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Business English Course Reiteration - May/June 2010
**** NOTE: reformatting this page according to template *** in progress
Course Outline - Teachers
(course outline - students)
A. Introduction
Target audience:
This course has been designed with intermediate business language learners in mind., i.e. students who need to develop their language knowledge and skills for business. It can be placed somewhere in the B1-B2 continuum of the CEFR and would be suitable for learners who are currently using the target language for work or who would like to do so in the future. No previous knowledge of Second Life is expected or needed in order to take the course. However, those who are unfamiliar with the platform should go through the student check-in procedure before they start.
In addition, we have decided to offer an additional two-session Short Introductory Course to Second Life before the students participate in the AVALON business language course. This will allow time for team-building and language needs analysis as well as serving as a gentle introduction to Second Life for the learners.
Objectives:
The main objectives of the AVALON Business Language course are:-
- to provide learners with business language practice and language knowledge appropriate for their learning level and business background in order that they may progress in their language development.
- to provide learners with the necessary technical knowledge of Second Life to make this language learning experience effective and meaningful for them as learners of a foreign language for business.
- to create a viable model of how Second Life can be used for teaching a business language course and an awareness of the potential of Second Life for online language education in general within the language education community.
- to show the benefit of using Second Life for teaching a business language course as opposed to other platforms for online language learning.
Course structure:
The course is divided into 6 lessons or meetings in which the course instructor and course participants come together at the same time and place in SL. Each session is 90 mins long. The classes are held bi-weekly.
In addition, course participants are expected to meet with members of their group in-between classes. This is to allow the participants enough time to meet together to research and work on their presentations. The course tutor will also be on hand to help during these more informal sessions if the group meeting times are at the usual class meeting times. Alternatively alternative times for these autonomous meetings can be arranged by the participants themselves . This makes total contact time = 18 hours.
What you need to know:
Location
The meeting place for the Business English course will be the AVALON Learning Business Barn.
This is where most classes will take place.
Additionally, there are two office spaces (Settlement Parcels 3 & 4) where Business English Groups can meet:
Timetable
Proposed timetables of the pilot Business English courses to be run September-December 2009:
Resources:
Any extras that students need for a course such as instruction material to get started, blog-link (if you have a blog associated with the course etc etc)
B. Main Content
(This is where the detailed descriptions go- start with a brief introductory overview- this course consist of 5 parts .... etc etc)
1 - Introductions and course outline
2 - Job Interviews
3 - Get Inspired!
4 - Mentor Presentation Negotiating
5 - Project Plan
6 - Final Presentation
*** Creation and presentation of a businessplan for a business in SL
C. Completion:
(summary of what has been done, trying to relate the course to more generic models, suggestions for variation)
Summary
Overall reflections related to basic principles (deliverables 1+2)
Suggestions on how the course can be adapted to different circumstances
Rewards
For this course, we decided to give the following awards:
- successful completion of the course -> title 'avalon enterpreneur'
- winner of businessplan competition -> 10 avaloneuros (to buy items in the giftshop)
- social special award -> clothing: red Avalon-shirt
- technical special award -> clothing: blue Avalon-Shirt
- language progress award: students write down their personal goals at the beginning of the course and do self assessment afterwards; teacher also assesses progress; students get a personalised certification that states, that they have improved in ... by ...
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NOTES:
For inspiration have a look at talkademy's Moodle:
http://lms.workademy.net/course/view.php?id=22
you can log in as guest at the course '200904 - Uni Bielefeld - Business English with project businessplan'
Participants required level: B1/B2 ("intermediate")
Pre-Requirements:
We assume, that participants are already familiar with the basic functionality of SL
LMS: Moodle (because of Sloodle's commitment to Moodle)
We can also use this to deliver texts for the students to read pre- and post- SL sessions and deliver instructions/directions about each session
Title: <sponsor's name>'s Businessplan Contest
Final Presentation / Contest: setting similar to BBC's "Dragon's den" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/) - we should avoid using this name though for copyright reasons. The format is owned by Sony (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons'_Den) and it seems unlikely that we'll be able to get them to agree to us using the name (so far I have drawn a blank trying to find a BBC contact)
There is also a great link from Heike about interviews with investors - let's see how we can use it: http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/graham/weblog/2180.html
Language training: some thoughts about language work:
- we want to meet the participant's expectations
- the goal of the course definitly is, to enable them to give a good presentation to the dragons, thus we have to drive their expectations in this direction
- as the focus is the presentation and not that much the language, we do not want to spend too much time on language work; (we realised in our last course, that it takes a LOT of time to get a good presentation!)
- thus we want to tailor the language work to the needs of the participants instead of working with pre-prepared stuff
- thus the trainer should decide on-the-fly what and how much language work to include
- in my opinion, a minimum should be, to take notes during the session and give some feedback on language at the end (and put the feedback into the Moodle)
- nevertheless we want to put some general language material (language for presentations, etc.) in the Moodle (for the nerds)
Reward - Ideas
Winners of the businessplan contest get ...
- the title 'Fellow of Avalon' with VIP-access to all Avalon-facilities and alltime free beer in Christian's pub
- sponsored items, e.g. English Textbooks? Private English-lessons? Linden$?
- winning team gets all the money, that was collected during the Final Presentation (dragon's den)
- winning team gets a great textbook about Business English, sponsored by Cambridge Press
- winning team gets free support / consultency by <whom> ?
- winning team may stay in student quarter for another 6 months (??
- winning team may advertise its product/service in the village (free signpost)
- winning team may set up a donation-box in the village
- winning team gets an entry in the 'role of honor' in the business barn
- winning team may speak at an Avalon conference and advertise its product/service
- winning team gets a 'Stammtisch' in the pub
Student's interaction partners:
- language teacher (for language training sessions)
- mentors (students of Manchester Business School?)
- members of the jury: businesspeople from SL, e.g. Gavin
possible Sponsors: BBC (owner of "Dragon's den" = Sony - think this is unlikely), publishers (definitely possible - soime interest from CUP obtained at IATEFL)
Tasks to be accomplished
- find a name, logo, mission-statement, idea for product or service for your company
- do a market survey - find out who is doing similar things (suggest this be done by students post class 1)
- fundraising: first earn the money, that you need to set up your company - or find investors
- set up your businessplan
- present your businessplan to your mentor - get feedback and improve it
- do another market survey: find out, what your potential customers think about your idea
-
The next step would be to start structuring the ideas into concrete sessionplans for the 6 meetings.
In our talkademy-courses, we use the structure:
- short description (what will happen, what's the objective)
- student's preparation (description, what they shall prepare and some material)
- student's rolecard (description, what the online-session will be about)
- student's homework (description, what they should do after the session)
- feedback quiz (how was this session for you? any comments? any technical problems?)
http://calendar.talkademy.org
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