A New Trend in Teacher Education: A Web-Enhanced Methodology Course

Abstract

Recent technological developments lead the widespread use of Web-enhanced technologies at higher education institutions. Despite enthusiasm about the Web-enhanced instruction in different disciplines, the potential of such instruction for teacher education and teacher professional development, particularly its effects on the pre-service teachers have not been explored in detail. Thus, the aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of web component of a methodology course in terms of Turkish ELT pre-service teachers’ perspectives. In the study, a face-to-face originated methodology course for pre-service ELT teachers was redesigned so as to provide an interactive, instructor-guided Web-enhanced course along with student-centered face-to-face instruction. This course was supported with an online learning platform for information and material exchange, which was provided by campus licensed WebCT (Blackboard) program. To determine the efficiency of this blended course, the perspectives of 25 students attending to this course were examined through a survey questioning pedagogical, communicative, technical and affective aspects of web-component. After the descriptive analyses on the collected data, it was seen that majority of the students had positive attitude towards the technology use, particularly web-component in the course. They defined this component as an aid in their learning and they agreed that such applications are useful for their teacher development. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the students found the web-component as effective and they particularly appreciated its efficacy for methodology courses, where their teaching skills are to be developed.