The goal of this project was to create a single online repository of teaching and study aids to meet the needs of students of English at HVO.
Divided into the three principal areas of English Studies covered in our courses – culture and literature, didactics, and language – the Bank of English Teaching Resources (BETR) provides guidelines on how to develop key skills and carry out essential exercises, annotated examples of good and bad practice, sample exam papers, and links to other useful resources online and in the college library.
Which educational needs does this resource address?
English is taught in a variety of different formats and on a variety of different programmes at HVO: some of our students study with us online, while others attend regular campus classes; some of them are enrolled on our Year Course or Bachelor programme, while others are working towards a teacher-training degree. Each of these formats and programmes brings with it its own distinctive needs and requirements and presents its own specific challenges.
There are, nonetheless, a number of fundamental learning strategies and outcomes that are common to all our courses and it is our responsibility to ensure that our students have the resources they need to enact those strategies and achieve those outcomes. These include the ability to acquire and evaluate information on one’s own, to continue to engage in active learning and self-assessment outside the classroom, and to conduct independent research and study.
The Bank of English Teaching Resources has been designed specifically to address these challenges.
By enabling students to find more of the information they need on their own, it should allow us to extend our implementation of the ideals of the ‘flipped classroom’ to a greater degree than has heretofore been possible.
By providing our students with structured guidelines to fundamental tasks along with annotated examples of good and bad practice, it should encourage them to continue to practise and develop the skills they need outside the classroom.
Finally, by giving them access to resources beyond those we actively discuss or utilise in class time, BETR makes it possible for our students to pursue their interest in English and the English-speaking world beyond the confines of their course plans and reading lists, thus stimulating in them a greater propensity for independent research
It should be added that having one single place in which to upload our documents and relevant links has brought at least one other benefit as well: now that we no longer have to post those documents or links several times in separate rooms on Fronter or Canvas, we not only save time but can also be much more confident that the versions of those documents we give to our students are the most up-to-date and that the links have not become defunct.
Implementation and running of the project
The project has been led by Timothy Saunders but has involved every member of the English section at HVO. We divided ourselves into three groups – one for culture and literature, one for didactics, and one for language – and each group was responsible for providing the necessary content for their assigned part of the site.
The Bank of English Teaching Resources uses a standard WordPress theme and template. This is easy to use and means that every staff member is able to edit and post their own material on the website. The only technical difficulty we encountered lay in installing this template on the college server; thankfully, the college’s e-learning team took care of that.
The Bank of English Teaching Resources can be found at https://betr.hivolda.no/. It is a password-protected site but is available for all staff members and students at HVO using their standard username and password.
Conclusion
The Bank of English Teaching Resources promises to be a vital platform for the teaching of English at HVO for many years to come. It is easy to use, simple in design and structure, and thus flexible enough to be expanded and adapted in response to the changing needs of the future. As such, we believe it helps place us at the forefront of the use and development of digital tools in the teaching of English at higher education institutions in Norway. In other words – and as its acronym suggests – we believe that BETR makes the teaching and study of English at Volda even better.
We would therefore like to thank the college for setting up the pilot programme aimed at stimulating the use of digital media in teaching that has funded this project. Without this funding, which – amongst other things – enabled every member of the English section to be bought out of a few hours of teaching, it is unlikely this resource would ever have come into existence. Now that it is up and running, though, we should be able to continue to expand and update it without the need for extra financial assistance.
Written by Timothy Saunders