VaCIE-CEMP Exchange to Friesland College
Nancy Hoagland
Alexandria Campus
Northern Virginia Community College
June 25, 2002
Purpose of the Report
On May 12-25, 2002, I spent two weeks at Friesland College in the Netherlands as a member of the VaCIE-CEMP Teacher Exchange Program. My partner Anke Beerendonk, who is a teacher of English as a Foreign Language at Friesland College, will spend two weeks at the Alexandria Campus of Northern Virginia Community College on October 12-26, 2002.
I went to Friesland College to learn more about how English is taught in another culture. In my proposal for the exchange, I listed the following areas that I hoped to investigate during my visit:
- Use of the Internet to teach English as well as other languages
- Placement of students in language courses
- Assessment of student learning
- Training of teachers to use new technology
- Development of new courses
- Definition of teacher workloads, especially for those using the Internet
- Role of drill in teaching language balanced with the need for students to engage in meaningful reading and writing activities.
When I began to communicate with my partner Anke, she explained that English is taught at Friesland College primarily through the Talencentrum, the Language Centre, using an innovative approach that has been in place for about three years. Rather than answer my questions directly, her response was just wait and see our special approach. When I arrived, I discovered that the college had embarked on a reform of the entire curriculum using an approach described variously as the project approach, situational learning, or self-directed learning. This report will describe the basic approach to teaching and learning at Friesland College and relate that approach to the areas of teaching English that I proposed to study. I will conclude with a comparison between Friesland College and Northern Virginia Community College and make recommendations for follow up and for implementation of new ideas.
Description of Friesland College
Regional Education and Training Center
Friesland College is a ROC or Regional Education and Training Center that offers further technical and vocational education and training to students 16 years and up; general adult education, including basic education to students 18 years and up; and Dutch as a Second Language to speakers of other languages. Instruction in English as well as Spanish, French, and other languages is included as part of technical and vocational training aimed at particular branches of industry.
Friesland College has about 15,000 students including both full-time and part-time students with over 600 full-time teaching staff and 280 supporting staff. The college maintains 18 sites with Leeuwarden (population 90,000) and Heerenveen (population 30,000) the main sites for Technical and Vocational Education and Training. A new three-story building, known as the Triangel Building, has been erected at Leeuwarden, the provincial capital of Friesland. The college is in the process of consolidating Technical and Vocational Education and Training at the sites in Leeuwarden and Heerenveen. Adult Education and Dutch for Speakers of Other Languages will continue to be offered in Leeuwarden, Heerenveen, Sneek, Drachten, and other towns.
Technical and Vocational Education and Training for students over 16 is
organized into 10 department or units with about 10,000 students:
Commerce, including Fashion
Business Administration
Hospitality and Tourism
Nursing and Health Care
Welfare and Social Care
CIOS Sports College
Laboratory Technology
Techno and ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Lyceum
Construction
Transport and Logistics
See Friesland College for additional information.
The Centre for Orientation and General Adult Education assists students over the age of 18 who have not completed previous attempts at education to participate in forms of continuing education and training. Students can also take courses for Lower Secondary and Upper Secondary Certificates and Diplomas as well as enroll in courses to pursue personal interests. About 1750 students are enrolled in this area of the college, which conducts courses at facilities at various locations.
The Centre for Dutch for Speakers of Other Languages has about 2400 students with facilities in several towns in Friesland. In Friesland, the immigrant population consists of about 4% of the total population, including refugees who are given a year of government support to learn Dutch and become integrated into the society.
Friesland College also offers training courses to over 1000 companies and organizations through a company called Friesland College Contracts. This company markets the expertise of the college staff and helps to keep college faculty abreast of trends in the workplace.
Mission of the College
Friesland College defines its mission as a pioneer in Adult Education and
Technical and Vocational Education and Training. To this end, the college
strives to be "independent and enterprising, internationally oriented,
and multi-coloured in every sen se" (Friesland
College).
Curricular Approach
About three years ago, under the leadership of a new administration, Friesland College embarked on a new curriculum and learning approach. This new approach has three goals:
- "further development of a new teaching and learning concept based on a student-centred approach
- supporting students in 'learning to learn' and
- empowering students by offering a rich learning environment with practical training in meaningful settings" (Friesland College).
To an observer, Friesland College has made a dramatic shift away from classroom-based instruction with the teacher as the authority figure in charge of presenting course content. At Friesland College, all instruction takes place in open classrooms and labs with the teacher in the role of coach and evaluator and students in charge of their own learning.
