Teachers’ attitudes to moving online quickly Jennifer West UTS College, Sydney Rebecca Matteson UTS College, Sydney
Context and participants We are teachers who work at UTS College (formerly UTS Insearch) in Sydney, which is a pathway provider to the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). Students can progress from UTS College to UTS in three ways: through the Academic English (AE) direct entry program, through the Foundation program (FDN), or by completing a diploma allowing entry to second year undergraduate courses. At the beginning of our project, Rebecca was Program Coordinator of an AE program. AE has five programs, each with 200 hours of intensive English tuition. Jennifer was Subject Coordinator for FDN English, within the FDN program. The FDN program is a 12-month bridging course for students who either have not completed the Higher School Certificate (HSC), which is the examination taken by students in New South Wales in their final year of high school, or whose qualifications have not been recognised by UTS. The program aims to increase academic study skills, and students take a range of subjects including Mathematics, Science, and Digital Literacy. At UTS College, 2020 was going to be a year of transition. Our school was planning to implement a new curriculum and a new learning management system (LMS) which would create a more blended teaching and learning environment than we had previously. As coordinators, we were tasked with adequately preparing teachers for these changes. To do so, we first needed to examine teachers’ attitudes to blended learning techniques. Therefore, we decided to focus our action research (AR) project on the teachers who would be navigating these substantial changes. Our research participants were ELICOS teachers who taught in either the AE or FDN English programs. At the start of 2020, there were over 100 teachers working at UTS College and our interventions and data collection were open to any of these teachers who wished to participate.
Research focus Initially, our AR project was focused on UTS College’s move to blended learning using a new LMS, Canvas, as a result of UTS College’s new curriculum. The impact of this move was that teachers would simultaneously need to learn the features of the new curriculum and the subsequent changes to teaching and learning it entailed, as well as how to navigate the new LMS. During previous technological and curriculum transitions, we had observed a range of attitudes towards the adoption of a blended learning approach, including ‘resistant’ teachers (Reinders 2018). We had hoped to examine teachers’ attitudes to blended learning techniques and ensure teachers were adequately prepared for the transition to the new LMS and curriculum. However, in March 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, our research focus shifted from blended to exclusively online learning. UTS College moved to deliver all courses online, via Zoom and Blackboard for AE, and via
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