A Path Analysis of Quality College Education in the Big Data Era〔*〕

Chen Baocui

(College of International Studies University of Science and Technology Liaoning,Anshan Liaoning 114051)



A Path Analysis of Quality College Education in the Big Data Era〔*〕

Chen Baocui

(College of International Studies University of Science and Technology Liaoning,Anshan Liaoning 114051)

Traditional teacher-centered teaching mode cannot meet the needs of our country and society for development and college students for improvement.How can we provide students with quality college English education? This paper points out current teaching reform approaches in terms of teaching staff,curriculum,teaching mode,teaching resources and learning assessment.

College English;classroom crisis;big data era;teaching reform

Ⅰ.Reflection on orientation of college English teaching in big data era

College English education is an important part of the national higher education.It has an irreplaceable role for college students to promote the coordinated development of knowledge,abilities and comprehensive qualities.In the current era of economic globalization when English has almost become the world’s lingua franca,college English cannot be canceled or weakened but must be strengthened in order to satisfy the development needs of the country,society and students.

Since China has a vast territory,colleges differ significantly from each other,ranging from students’ literacy level to the college’s operating conditions.The implementation of College English Curriculum Requirements nationwide is obviously incompatible with the objective reality and thus it loses its guiding significance.The new reform in college English education in the Big Data Era must be college-based and the college English syllabus should be tailored according to its educational goals so that the teaching requirements,teaching modes,curriculum design and teaching management conform to the college-based teaching reality.In this way,the College English can be built into a quality course that win college students’ hearts and benefit them for a lifetime,which can better satisfy college students’ needs of high quality and diverse college English teaching.〔1〕At the same time,we expect the competent authorities to issue the Teaching Guide for College English as soon as possible to guide and supervise the college English teaching activities.

Ⅱ.Path to achieve quality college English education

1.Enhance the information literacy and professional qualities of college English teachers

Teachers are the key to the quality of teaching,which can be seen clearly from the formula presented by UNESCO for the quality of foreign language teaching:Teaching Quality = (Students (1 point) + Textbooks (2 points) + environment (4 points) + Teaching methods (3 points)) * Teachers.All the teaching objectives should be designed by teachers.In the traditional teaching mode,an excellent English teacher can be summarized as follows:he or she can speak idiomatic English with accurate expressions and natural pronunciation and intonation;he or she can well manage the relationships between input and output,language and content in the classroom;he or she is a good master of theories about linguistic and applied linguistics with strong organizational capabilities of language teaching.〔2〕

In Big Data Era,it is clearly insufficient for college English teachers to possess only language competence,especially when the “after 90s” college students who grow up with the touch-screen information enter college.Since the students have a high information literacy,if teachers fail to grasp the modern educational technologies and adapt to the shift of new technology and intelligence,the teachers’ authority will be greatly reduced in front of students.In fact,modern students have increasingly high requirements and expectations for teachers,whose personal charisma is also a necessary element of quality college English education.According to a survey,teachers who are responsible,knowledgeable,competent,humorous,cheerful,good at exchanging ideas with students,patient and impartial are most popular among students.〔3〕Therefore,teachers must advance with the times,enhance their learning and even participate in specialized training so that they can improve their information literacy and professional qualities to combine the college English teaching with information technology and improve the effectiveness of classroom teaching by creating a positive classroom environment for students.

2.Construct a three-dimensional curriculum system

College English as a course is composed of three parts of teaching contents:General English,English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and Intercultural Communication.The Objectives of General English courses are to develop students’ language skills in the scope of English listening,speaking,reading,writing and translating,including teaching students vocabulary,grammar,discourse and pragmatics.According to students’ language foundation,General English can be divided into primary,intermediate and advanced levels and teachers teach students in accordance with their aptitude.ESP is divided into academic English and vocational English,cultivating students’ ability to use English for professional and academic exchanges as well as for work.Intercultural Communication courses cultivate students’ intercultural awareness and enhance their understanding of cultural differences to predict and avoid misunderstandings due to different cultural expectations and to achieve more effective communication.Since the periods of College English are limited,colleges should build the three parts into a curriculum system based on their school-running orientation and students’ levels,including some compulsory courses,some restricted electives and some free electives,so as to give the options back to students.

3.Overturn the traditional teaching model

In 300 BC,the form of private school founded by Confucius and the lectures given by Socrates set an important precedent for education.In the 16th century,

Johann Amos Comenius introduced the Industrial Revolution to teaching and created the classroom learning system,namely,a teacher carried out one-way instillation teaching with students in a fixed place with the one-to-many teaching mode which has been used ever since.〔4〕Then change is to education what Industrial Revolution is to social development.Now that the society has entered the Big Data Era,if teachers keep instilling the textbook knowledge in the students,students with strong learning motivation may be busy taking notes while those with weak learning motivation may just show up without working hard.It’s quite common for students to take a nap or fiddle with their phones in class.In order to complete the task of teaching,teachers rush to finish the contents established,leaving no time to communicate with students who are not used to challenging their teachers.If students learn without application,they will become tired,wary,bored and resistant to college English classes as time passes,〔5〕leading to time-consuming and inefficient college English teaching.In some district colleges,examination-oriented teaching is still prevalent.Their teaching objectives are to pass College English Test (CET) 4 and CET 6,the passing rate of which is an important indicator of evaluating teachers’ teaching performance.So it naturally becomes students’ learning goals to pass CET 4 and CET 6.Once they achieve the goals,they will immediately lose their learning motivation.From the feedback information of the employers,students who pass CET 4 and 6 have great difficulty not only in oral and written English but also in reading.It’s obvious that both students and the society are not satisfied with the current teaching models of College English.