This curricular model is pervasive from teaching of languages in the Language Centre, to economics courses for business, to courses in computer programming, computer repair, and Web design.
In a typical department such as Business Administration, a program is usually four years in length with students advancing each year to a new level of certified proficiency. In a given year, instruction is arranged in 10- or 20-week units. Each unit has specified learning outcomes with various tasks that much be accomplished for a student to complete the unit. Students, who work in groups, usually have some choice as to the types of tasks they select. They are responsible for acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to complete the tasks within a given period of time. They may draw upon the teacher as a resource by arranging tutoring and requesting referral to additional resources. The teacher evaluates the work presented by the students at the end of the unit according to a list of competencies and performance standards agreed upon by representatives of business and industry and the college.
Friesland College has invested in this approach to the extent that the new three-story building, the Triangel Building, has no classrooms. Instead, the building has large labs and seminar rooms with very few actual doors to separate learning spaces. In the new building, students and faculty pass through security gates at various points in the building with these programs keeping a record of attendance. These records are important because students are reimbursed for training under certain conditions.
As I became more familiar with the Friesland College approach to learning, I began to search my own experience as a teacher for relevant examples. I remembered the experiential learning theories of John Dewey that have influenced much of my teaching. Also, one Friesland College faculty member cited Howard Gardiner's theories of multiple intelligences and the need for alternative learning experiences as a source for the curriculum. I also remembered a seminar I had attended on student-centered learning, and I thought of my colleagues in Virginia who used a case-study approach to teach business as well as those who were engaged in service-learning projects. Clearly, I knew of examples of self-directed, situational learning, but I had never encountered a whole institution invested in such a model.
One Friesland College teacher summed up the impetus for the new curriculum by saying that now their students were able to enter the workplace with practical experience. Employers no longer had to invest extensive resources in on-the-job training. Another teacher explained that researchers in the Netherlands had described how children began their education eager to learn but somehow had that spirit destroyed as they progressed through the system. The Friesland College approach was designed to reawaken in students the desire to learn and to make them responsible for their own learning.
Staff Development
The new curricular approach was first defined by the two chief administrators of the college who had been hired by the Dutch government. Faculty were required to participate in a staff development program called "Kalmoes," after an herb that is added for flavor to the national Frisian drink of Beerenburg. After three years, the faculty who have continued at the college are mainly supportive of the new curriculum, although some see it as evolving to a more traditional model after a few years. The program has spread to other ROCs in the Netherlands, and now there is also a new certificate program for the ROCs to increase the professionalism of the staff and to reinforce the notion of the teacher as coach in the learning process.
Members of the VaCIE-CEMP Teacher Exchange
The group that visited Friesland College on May 12-25, 2002, consisted of five people, three from Virginia and two from Illinois. Listed below are the Friesland College faculty and their visiting partners.
| Dirk Elderman Commerce Campus Leeuwarden |
Charlie W. Adams Computer Science Danville Community College Danville, VA |
| Theunis de Vries Business Administration Campus Leeuwarden |
Peter J. Nodzenski Math Black Hawk College Moline, IL |
| Anke Beerendonk Talencentrum (Language Centre) Campus Leeuwarden |
Nancy Hoagland English Northern Virginia Community College, Alexandria Alexandria, VA |
| Ammir Farokhi Techno and ICT Lyceum Campus Leeuwarden |
Samuel Sudhakar IT Administrator Carl Sandburg College Galesburg, IL |
| Rimmert Zelle CIOS Sports College Campus Heerenveen |
John Patterson Biology Paul D. Camp Community College Suffolk, VA |
The exchange was coordinated by Addie Birkhoff from the International Office
of Friesland College. Addie had coordinated previous exchanges, and her experience
and expertise were greatly responsible for such a successful exchange on both
a personal and professional level. All members expressed a high level of satisfaction
and were looking forward to continuing the exchange in October 2002.
Back, left to right: Charlie Adams, Dirk Elderman, Theunis de Vries, Rimmert Zelle, and John Patterson. Middle, left to right: Ammir Farokhi, Nancy Hoagland, Samuel Sudhakar, Peter Nodzenski. Front, left to right: Anke Beerendonk and Addie Birkhoff.
