The reality behind the hype -- Online world language teaching and instructional design.

摘要

The rapid growth of online learning has caught much attention of educators in recent years. In 2013, more than 7.1 million college and university students took at least one online course in the United States with about 400,000 more students joining the virtual learning environment each year. This speedy progress prompted language educators and school administrators to consider the option of online learning to meet students' demand for world language studies and increase learning opportunities. However, surrounding this rapid advance are cautious opinions and concerns. For online learning to hold its ground, thrive, and fulfill its promise, many pivotal issues should be carefully considered prior to its initiation. Instructional design, for instance, is one of the imperative factors that educators cannot ignore.;Conducted as a mixed methods study, this dissertation research investigated world language teachers' online teaching experiences and how they understood the concept of instructional design. It examined the instructional design strategies that online world language teachers perceived as important and explored the relationship between the teachers' perception and adoption of these strategies. Most importantly, by documenting the way world language teachers developed and delivered their online instruction, this study aimed to shed light on the "black box" of the teaching and instructional design process of online language courses.;Analyses were conducted on data collected from a questionnaire survey (N= 46) and 14 individual interviews with online language teachers. Course materials provided by the teachers were also employed for document analysis. As the findings suggested, language teachers were much more concerned about the drawbacks than they showed passion for the affordances of online teaching. They were cautious about the insufficient interpersonal interaction in the courses, widespread student failure, confounding technology applications, and an administration-driven objective for online education. Their understandings of instructional design evoked a "one-size-fits-all" connotation, which showed a clear contradiction to the existing literature and should deserve scholars' and practitioners' careful consideration. However, against the backdrop of numerous challenges in relation to schools, students, and the online courses, language teachers' instruction aligned with the major pedagogical principles was evidenced in the study.