Talk:Data-Driven Language Learning Using Corpora and Concordancing

Instructor Comments on your unit 1 -- Jz833665 13:01, 22 November 2009 (EST)

You've worked out a nice design for the course as a whole. A few suggestions based on my reading of your unit 1 in progress:

Before you start your unit 1, you need to have a paragraph to background this course and orientate the learners.
In unit 1, I think you need to introduce (at least briefly) "Data-Driven Language Learning" early on, so that the learners know why they should care about corpora. To help the learners have a sense of the "whole task" you may even provide an example/case of a Data-Driven Language Learning class (e.g., a video, lesson plan), so that they will then know towards what end they are the learning the component skills/concepts.
For each reflection/discussion activity, you need to tell the learner where they will post/write down their responses, such as on paper or in a discussion space (see General_Suggestions_and_Feedback#Can_I_create_a_discussion_task_and_space_in_my_wiki-based_course)

Kurt's Overall Comments -- Kurt Hassenpflug 16:49, 28 November 2009 (EST)

Ben,

It looks like you're off to a good start with your design project. Having a graphic on your introductory page is always a nice touch because it can soften what might otherwise be a lot of text. In regards to introduction, I think it is very well written. One change that you might want to consider making to it would be to specify in the introduction exactly who the course is for (i.e. teachers of..., etc.)." Also, you may want to consider bulleting out your course objectives rather than keeping it in narrative format. Bullets make it very clear what the expectations are.

In unit 1, I think your inclusion of an example lesson is an excellent idea - it really helps to drive points home for the participants in your course. Once again, I would consider bullets for your target objectives for this unit. I think both of your exercises for Unit 1 are excellent. However, I think the directions might be clearer if you outlined them before the students even get to the questions. For example, in Thinking Exercise 1, the directions at the top simply tell students to think about the questions, but then after the questions you tell your participants to respond to the questions in the discussion area. This dissonance may be confusing for some, so I think that clearly stating that you want participants to "respond to the following questions in the discussion area" before you give the questions may help to clarify things.

Overall, I think you are off to an excellent start. Keep up the good work and I look forward to seeing the finalized project!

Barbara's Comments -- Barbara Recchio-Demmin 20:29, 28 November 2009 (EST)

Ben Your mini-course is amazing! I must admit that I knew nothing about data-driven language learning, although I have been using authentic materials in my Spanish classes for years. This method of incorporating language learning through text analysis is so powerful! Thanks for enlightening me. I read every article and looked at all of your links. I know I need to be giving you feedback, but honestly, I couldn't see anywhere that you could improve - not even a typo! Instead, you taught me a ton! I will be back when you finish the other units, in order to further my education :) Barb

Sapphire's Comments -- [[User:--Sapphire Gimenez 20:03, 30 November 2009 (EST)]]

Hi Ben, I'm turning over our email conversations/comments onto here for convenience sake. As I mentioned earlier, the pictures you have selected are wonderful. They correlate well with your written work. The choice of topic is also very interesting. Most people don't know a whole lot about it and so the interest is high.

On the other hand, introducing a new topic with lots of new terms on one page can be demanding on the reader. Look how many technical words are in this sentence "Data-Driven Language Learning Using Corpora and Concordancing".

Maybe scaffolding the concepts, introducing them gradually, might be a solution.

Sapphire