Professional Activities
The schedule of activities entitled "Visit by USA Exchange Colleagues" includes a Joint Programme for the entire group and the Individual Programme for me. I was extremely satisfied with the quality and variety of professional activities that were arranged for the group and for me individually. Here is a brief summary of professional activities.
Monday, May 13
Orientation to the program at the home of my partner Anke Beerendonk. Since
Anke and I both teach English as a Foreign/Second Language and both of us
are using Blackboard as one means of instruction, we used her laptop and home
Internet connection as a primary way of exchanging ideas and following up
on group sessions.
Tuesday, May 14
Visit to the Leeuwarden Campus for the first meeting of the group, lunch prepared
by a student group, an introduction to the Language Centre, and a guided tour
of the new Triangel Building. In the evening, I attended two English classes
taught by my partner Anke.
Wednesday, May 15
Visit to the voting place for the Dutch national elections. Meeting in Leeuwarden
with the Language Centre Coordinator to discuss methods of placing students
and assessing student learning. I was introduced to the portfolio that had
been created to track student performance in language courses. Guided tour
of Leeuwarden conducted by English students who had undertaken the tour as
a project for their language class.
Thursday, May 16
Visit to a Center for Dutch Language Instruction in Oosterwolde where I attended
a Dutch Language Class for refugees. I talked with students with the help
of a translator and watched as they demonstrated computer-based materials
for learning Dutch. Enjoyed an afternoon tea and country walk at Anke's home
with other members of the group.
Friday, May 17 - Monday, May 20
The Whitsuntide Holiday, a long weekend for our hosts, was taken up with family
and tourist visits.
Tuesday, May 21
Visit to the Language Center in Heerenveen Campus followed by a tour of the
Business Administration Department conducted by two secretarial students.
We then toured an Eco-Kathedral and the professional soccer stadium in Heerenveen.
That evening I once again attended Anke's two ESL classes in Leeuwarden. I
had brought a CD of pictures of the Pentagon attack, and students in the first
class enjoyed practicing their English while asking about the pictures. I
also was able to ask them informally about their opinion of the new curriculum.
In the second class, I helped evaluate the oral presentations of four students
who were practicing for the final presentation due the following week.
Wednesday, May 22
Anke and I went to Amsterdam for a morning visit to an elementary school where
her sister-in-law taught a special class for students aged 5-7 who were recent
immigrants to the Netherlands and did not speak Dutch. The purpose of the
class was to teach the students Dutch as quickly as possible and move them
into other classes.
Thursday, May 23
Visit to the Language Center at Leeuwarden to tape some student and faculty
presentations. Tour of the Popta slot estate and gardens with students as
tour guides. Then we returned to the college for a meeting to review the exchange
program followed by an elaborate five-course dinner in the dining facility
staffed by students.
Friday, May 24
Returned to Leeuwarden for drinks with previous and future members of the
exchange program. Toured the computer program facilities that had been recently
renovated to support the new curriculum. The labs now contained multiple stations
with all elements at one station rather than a series of labs with each lab
devoted to a given kind of element. This increased usage of the equipment
and also facilitated the project approach to learning.
Personal Activities
For me the most enjoyable part of the exchange was the time I spend with my hosts Anke and Laurens Beerendonk. They were unfailingly gracious and intent on sharing their love of Friesland life and culture with me. Here are just a few of the highlights of my visit in their home.
When I first arrived on Sunday, their son and his three friends were there for dinner as well as two more friends who had parked their new caravan in the meadow for a couple of nights. The next day was Laurens's birthday and more friends dropped by with gifts and good wishes.
The next day we sailed along a lake and inland waterway to meet the members of Anke's rowing club with coffee and bread. Later we spent a whole day sailing along the beautiful lakes and waterways of Friesland.
Over the long weekend, we attended the Floriade, a celebration of nature held every ten years in the Netherlands. Another day we went by car to Stavoren and then took a boat to Enkhuzen to the Zuiderzee Museum, which is an open-air museum of all of the fishing villages of the area.
Later that week Anke took me on a tour of many of her favorite places in Amsterdam where she grew up and attended college. I had visited Amsterdam previously as a tourist, so I greatly enjoyed an insider's view of the city.
From my visit with Anke and Laurens, I came home with memories of a beautiful Frisian home, warm people, and a very different pace of daily life. I also came home determined to be more environmentally conscious as the Dutch have set such a good example for all of us.
