Teaching Languages Online

Definitions and Terms

Who's talking about what has been part of the confusion when talking about teaching online, or teaching at a distance, or do you mean asynchronous networked courses? Here are some of the commonly used terms with our definitions and some sources that may support - or contradict us!

Online course — 80% or more of the course is online (delivered by networked computer) — re SLOAN-C, considering that some courses are taught entirely online but require face-to-face for exams.

Distance teaching/learning — when the teacher is not in the same room as the student. This would include online courses, videoconferencing, and traditional correspondence courses.

Hybrid/blended — we've seen this used in two different ways:
1) Focus on the content/delivery where sometimes the student is in class face-to-face and sometimes the student is getting content online and they drop F2F meetings for the online content.
2) Focus on the student/teacher where a synchronous teaching situation includes some students in the room with the teacher and other students at a remote site.

Videoconferencing — delivered through synchronous video — although this term has gotten confounded now because it could mean using a special hardware system like the Polycom or it could be through a computer internet system like Elluminate or AdobeConnect (networked computer).

Synchronous — happening at the same time, live. Examples: Elluminate sessions, Skype video chat.

Asynchronous — content stays so people can access whenever, not live. Examples: email, discussion board, wiki.

Semi-synchronous — "almost live" but not quite synchronous. Examples: texting, instant messaging.

So pick your definitions and let people know exactly what you are talking about!
Things tend to be quite different between K-12 and higher ed — are you looking at both?

Higher Ed
Here are definitions from the the SLOAN-C's report (p. 7) for higher ed:
http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/goingthedistance.pdf

K-12
"Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning" yearly report:
http://kpk12.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/KeepingPace2011.pdf
This report contains helpful definitions and program explanations (p. 8-11)

You may also want to pick up iNACOL's "Online Learning Definitions Project" (PDF)
http://www.inacol.org/research/docs/iNACOL_DefinitionsProject.pdf