necessary. Google Docs’ built-in chat function was where most of the communication occurred in my travel itinerary task. Some groups wrote directly in the document to compensate for one of Google Docs’ limitations—only the browser version has chat functions.  When I gained access to Zoom, I used the same task, but Zoom was used for communication rather than Google Docs. In this case, the students could talk to each other in breakout rooms. The biggest difference when using Zoom instead of text-based chat was that Zoom allowed the groups to more efficiently communicate. Thus, they completed the task faster.

Problem 2: How to deal with copying from the Internet and using translators for doing assignments?

It is not uncommon to encounter student work that has been plagiarised from the Internet or completely done through an online translator. To me, these two problems seem more common this online semester—perhaps because I cannot monitor students as they are doing their assignments. There are many reasons for students to turn to plagiarizing or using a translator. For copying, they might not know how to properly use online resources. Alternatively, the students might just be incredibly lazy and copying from the Internet or using a translator is easier than doing the work in another language.

I can think of several ways of addressing these problems. In my opinion, the best way to deal with copying from online is to teach the students how to write summaries in L2 and give them opportunities to practice it. However, this may not be an option in classes with rigid curriculums because it could be too time consuming to integrate into the syllabus. As for translators, I personally do not think using them is an issue. They are useful tools that give clarity when used for reading instructions, and make writing documents involving L2 faster and easier. However, inputting text into a translator, taking the output and calling that the final product is a problem. Translators miss out on providing voice or can put incorrect words—or transliterations of words—if the L1 input contains mistakes. Students need to be taught how they can use their translators by rereading and changing the final output to match a genre. However, like teaching summaries, this might not be possible in courses that have restrictions on content or time constraints.  A more time-efficient approach to deterring students from copying and using translators is to not make it worth their time.

Implemented Solution: Limit copying and translators through requirements

A simple way to discourage students from using a translator or copying from the Internet is to make it inefficient to do so through requirements. For example, I made a vocabulary requirement for my assignments. The textbook in our credit courses introduced many lexical items each unit. I required my students to use a certain number of vocabularies from the book’s vocabulary list to score points on the assignment’s rubric. I suggest requiring students bold or underline the words to make them conscious of their word choice. It also makes it easier to grade the vocabulary requirement in the rubric.  

The vocabulary requirement makes it difficult to copy information directly from the Internet or use an online translator. Internet resources do not include enough vocabulary words to come close to fulfilling the requirement. Likewise, using a translator does not guarantee that enough vocabulary words will appear in the output—it will not underline them either—unless the student rereads and edits their work.

Other requirements also work to deter copying and translators. Setting requirements to use certain numbers of a grammar form would also force students to write their own sentences or do some heavy editing. Putting a genre or voice requirement would also make it very difficult to rely on a translator.

An extra bonus to adding requirements is that it shifts the issue from copying and translating to fulfilling requirements. Thus, it also addresses a problem where I encounter student work that I am suspicious of copying but cannot find any solid evidence. Prior to adding requirements, I would have to spend time looking for evidence rather than marking and giving feedback. However, by adding requirements to assignments, I do not need to justify that I am suspicious of copying, I can fail students for not meeting requirements. I find this to be a much more defensible and efficient solution.

Conclusion

These are some solutions that I have used to solve some of the problems that I have encountered online this semester. There are countless potential problems that we as instructors will encounter online. A lot of them can be solved with a similar approach to what I have shown in this article—find a way to solve the problem through designing tasks that address it.

ABOUT AUTHOR:

Andrew Aguiar is the head of the SLE Curriculum Committee at Gyeongsang National University. He has a background in TESOL-MALL (Multimedia Assisted Language Learning).