Anke and Laurens Beerendonk
The Teaching of English in the Talencentrum or Language
Centre
I had hoped to gain a new perspective on teaching English as a Second Language as a result of my study visit to Friesland College. My hosts made every effort to introduce me to the new curriculum and facilities at the college so that I could fulfill this goal.
PowerPoint Presentation on the Talencentrum
My introduction to the Talencentrum came from a videotape of a PowerPoint presentation that Anke Beerendonk and her colleague Cathy Wielema made earlier this year at a seminar for teachers of English in Ireland. The following information and quoted material is taken from that presentation.
The Talencentrum has about 20 language teachers, a project manager, two coordinators, and four to six assistants on two campuses, Leeuwarden and Heerenveen. A teacher has about 25 students per group and has about 4 contact hours each week per group. These contact hours constitute one session. Each teacher has six sessions with students each week in addition to three sessions of other duties. A normal workload consists of about 40 hours per week.
In this presentation, Anke and Cathy define the teacher's job as that of coach. Specifically, the teacher's role is to "coach the learning process, monitor students' progress, assess level of proficiency, develop skills, and in-service training."
In this system, the student is "responsible for own learning process, working together in meaningful situations, working individually, working in open study centers, and oral presentation of product."
Student resources consist of "no specific course books, access to mediatheque/library, the Internet, CD-ROMs, VCR, and digital camera."
Students are assessed on the basis of "oral presentation, portfolio, Level A1 to B2 of European Framework, and external authorization [from credentialing bodies]."
European Framework
The European Language Portfolio is a project of Council of Europe designed to promote unity and ensure respect among the citizens of Europe by providing a standard for supporting and recognizing language learning at all levels. The Portfolio is based on the document " A Common European Framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment" available at http://culture.coe.int/lang.
In this framework, language competence is divided into five categories: Understanding by listening, Understanding by reading, Spoken interaction, Spoken production, and Writing. Six levels of proficiency (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C3) are defined for each category beginning with basic language tasks at the A1 level and extending to the language abilities of a near-native speaker at the C2 level. At Friesland College, the vocational and technical programs draw on the expertise of faculty and members of the business community to set the expected language levels for a given program. For example a student at the advanced level of the tourism program would be expected to have a higher level of proficiency in a language than a student at the beginning level of the program.
The teacher's job in the Talencentrum is to devise a 10 to 20 week course to enable students in a given department and at a certain point in a program to master and demonstrate the language levels that are required for that program.
Example of an Instructional Unit
The following is an example of a four-week unit that is one of several choices for an English class for students in Business Administration. Students must demonstrate competencies in English at Level B1 of the European Framework in order to receive a passing grade on the unit. Students are responsible for planning the work, securing necessary resources, and conferring with the teacher about completing the work.
|
Administratie 05.3 |
|
|
Block 4: |
(4 weeks) |
| Products | Suggestions |
|
Presentation: |
Grammar:
|
Students work independently and in a small group over the four weeks to write
and make an oral presentation, complete work in a language notebook, write
four letters, and write three summaries. They are tested individually in class
on letter writing and summary writing as well as language usage. They are
graded on the oral presentation made by the members of the group. All of the
work is collected into an individual student portfolio with the assignment
sheet, a student log of work completed each session, copies of written assignments,
copies of graded quizzes, and an evaluation of the oral presentation. The
teacher uses the contents of this portfolio to determine if the student has
attained the level of competency needed to pass the unit of work. During a
given term, a class typically completes three or four such units.
Uses of Technology
As expected, Friesland College has many large computer labs with a large number of lab assistants and teachers assigned to the labs. Many different kinds of instructional materials are available online and on CD-ROM. The labs include areas for preparing and giving presentations and seminars.
The Language Centre has begun to use Blackboard as one means of presenting course work. For students who are engaged in independent learning, Blackboard offers an excellent way of making course materials accessible to students at home and in college computer labs. There is also an experimental distance education program in existence at Friesland College.
At the present time, the college is experiencing problems with the IT infrastructure among the various campus sites and programs. For instance, faculty at one site may not be able to log in to the server in use at another site to get email or to access programs.
Once these problems are solved, Blackboard should offer a convenient way of making course materials available to students and faculty in the Language Centre. The materials for student-directed learning require extensive planning, so Blackboard should offer faculty an effective and efficient means of sharing materials and cutting down on their heavy workload.
