Education & Times - With nearly 20 years of experience teaching English at all grade levels and approaching many developed methods, Ms. Bich Nhu Ho had applied teaching initiatives through Schoology software when taking on her duty at the Faculty of Foreign Languages of Kien Giang University.

Never stop innovating

 After graduating with a B.A degree in pedagogy from An Giang University, Ms. Bich Nhu Ho had started her teaching career since 2000. She taught at different secondary and high schools in An Giang province. At times, she even went teaching in Hon Tre island commune - Kien Hai District (Kien Giang province). In 2007, she moved to Rach Gia City (Kien Giang province), continuing to work as an English teacher at Nguyen Dinh Chieu High School before the school converted to a private mechanism, bearing the new name I- school.

During her post-graduate study, Ms. Nhu Ho witnessed professors presenting the Moodle online learning management system. In 2015, she applied for a job in the Faculty of Foreign Languages ​​at Kien Giang University and began to come up with the idea of ​​applying smart software to support teaching task as an English teacher.

 However, the previous Moodle application version required fee from users, while Ms. Nhu wanted to find another application permitting users to use for free to make students’ study convenient and cheap. Luckily, a former colleague teaching Math in An Giang high school introduced her to Schoology software. Because Ms. Nhu was one of the pioneers using Schoology in the region, his business unit decided to let her use free several basic functions.

 How convenient is Schoology?

 Schoology was originally a forum designed by Jeremy Friedman, Ryan Hwang and Tim Trinidad in 2017 when all three were students at the University of Washington. Schoology became a learning management system (LMS) for schools and higher education institutions. The application allowed users to create, manage and share content for a community of educators around the world.

 The Schoology platform was cloud-based, allowing teachers to organize courses and manage student learning content. Meanwhile, they could share and connect with other educators right on their blog.

 Ms. Bich Nhu Ho shared: "Through Schoology, I can create accounts, create courses, and issue login codes to students in class. Students go to the application, fill out information and become a member. Using Schoology, instructors can download documents in pdf, word, audio files, images... instead of wasting time sending emails to each student."

 According to Ms. Nhu Ho, when teaching at university, the problem lied in limited class time, requiring students to self-study. Schoology was very suitable for students to hone their skills outside of regular classes. When creating assignments on Schoology, Ms. Nhu Ho could create a discussion forum. If this student uploaded his/her assignment, other students would be able to access it and give comments. The teachers themselves could easily grade. Among the four skills of listening - speaking - reading - writing, Schoology served essay writing skills very well. If the students wanted to organize group to do exercises, Ms. Nhu Ho would have created a separate group for each group to do exercises and then she assigned a deadline for them to submit their tasks.

Dynamic learning process

 The application of Schoology created a premise for diversifying learning activities through extracurricular activities. Extracurricular activities of the Faculty of Foreign Languages ​​took students to tourist destinations. Students visited and practiced speaking English and communicated with foreigners in the area they visited.

 At the end of a field trip, Ms. Nhu Ho divided students into groups to make clips reporting their experiences in English, then uploaded them to Schoology for other groups to watch, give comments, and be graded by the instructor. Observing a class that Ms. Nhu Ho deployed using the Schoology application and showed clips created by students, you could see that the students created the clips very elaborately, spoke English quite fluently and were very bold in expressing themselves in front of the screen.

After a period of applying Schoology, Ms. Bich Nhu Ho assessed that most students were interested, studied more actively, and all had the opportunity to access more reference material. In a scientific study conducted by Ms. Nhu, there were two survey groups, one group studied through Schoology, the other group studied using traditional methods. The results showed that the group learning through Schoology achieved higher results.

In the near future, Ms. Bich Nhu Ho hoped to build a "flipped classroom model" based on e-learning technology. Accordingly, teacher posted videos in advance and students watched these lectures at home. Time in class was only for activities that consolidate, expand knowledge and create more interesting learning opportunities.

Ms. Nhu Ho also wanted students to take competency tests on the Schoology system, however, this system was only accepting free use of basic features, so a class of over 30 students easily led to overloading the Schoology feature. Ms. Nhu Ho said she was aiming at a solution with a stronger foundation.

 According to Education and Times Newspaper

(Translated by M.A Hieu Danh)

http://www.vnkgu.edu.vn/Tin-tuc---Su-kien/Co-giao-day-tieng-Anh-ung-dung-phan-mem-thong-minh-274.html