Compared with the traditional classroom model limited by time and space,Flipped Classroom which originated in the United States as a new teaching idea and method that overturns the traditional teaching methods is increasingly becoming a concerned topic of reform in the global educational circles.Flipped Classroom (FCM ),also known as Inverted Classroom or Reverse Classroom,means that teachers integrate the key points,difficulties and some new knowledge of a course according to the teaching content and create relevant teaching videos;students independently learn the new course in advance by watching the teaching videos in their spare time;then students will participate in the interaction and communication,sharing and discussion between teachers and students and among students in class with questions emerging in the process of self-learning.In this way they can fully understand and master the new knowledge.〔6〕

The essence of the implementation of FCM is to inverse the two processes of “knowledge transfer” and “knowledge internalization” in the traditional teaching model.The process of knowledge transfer is moved from inside the classroom to outside the classroom and the process of knowledge internalization is moved from outside to inside.Thus,the learning process is completely inverted from the two dimensions of time and space.The adoption of the new teaching paradigm of “learning before teaching” brings a qualitative leap to the teaching and learning results.〔7〕

The success of FCM depends on the quality of students’ extracurricular independent learning.Students must develop good habits of independent learning.Only after they autonomously complete the knowledge absorption outside class can they effectively communicate with teachers and students in class,complete the knowledge internalization and convert knowledge into ability.Therefore,extra-curricular independent learning must be combined with formative learning evaluation and students’ learning motivation should be stimulated by attaching importance to the regular grades.

4.Enrich teaching resources constantly

In traditional teaching,teachers explain knowledge and skills based on textbooks.But big data provides rich and diverse resources for English teaching.“MOOC:Massive Open Online Courses” is one of them.The edX MOOC platform created by Harvard University and MIT founded has 49 universities joining it,including Peking University and Tsinghua University.More than 1 million students can take electives from the 75 online courses it offers;the Coursera MOOC platform founded by Stanford University has 82 universities joining it and offers 386 online courses for 3.5 million students;〔8〕the United Kingdom,Germany and Australia have also developed MOOC platforms of considerable size.With the help of these online education platforms,our students can gain access to the high-quality educational resources of world-class universities.

There are a large number of students attending the College English course,And international MOOC is a good choice to consider in order to meet their needs since it provides language advantage.If students can not go directly in line with the international standards like the students from Tsinghua University and Peking University,teachers can transform the international MOOC and build the college-based MOOC platform.MOOC has made considerable progress in teaching than the existing platforms such as national quality courses,video open classes and resource sharing lessons,〔9〕because ① the MOOC micro lectures,after collective and repeated modification,can provide better explanations in the linguistic knowledge than a single teacher;② students can selectively watch the videos repeatedly and adapt to individualized learning;③ multi-modality approaches such as video have better learning effect than simply reading the textbook.〔10〕MOOC-based learning can maximize the effectiveness of the input and prepare the students well for the centralized output in the classroom since students can freely control their time,learning direction,content and progress of study.The MOOC courses are not only designed for PC,but also for the mobile terminal APP to develop teaching videos for students’ independent learning in their fragmented time.The materials of MOOC course design can be based on textbooks and mainly selected from a mass of news videos and newspaper articles to expose students to the most vivid English expressions in life and work so that they can apply what they have learned.It is noteworthy that both the development of independent resources of MOOC-based College English and the introduction of college-based international MOOC resources must comply with the actual learning ability of students.The after-school quiz for autonomous learning should be concise instead of daunting to avoid impeding progress toward meeting the teaching objectives of FCM.

5.Focus on formative learning evaluation

Learning assessment method is an integral part of a teaching model.The traditional teacher-centered teaching model of “I lecture and you just listen” naturally has no choice but to adopt the closed-book exams at the end of a semester to determine the students’ learning results.The main content of the exams is to test students’ memory of knowledge.Such exam content and form are not conducive to the cultivation of students’ interest in learning,and impossible to develop their independent thinking and innovation ability.After the exams,the only feedback students can receive is their score report.Students have no idea where it went wrong or why it went wrong.This testing method ignores students’ learning process,interest,emotional experience and daily performances.Besides,since it is teachers who evaluate,students tend to be in a negative position of passive learning and their subjective initiative can not be brought into full play.

To carry out the teaching model of FCM students’ extra-curricular input directly determines the quality of curricular output.It is the key to measure the success of the FCM model and an effective way to cultivate independent study habits.Therefore,the learning assessment under this new teaching model must be mainly formative evaluation,namely,emphasizing on estimating and giving positive feedback on the students’ interest,attitude and participation level in the learning process,as well as the state of their language development.The innovation of evaluation contents and evaluation methods should be driven by the reform of teaching contents and teaching methods.The classroom is no longer a place where teachers put on a one-man show but a platform for teachers to test students’ learning outcomes after school and for students to demonstrate the outcomes.

Teachers’ observation and recording of students’ output in class:test assessment such as tests and dictation can be used,but the main assessment should be non-test,such as questions,answers,debates,group discussions,role plays,scenario simulation,playlet,spoken statements and so on.Even the analysis and conclusions of students are inconsistent with the views of teachers,students should also be given a relatively high score for regular grades so as to encourage students’ research-based learning habits and critical thinking.

In the process of implementation of formative evaluation,teachers must try to be fair and objective,and give regular feedback to students.In this way teachers can break down the test scores to the entire links of the course teaching,forcing students to constantly reflect on their own learning and gradually forming independent learning habits that will benefit them for life.

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About the author：Yang Yong(1980—),PhD,associate professor of School of Foreign Languages in Fuyang Normal University,research field:applied linguistics,syntax and network language.

〔*〕This paper is the phased achievement of the key projects of provincial scientific research in universities of Anhui Province (SK2016A0704),revitalization plan of Anhui Province(2015zytz036).