Faculty and Student Feedback
The five visiting faculty had many opportunities to talk formally and informally with teachers and students at Friesland College. As previously reported, the Friesland faculty seem highly motivated and remarkably unified in developing an innovative curriculum for vocational and technical education and training. Some departments such as Business Administration seem to have made allowances for more traditional teaching methods such as setting aside a time or place for informal group instruction. On the other hand, the Language Centre seems to have subscribed fully to student-directed, situational learning.
When asked to evaluate the effects of the new curriculum, faculty and administrators acknowledge that a systematic assessment of student outcomes has not yet been completed. One administrator said that the ultimate evaluation will come from the business community with feedback on how well students are prepared after completing their programs of study.
We had contact with many students who served as guides to the college sites and to tourist attractions. Most of the younger students agreed that getting used to student-directed learning was difficult in the beginning, but they had no desire to return to more traditional teaching methods. Occasionally, they offered suggestions to improve instruction such as "Install more doors" and "Provide textbooks," but they obviously took pride in their work as they held up their portfolios for us to inspect.
Older students who had frequently attended other institutions of higher education seemed less convinced that the new curriculum was preparing them adequately to enter a new field. They seemed more resistant to change, having grown accustomed to a teacher-directed style of learning.
Comparing Friesland College and American Community Colleges
One of the final meetings of the faculty exchange group was devoted to a review of the two-week visit. The review provided an opportunity to compare the host college with community colleges in the U.S. Here are some points made during that discussion.
- Friesland College students enroll in programs of various lengths with
a variety of components such as work experience; community college students
enroll mainly in courses of a set length.
- Friesland College courses are designed mainly to train students to
perform specific jobs; community college courses have a heavy general education
component.
- Friesland College students tend to be younger, attend day classes on
a full-time basis, are not already employed, and receive an educational
allowance until the age of 20. Community college students are older, have
family responsibilities, and already have jobs and practical work experience.
They also have less financial support for attending college and often attend
on a part-time basis.
- Friesland College English classes focus on developing skills in oral
language; community college ESL courses focus on written language skills.
One reason is that immigrants who attend American community colleges usually
have one and sometimes two jobs, so they are theoretically already getting
real-world experience in using English. Their purpose in learning English
is most often to attend a four-year college, so the emphasis is on teaching
them academic writing skills. On the other hand, in the Netherlands teachers
of English must make sure students have an opportunity to use the language
in real-life situations rather than focusing on grammar study from a textbook.
- As teachers of language, my partner and I agreed that writing occupies
a different place in the college curriculum in the Netherlands than in the
US. In the Netherlands, there is not much emphasis on writing as means
of encouraging analysis and critical thinking. Also, teachers were not stressing
writing as a means of teaching and learning as promoted by the Writing Across
the Curriculum Movement in the U.S. and England. In the Netherlands, writing
is more a skill to be mastered than a liberal art to be developed and cultivated.
Plans for Follow-Up
The five members of the Friesland College faculty will visit community colleges
in Virginia and Illinois on October 12-26, 2002.
In anticipation of Anke Beerendonk's visit to the Alexandria Campus of Northern Virginia Community College, I plan to create some student-directed learning experiences for ESL 006 English as a Second Language Reading II for Fall Semester 2002. In this course, students will read a nonfiction account of the hunt for the 1918 flu virus. I want to offer several blocks of research activities from which students can choose for the research component of the course. Anke has agreed to review these materials and make suggestions for improvement.
I don't think that ESL or English faculty at the Alexandria Campus are very likely to embrace a total student-directed approach to learning, nor do I think that they should. But I believe that instruction can be enhanced and improved with the introduction of some of the Friesland College ideas regarding the teaching of language. I hope that the Alexandria faculty will enjoy meeting Anke and listening to her presentation about the new curriculum for teaching and learning at Friesland College as well as offering feedback on the new ESL 006 instructional units.
One of the ongoing concerns at Friesland College is the assessment of an entering student's level of competence in a language. By Fall 2002, NVCC should have in place AccuPlacer, the new computerized placement test for English as a Second Language. Anke has expressed an interest in learning more about this test. Also, Anke was assigned the task of introducing her colleagues in the Language Centre to Blackboard, so she will be interested in our college's use of Blackboard for distance education and to enhance classroom instruction. Finally, Friesland College has just begun to assess the effects of their new curriculum, and Anke will probably be interested in talking to members of the college faculty who have been involved in the assessment of reading and writing programs.
I look forward to her visit with the hope of sharing our American culture and educational system as graciously as she shared the Friesland experience with us.
