Málfríður - 15.03.2007, Blaðsíða 26

 MÁLFRÍÐUR
software in an open and standardized way. BRR
is a community initiative that is being sponsored
by Carnegie Mellon West Center for Open Source
Investigation, O‘Reilly CodeZoo, SpikeSource and
Intel.”
The resulting ratings confirm the current pre­
eminence of Moodle:
Category Moodle Sakai ATutor Boddington
Functionality 1.25 .75 .25 .25
Usability .8 .8 .6 .65
Documentation .645 .465 .54 .54
Community .6 .384 .24 .288
Security .42 .34 .28 .42
Support .4 .15 .35 .15
Adoption .352 .336 .208 .336
Total Score 4.467 3.225 2.468 2.439
(out of 5)
This announcement produced a massive stimulus
to the environment in which the Covcell Project is
working and guarantees that the system which we
have adopted will receive ongoing financial invest­
ment and support.
3. The Covcell Test Course in Media English
Among the activities of the Covcell Project is the
development of courses in the Moodle environment
which support constructivist approaches to lang­
uage learning and in which Covcell tools can be
tested as they come online. In this section, I will
give an overview of one Covcell Test Course which
I am teaching at the University of Iceland during
the Spring semester of 2007: the course in Media
English. I will present the standard Moodle tools
that I am using in the course, the limits of these
tools and the solutions that the Covcell Project is
developing to address these limits.
3.1 Introducing the Media English Course
The Media English course is one which I have
taught for several years but which I have never
before offered for distance learning. One of the
immediate rewards of adopting Moodle for this
course has been that a small group of distance stud­
ents has been included in the class for the first time.
The course has three general aims: to increase stud­
ents’ confidence in discussing cultural ideas and
stating analytical positions in English; to increase
the linguistic resources that students have for such
discussion, for example by introducing them to
relevant vocabulary; and to increase students’ ana­
lytical awareness of the effects of linguistic usage in
the construction of points of view in news reports
and adverts (e.g. vocabulary choice, grammatical
construction, punctuation and so on), i.e. to develop
critical reading skills.
The course covers texts of two kinds: newspaper
reports in the first half of semester and adverts in
the second half of semester. A number of factors
guided the selection of newspaper texts. The reports
were contemporary; they were largely drawn from
British or American sources; they dealt with issues
that were generating a great deal of comment in
their respective national communities and so could
give an insight into both the kinds of topics which
were culturally salient in those communities and
the style of discourse with which these issues were
addressed; four or five reports were chosen that
covered the same event, allowing a comparison of
reporting approaches, where the variation might be
linked to national perspective (British vs American),
political affiliation, or target market (broadsheet vs
tabloid).
In class, students are encouraged to discuss the
use of language in the reports and present their
views on the perspective on events being offered
in each article. The teacher’s role is to facilitate dis­
cussion, provide analytical vocabulary and cultural
background information, draw attention to relevant
features of the texts and encourage students to draw
out and elaborate their initial responses in a more
explicit and analytical manner.
3.2 Media English – The Original Version
In earlier versions of this course, all interaction was
class­based. The course was evaluated by two set
essays, one on the use of language in the newspa­
per reports and one on the use of language in the
adverts. As resources for preparing this essay, stud­
ents had whatever notes they had taken on class
discussions and the set book. Because the course
was exclusively driven by in­class discussions, it
was impossible for distance students to constructi­
vely participate in the course.
Clearly this course represents a prime example of
the problem and the opportunity that the Covcell
Project seeks to address. It is a language course that
relies on interaction between students and co­oper­
ation in building the understanding of texts and
emphasises the need for students to express their
own views and interact constructively with others.
The question is the degree to which this is possible
in an online environment and whether it is possible
with blended delivery (i.e. mixing on­site and on­