You are here: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tcc2003/proposal.htm

Webheads participate in the Eighth Annual Teaching in the Community Colleges Online Conference April 22-24, 2003

Our presentation has been scheduled for: Tuesday, April 22, 2003, 16:00 to 16:50 GMT
in the Hibiscus chatroom, accessible from http://chat.kcc.hawaii.edu/run.biapchat

Note time change to 16:00 not 19:00

Note for student presenters:

As promised, the conference organizers will waive the registration fee for all presenters that are students or graduate students. If you or your co-presenter(s) qualify for this waiver, please send Bert Y Kimura <bert@hawaii.edu> an email message with the subject line: TCC 2003 student presenter. Bert will send you further instructions on how to register online for this purpose.

OR try this: register by going to the URL: https://skellig.kcc.hawaii.edu/tccreg/reg_info_guest.php

When completing the registration form be sure to:

Choose "Student/Graduate Student" for Affiliation: Status/Classificuation
Choose "Other" for your Registration Choice.

Once you are registered you will get a password and you can see our listings on this page: http://makahiki.kcc.hawaii.edu/tcc/2003/preconf/presentations/

"Student Perspectives on Participating in Webheads, a Community of Online Language Learners and Teachers"

Vance Stevens, Amideast, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Dafne Gonzalez, Universidad Simon Bolivar, Valencia, SPAIN;
Susanne Nyrop, Danish University of Education, Emdrupvej, Copenhagen, DENMARK
Aiden C. Yeh, National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC
(I have requested to have added Yaodong Chen and Fin Su)

And our catalog listing here: http://makahiki.kcc.hawaii.edu/tcc/2003/preconf/presentations/stevens.html

This presentation will report on progress with a student-teacher project in an online ESL class called Writing for Webheads. WfW is a unique example of a well established (online since 1998) yet informal community of self directed learners and teachers interested in developing language learning and teaching skills through exploration of free online CMC (computer-mediated communication) tools ranging from a simple email list and a complex of personal homepages, to synchronous meetings online utilizing voice and webcam conferencing. Online events include a logged live chat session every week, occasional online conference presentations such as this one, and spontaneous instant messaging sessions incorporating text, voice, and video (to the extent possible by participants - not required).

Presenters in this session will include students who will, in conjunction with the teacher participants, prepare a paper discussing positive aspects of their participation in the community as well as negative ones. <Click here to see our paper> Positive aspects include communicative sharing with teachers and other language learners on genres ranging from free discussion to longer debates on the world situation, as seen from different viewpoints in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Germany, Australia, India, etc. Besides surmounting geopolitical borders between students and teachers, distinctions between learners and teachers diminish as they inform each other on their best practices and get answers to all kinds of questions pertaining to use of CMC tools.

On the negative side, students find it hard to follow the discussions, the topics are sometimes beyond their grasp, and sometimes teacher-related matters predominate, and consequently students sometimes report feeling alienated. However, the student participants are motivated in learning English and are willing to use CMCs in their learning processes, and indicate that overall they find Webheads beneficial to their learning.

Our paper will present evidence of trust and commitment throughout the activities, ranging from help with Powerpoint presentations put online, co-production of websites, and keeping of commitments to participate in regular weekly sessions as well as to meet online with people at conferences as in the present case. As time and willingness of online participants allows, the Webheads teacher and student panelists can augment our presentation with a brief tour of the Webheads web pages, as well as Tapped In, Yahoo Messenger voice and/or video conference chat, and iVisit.

Poster Session - View the Poster at the following URL. Explore the Poster. <The link is to this document at: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tcc2003/proposal.htm>
Join the Poster Discussion - Join in the discussion of this session. Go to the following URL to access the Forum bulletinboard. Choose, TCC 2003: Poster Discussions. http://makahiki.kcc.hawaii.edu/vbulletin/
Read a work-in-progress explaining the Webheads projects: Chapter 10. Webheads Communities: Learning Tasks Interleaved with Synchronous Online Communication and Web Page Development forthcoming in a book entitled TASK-BASED INSTRUCTION IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION: PRACTICES AND PROGRAMS coedited by Betty Lou Leaver and Jane G. Willis, Georgetown University Press.
Read Aiden Yeh's paper for this presentation (referenced in the text above): http://www.geocities.com/aidenyeh/webheads/W4W/Publication1.htm
Visit the Writing for Webheads website: http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/webheads.htm
Visit the Webheads in Action website: http://www.geocities.com/vance_stevens/papers/evonline2002/webheads.htm

