E-mail Gateway to Online Learning

I've been learning a lot about the fundamentals of teaching English pronunciation. As a result, I'm thinking more about how to share some of this knowledge with volunteer English teachers.

Professional development for volunteer teachers presents some challenges similar to PD for professional teachers, as well as some unique ones:

• Some teachers have little to no ESL coursework or experience
• Volunteers are only required to complete 2 hrs of professional development per year
• Teachers may not be motivated to complete PD for a volunteer commitment
• Workshops offered by 3rd party trainers may not be viewed as relevant to the volunteer's particular teaching assignment
• Scheduling group trainings has been difficult due to scheduling conflicts
• Volunteers posess a wide range of technology skills and some may not be comfortable with the format of online trainings

Recently I've been considering the possibilities of e-mail as a tool for online training for those who may not be comfortable or motivated to use an online message board or online course managment system. E-mail offers some useful affordances. For example, e-mail is a familiar medium that already carries a social expectation of responding to others in a timely manner. Furthermore, many webmail providers, such as gmail, now make it easier to keep track of discussion threads in e-mail by lumping replies together.

Imagine that you receive an e-mail invitation to participate in a small group (3-5) training that will take place through e-mail over the next 3-4 weeks. Twice a week, you receive a short message from the moderator including a reading, research, or reflection assignment that is designed to take 20-30 minutes. Each assignment has a deadline within the next 2-4 days. You complete the assignment by responding to the e-mail using reply-all so that your cohort can see and reply to your responses.

In many ways, this training would be very similar to other forms of online training. The advantage of using e-mail would be to introduce participants to a form of distance learning without requiring them to sign up for a new account or learn a new interface. Initial enrollment is one of the main hurdles to getting volunteer teachers to participate in either F2F or online trainings. By using a familiar format, such as e-mail, volunteers may be less intimidated by the technology and feel that this is a training opportunity that already fits in their routine.

I'm also curious to see if the medium of e-mail encourages greater participation and persistence. I think it is possible that the routine of regularly checking e-mail and the arrival of "reply-all" responses directly into one's inbox may keep participants more engaged.