My students work on their projects for about 7 – 8 weeks. I give them a framework in which I outline the purpose and learning objectives of this exercise, the timeline, traditional and online tools to be used, expectations, and evaluations. This framework serves as a skeleton which students use to navigate their knowledge building. I do not, however, select the topics for my students, nor do I ask, as I have seen some teachers do, the whole class to focus on one topic. I emphasize that students should choose topics they are interested in and not topics that they think 1. are easy to research or 2. teachers want them to choose. Keep in mind though that I am working with adults (19 – 25 years old) who are university students or are about to become university students. I do review and approve these topics as some of them might be too trivial or too narrow to do research on. It’s really up to the student, however, what they want to investigate and what they want to become experts on. I do emphasize the word EXPERTS – they work on these projects to become the leading specialists in the field (very motivating and empowering, as you may have guessed).

Over the several weeks that I spend with my students, they engage in using various traditional and more unconventional tools in their knowledge collection. Since reading, summarizing, and paraphrasing skills are the key learning outcomes, students engage in collecting articles from various sources on their research topic. I introduce them to library database, Google Alerts, and Google Scholar, but they are free to find their articles anywhere. Every week, they present the findings on their topic to the class (in-class assignments) or on their blogs. I have done it in different ways, so it’s up to one’s imagination really.

We use blogs as research journals. In the first week, students set up blogs which they later use to summarize and critique news articles or listening material. In regards to listening material, I introduce them to university lecture podcasts and videocasts (many American universities have put their lectures online and UC Berkeley started putting their lectures on googlvideo) as well as other less academic sites such as Absolutely Intercultural. They are also required to find a video on UTube on their topic, post it on their blog, and summarize or critique it. This has worked well and they all have enjoyed doing it.

We use Flickr to collect images and 43Trio (occasionally) to see what others say on the topics of people, travelling, or one’s goals. Flickr has worked out well although there are some issues in regards to copyrights that I need to incorporate into my exercises. 43Trio is less useful as a information gathering site mostly because of navigation problem (we spend a lot of time learning how to use it) and because it rarely matches my students’ topics.

In a nut shell, the students use all of these tools (academic and non-academic resources) to go from a limited knowledge base on a particular topic (they may know it well in their first language but not in their second language) to becoming experts in that particular field. It’s really a scaffolding process in which they become authorities. I purposely de-emphasize the pure academic approach to researching (library books) because I think we have gone beyond the traditional typographical discourse with the online presence and access to information that we have now (e.g. when I need to know something my first instinct is to google it and not to go to the library). I also try to include a variety of tools and information sources so that students become 1. connect (or see the connection between) the academic world with the reality, 2. become more resourceful and creative in their approach to learning, 3. become proficient with various online information gathering applications, 4. collect information in a variety of medium (text, video, image, voice) – become multiliterate (I would also argue that they are growing up multiliterate but when they go to school their multiliterate identities are discouraged with heavy emphasis on text).

The students present their projects at the end of the term in a written form and orally. I haven’t figured out how to make it more multimodal yet (podcast, VoiceThread, etc.) but I am working on it.

There are several challenges to this project-based research approach, but that’s a topic for a different post.

The major project that we do together over the 6 weeks I spend with one group is the research project. Students start early in the semester by choosing their topics and continue to collect data on that throughout the rest of the session. A research project can be both a boring and douting assignment, done mostly by using the library system and its collection of books and other print materials. What I decided to do was to transform the nature of this project from a purely text-based project to a multi-media one. In addition to text-based resources students also look for information online using various other online applications.

In this diagram, the middle part, “Classroom Teaching and Learning,” represents the traditional, closed, classroom environment. The learners interact with each other and with their teacher for a couple of hours a day. They use the tools available in the classroom setting: blackboard, textbooks, notepads, dictionaries. They also have contact with each other which means with other students learning English who are at the same level they are; therefore, there is not much linguistic input taking place in this environment.

“Content-Based Teaching” refers to the research project that students are required to do; their learning environment is somewhat extended because they need to find resources and interact in English outside of the classroom environment (e.g., library, other students, etc.). Having one project to work on is a good base to develop their linguistic skills as they can concentrate on one topic that is of interest to them and they can build their linguistic knowledge by focusing on one area of studies. In addition to that, working on this project allows them to become experts and that in turns builds their confidence in using the language.

The addition of online tools such as blogs, podcasts, bloglines, and flickr allows the students to extend this learning environment even further. By using these online applications for their research purposes, students find information outside the confinement of their classroom/textbook/teacher environment and can also interact in English by joining groups and looking for other individuals interested in the same topics they are interested in. The arrows represent the dynamics of interaction that is taking place between the learner’s traditional learning environment and the extended environment that is available online.

What does “social media” mean for you? Which social media have you used already and what are your feelings about it?

The brilliance of social media is that it allows individuals to connect. This is something that is not only crucial for ESL/EFL students but to everyone else in general. We now have various applications that we can use for personal interests to find out where people travel (43places) or applications through which we can share our professional interests or knowledge (del.ici.ous). I am also a big fan of other social networking sites such as Facebook because those allow us find others who have similar interests and join in a conversation with them. I connected with many other EFL/ESL teachers just by having my presence on that site. The socialization and sharing of information that take place on these sites is definitely revolutionary. It is also something that the students already have in their blood, so forcing them to use text-based only materials for research, studying, or practicing their English skills seems to be “going back in time” and utterly unnatural. Adopting to what they do and how they function in their out-of-school environments is crucial for us. Social media allows us then to be able to meet the students’ needs.