The annual TCC conference is held each year completely online. The topic for the conference this year is "THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE IN ONLINE AND HYBRID COURSES". This completely online event provides an opportunity for educators to understand the student's perspective in online or hybrid classes. College faculty, staff, students and administrators will describe their experiences, views, imaginations and visions of the student experience in Internet-mediated learning. Topic areas include instruction, learning support, administration, counseling, student services, disability access, and educational technology. This year's conference features presentations by graduate and undergraduate students in collaboration with faculty and other support professionals.

Link to Website: http://www.geocities.com/aidenyeh/webheads/W4W/Publication1.htm (Aiden)

How can language learners use the target language in authentic context, with real audiences to improve their language abilities?

“Writing for Webheads (W4W) is a unique example of a well established (online since 1998) yet informal community of self directed learners and teachers interested in developing language learning and teaching skills through exploration of free online CMC (computer-mediated communication) tools ranging from a simple email list and a complex of personal homepages, to synchronous meetings online utilizing voice and webcam conferencing.

Our paper, for this session, will present evidence of trust and commitment throughout the activities, ranging from help with Powerpoint presentations put online, co-production of websites, and keeping of commitments to participate in regular weekly sessions as well as to meet online with people at conferences as in the present case.

As time and willingness of online participants allows, the Webheads teacher and student panelists will show how this communication and learning takes place with a brief tour of the Webheads web pages, as well as a live participation at Tapped In, Yahoo Messenger voice and/or video conference chat, and iVisit. They will share their experiences in this online learning community, and will anwer questions posed by the audience.

(200 words) - Dafne

Aiden prepared a web page for us and Vance submitted it by the February 17 deadline.
Our presentation is here: http://www.geocities.com/aidenyeh/webheads/W4W/Publication1.htm

Aiden's paper links to another of her articles: http://www.geocities.com/aidenyeh/webheads/W4W/wireless/fp/page1.htm

Susanne has created a weblog at http://www.xanga.com/w4w Username w4w Password: webheads. Here, anyone with the password can make changes to the same document. Sus warns: "Take care! changes can be made by anyone, and please consider before changing whatever. The involved active users should consider to update mails - this will drop a mail in your personal mailbox everytime a new entry has been submitted and published."

So far, the following Webheads are listed in our proposal:

Teachers	Registered?	Students	Details sent to Vance/ Listed in our proposal?
Vance	<-- yes	Susanne (Denmark)	yes / yes
Aiden	<-- yes	Dafne (Venezuela)	yes / yes
		Fin (Taiwan)	yes / yes
		Yaodong (China)	yes / yes

Presentation Title: Student perspectives on an online community for language learning and global friendship - the case of Writing for Webheads
Presentation Format: online panel discussion based on accompanying paper
Nature of the proposed paper: with the help of teachers in the community, students will prepare a paper on our work and experiences, and convene online for a discussion of our community
Status: Not previously published
Intended Audience: from Novice to Advanced; students as well as educators

Registering as Presenters

Name: Vance Stevens, MA/ESL
Academic Title(s)/Rank: CALL Coordinator / Consultant
College & Department: Amideast UAE / MLI Project
Business Mailing Address: Box 7102, Abu Dhabi, UAE
E-mail Address: vstevens@emirates.net.ae
URL (if available): http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/
Pic (124x156): http://www.geocities.com/vance_stevens/papers/vance02march.jpg

Name: Aiden C. Yeh, M.Sc. in English Language Teaching Management
Academic Title/Rank: Instructor
College & Department: English Department, Applied Foreign Languages, National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Business Mailing Address: 1 University Road, Yenchao, Kaohsiung 824, Taiwan, ROC
E-mail Address: aidenyeh@yahoo.com
URL (if available): http://www.geocities.com/aidenyeh
pic (126x123): http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/pics/aiden020917.jpg

Registering as Students

Name: Dafne Gonzalez, MA in Applied Linguistics
Academic Title/Rank: Associate Professor
College & Department: Universidad Simon Bolivar, Language Department
Business Mailing Address: Periodista Badia, 4, 19 Valencia 46010, Spain
E-mail Address: dafne_gonzalez@yahoo.com
URL (if available): http://www.geocities.com/dygonza/index.html

Name: Susanne Nyrop
highest degree(s) attained: Exam.Ped (B.A equivalent),
Academic Title(s)/Rank: educational multimedia & communication, stud.cand.ed, exam controller at colleges for Social education
College & Department: Danish University of Education
Business Mailing Address: Emdrupvej 101, 2400 Copenhagen NV., Denmark
E-mail Address: s.nyrop@get2net.dk

Name: Yaodong Chen
highest degree(s) attained: BA
Academic Title(s)/Rank: Language instructor
College & Department: English Dept of Guangxi Polytechnic
Business Mailing Address: #268 Donghuan Rd,Liuzhou, China 545006
E-mail Address: chenyaod@lz.gx.cninfo.net
URL: http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/yaodong.htm

Name: Fin Su
highest degree(s) attained: BA
Academic Title(s)/Rank: Student
College & Department: Shin Chien University Applied Foreign Language Department
Business Mailing Address:
E-mail Address: huhaye@yahoo.com.tw
URL: http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/fin.htm

Withdrawn: Joyce Chu
Academic Title/Rank: Student
College & Department: English Department, Applied Foreign Languages, National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Business Mailing Address: 1 University Road, Yenchao, Kaohsiung 824, Taiwan, ROC
E-mail Address: panda@ms24.url.com.tw
URL (if available):

URL: http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/webheads.htm
Description: Ten- to twenty-line description or summary of your proposed presentation. -
This presentation will report on progress with a student-teacher project in an online ESL class called Writing for Webheads. WfW is a unique example of a well established (online since 1998) yet informal community of self directed learners and teachers interested in developing language learning and teaching skills through exploration of free online CMC (computer-mediated communication) tools ranging from a simple email list and a complex of personal homepages, to synchronous meetings online utilizing voice and webcam conferencing. Online events include a logged live chat session every week, occasional online conference presentations such as this one, and spontaneous instant messaging sessions incorporating text, voice, and video (to the extent possible by participants - not required).

Presenters in this session will include students who will, in conjunction with the teacher participants, prepare a paper discussing positive aspects of their participation in the community as well as negative ones. Positive aspects include communicative sharing with teachers and other language learners on genres ranging from free discussion to longer debates on the world situation, as seen from different viewpoints in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Germany, Australia, India, etc. Besides surmounting geopolitical borders between students and teachers, distinctions between learners and teachers diminish as they inform each other on their best practices and get answers to all kinds of questions pertaining to use of CMC tools. On the negative side, students find it hard to follow the discussions, the topics are sometimes beyond their grasp, and sometimes teacher-related matters predominate, and consequently students sometimes report feeling alienated. However, the student participants are motivated in learning English and are willing to use CMCs in their learning processes, and indicate that overall they find Webheads beneficial to their learning.

Our paper will present evidence of trust and commitment throughout the activities, ranging from help with Powerpoint presentations put online, co-production of websites, and keeping of commitments to participate in regular weekly sessions as well as to meet online with people at conferences as in the present case. As time and willingness of online participants allows, the Webheads teacher and student panelists can augment our presentation with a brief tour of the Webheads web pages, as well as Tapped In, Yahoo Messenger voice and/or video conference chat, and iVisit.

Would any students or teachers here like to present at this online conference? Are there any people on this list who would like to be presenters at this conference? Our proposal has now been accepted, and together we need to prepare and present it.

A special appeal for student presenters to join us ...

The topic of our presentation is Student perspectives on an online community for language learning and global friendship - the case of Writing for Webheads. It is important that conference attendees hear from you, the students. If you join us, your names will be on the program for the conference.

This will be a great language learning and practicing experience. To make a presentation, all you have to do is join a chat room and say anything you like about Webheads. Native English-speaking Webheads will be there to help you, so language difficulty will not be a problem for you. People who attend your presentation will LOVE to hear from you, believe me!

The conference organizers have agreed to waive registration fees for our student presenters. This means if you want to join our presentation as a student you don't have to pay. To see how to register as a student, click here

For anyone who is not a student ...

REGISTRATION FEES
Individuals: $70 until March 15; $99 late fee
Presenters: $35 until February 28; $70 late fee

Contact Vance to get yourself listed on our presentation AND THEN
REGISTER ONLINE http://tcc.kcc.hawaii.edu before February 28 in order to qualify for the $35 early fee

If you want to join us, then I need from you ...

Name
highest degree attained, e.g., PhD, MBA, BA etc.
Academic Title(s)/Rank:
College & Department:
Business Mailing Address:
E-mail Address:
URL (if available):

Students may co-present for free. If you wish to list yourself as a presenter, you must be available to join us when we present at some point between April 22-24, 2003

Besides those listed in the proposal, others who have expressed interest are:

Teachers: Michael Coghlan (Australia), Juani Barrientos (Chile)
Students: Mika (Japan), Dafne's two students (Venezuela; except the university in Caracas is closed, so indefinite)

At time of submission by the Dec 16 proposal deadline, those who sent in their contact details were listed in the proposal. We can still add more names. For all who want to join us, I need the information (name, etc) shown here.

Webheads have in the past presented live and online at many conferences. We have presented at the "Teaching in the Community Colleges" conference before, at the April 12-14, 2000, Fifth Annual Teaching in the Community Colleges Online Conference. Michael Coghlan wrote our paper for it, at: http://www.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/TCC2000.htm. At this presentation, besides Michael and Maggi and Vance, there were also Gloria, Ying Lan, MaggiE, and Dave Kees from Guangdong. DK had become interested in our class through his interactions with Vance on TESLCA-L, where he had learned that one of our students, Maggie, was from Guangdong as well.

A log of the presentation can be found here http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/tcc2klog.htm

Also, this conference was where we met Keiko Schneider. You can read Keiko's impressions of our first encounter in the discussion associated with our presentation, which you can find at:

http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/tcc2k_tl.htm

All of the above mentioned people are still Webheads (Vance waves hi!)

"THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE IN ONLINE AND HYBRID COURSES" Web site: http://tcc.kcc.hawaii.edu/ Proposal Deadline: December 16, 2002

THEME. The organizers of this completely online event are especially interested in proposals from college and university faculty, staff, students and administrators that provide an understanding of the student experience in Internet-mediated learning. Submit a proposal that captures your experiences, views, imagination and vision of what is to come in your particular discipline: instruction, learning support, administration, counseling, student services, educational technology, etc.

We especially want to encourage presentations by graduate and undergraduate students in collaboration with faculty and other support professionals.

GOAL. The goal of this conference is to provide practitioners with an opportunity to understand the student's perspective when delivering or supporting online or hybrid courses. Presenters are encouraged to project how to enhance student learning or how to improve services for students in the near future.

The deadline for proposals is December 16, 2002.

Here's the list traffic on this topic

Aiden's two cents worth. This may not necessarily be in the Abstract

For this conference, I think, I've got a brilliant idea. Remember, we were discussing about how my students (Shih Chien) feel about joining our weekly webheads meeting in TI and how some of them feel frustrated that cannot really join in the discussions, for reasons such as:

1. they find it hard to follow the discussions

2. the topics are sometimes way over what they know, too difficult and sometimes, only teacher related matters are being discussed

3. because of these 2, they feel alienated These reasons are/or could be stumbling blocks for students. We have to remember that these students are quite highly motivated in learning English and are willing to use CMCs in their learning process/es, and find Webheads completely helpful and beneficial to their learning. They do not only enhance their English skills but they also meet teachers and other students online, gaining international friendship in the end.

And Vance, we could use the chat logs we had last week and if they aren't enough I could always ask them to write something down. aiden

Now that I read your idea for the proposal, about the difficulties and advantages for students like yours to join W4W, I think you are opening a very interesting and relevant concern - following up on a spontaneous chat we had with Vance some days ago at Homestead.

Tomorrow, I will not have any time to get to my keyboard before late evening, and today I also came home late. Could you possibly think of a way to cross this with part of my very broad painting abstract for the TCC presentation and paper - a lot of what I typed in a hurry could be cut down to a minimum, and your ideas added somehow?

Also, thanks for Dafne's positive feedback, and Juani's message about her own class' cooperative exchanges with Aiden's class Tihs is a very fine example on how our informal networking brought new life to the teaching practice. Juani, are you interested in joining our group for this TCC conference in April - maybe even with introducing some of your students (we could train then in TI and YMS on advance :-)

Hugs, Sus

ACTIVITIES FOR PRESENTERS

All presentations will be posted on the conference web page one week prior to the start of the conference.
All presenters will be expected to respond to email questions and comments from conference participants.
All presenters and participants will be included in the conference discussion list.
All presenters will be expected to submit a photo and brief professional bio for the conference web site.
All presenters will be scheduled for a one-hour informal chat session on one of the conference days to meet with participants.

REGISTRATION FEE. All presenters are required to register online and pay the conference fee ($70). Presenters may qualify for a special discounted rate ($35) by submitting proposals and written presentations by December 16 and February 17 respectively; and actively plan or host a discussion, forum, roundtable, workshop or other interactive activity over the entire three-day session.

FURTHER INFORMATION. For further information regarding guidelines for proposals, formats, possible topics, presenter's role, registration procedures, key dates, etc., see http://tcc.kcc.hawaii.edu/ or contact Dr. Bert Kimura bert@hawaii.edu, or Mr. Karl Naito knaito@hawaii.edu.

The following message was sent to the conference organizers Nov 7, 2002; I've placed it here as a means of cc'ing the group.

Dear Bert and Karl,

I wrote you a week or so ago to ask if it would be possible to arrange for free student entry to the TCC2003 conference site long enough for them to join in a presentation. We were responding to your conference theme of presenting the student experience in online education. We are a community of language learners and teachers who have been working online since 1998 and we made a presentation at the TCC2000 conference. We would like to present at the 2003 conference but this time engage our ESL students in formulating the proposal and being listed as presenters at the conference. Imagine how motivating this will be for them.

We have created a web page where we plan to develop our proposal http://sites.hsprofessional.com/vstevens/files/efi/papers/tcc2003/proposal.htm

You can see there that we have two students and two teachers so far interested in the proposal.

You can also link back from there to the extensive Webheads website and get an idea of the work we have put into the project.

However we are a free, all-volunteer, non-commercial, no-fees community. We have no means to fund from our end student participation in the conference.

In order for us to make a proposal by Dec 16 we would need to have some assurance that if it were accepted some arrangement could be made to allow our student presenters to enter the conference chat site gratis for long enough to make the presentation we propose.

Benefits to you in giving this assurance:

The teacher-presenters involved in the proposal would pay and register for the conference
If accepted, the proposal would enhance the quality of the conference for the other delegates
By assisting a group of online language learners you would be furthering work in the field your conference represents

Drawbacks to you

You would have to allow students whose names were on the proposal Dec 16 to enter the conference chat site for free for at least long enough to give their presentation.

It is unlikely that these students would want to join in the conference beyond giving their presentation

I would very much like to get your go-ahead to go forward with promoting this project among members of our community.

Thank you for your attention, and looking forward to your response,

Vance

Subject: Re: Request regarding conference fees for students
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 21:16:20 -1000 (HST)
From: Bert Y Kimura bert@hawaii.edu
To: Vance Stevens vstevens@emirates.net.ae
CC: knaito@hawaii.edu, Sharon Fowler fowlers@hawaii.edu

Aloha Vance,

My apologies for not responding sooner. Yes, we'll waive the conference fees for any student presenter. Our wish is that the student presenter participate actively in the conference by responding to messages from the participants and participating in board discussions or chat sessions. I want to encourage student participation and in fact, strongly feel that we cannot fully benefit from this theme if there are no students participating in it.

Please let me know if you have further questions. We will incorporate a mechanism for students to register without having to pay a fee. I'll be working that out with the conference staff.

Cheers, -bert

Issues unresolved with the conference organizers

On Nov 7, 2002 I receive email saying that "We will incorporate a mechanism for students to register without having to pay a fee. ... When we announce registration in a month or so, please remind me if you don't receive any instructions on how to get the student registered."

We have 2 presenters who have both registered: Vance Stevens and Aiden Yeh.
Their details are here (including pics):
http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tcc2003/proposal.htm#presenters

We have 4 students who wish to register: Dafne Gonzales, Susanne Nyrop, Yaodong Chen, Fin Su.
Their details are here:
http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tcc2003/proposal.htm#students

From the website: Send all the information required (full paper, summary, bio, and photo as appropriate) to KARL NAITO <knaito@hawaii.edu> by FEBRUARY 17, 2003.

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Last updated: April 22, 2003 in Hot Metal Pro 6.0

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