Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Using WhatsApp in the ESL Classroom






Social networking websites enhance the teaching and learning process, foster collaborative learning, facilitate networking, and promote the knowledge sharing. WhatsApp is social networking site that allows all this and increases rapport between students and teachers.



WhatsApp is a basic social networking website that contains the features of chatting, voice noting,  sending links, sharing links, and an ability to send messages to groups or individuals.  As an instructor, you can send notifications, create assignments, build quizzes , poll audiences, via sending the links to the WhatsApp group. With WhatsApp students and instructors can network in an environment that keeps the focus solely on teaching and learning without the risk of inadvertently glimpsing into each other’s private lives as in the case of Facebook.

WhatsApp is perfect for:



1. information sharing. WhatsApp enables students to easily communicate with their classmates and instructors. When communicating with classmates, WhatsApp allows students to ask each other questions as well as view and respond to each other’s questions; they also can share and view information. In my experience, students are quick to respond to one another. For more difficult questions, instructors can choose to respond directly or privately on WhatsApp, which allows all students to view and benefit from these messages. This information sharing ability is also useful for courses in which students need to share links with one another.

2. group work.  WhatsApp allows for the easy creation of small student work groups. Each group has the ability to create a team name and work within an individualized space where they can share ideas, articles, news, and resources with each other. This feature is especially relevant in courses with group projects such as a research methods course in which students may need to share empirical articles, post measures, talk about stimuli, or coordinate group face-to-face meetings.



2. mobile notifications. Receiving mobile notifications enhances the idea of alterness.













































































 For example, instructors can use this feature in the case of having to cancel class.






3.  control and visibility. Instructors can maintain a degree of supervision by being admins to the WhatsApp group. You can determine if your students are sharing information, if they are uploading materials to share with one another, and if they are responding to each other’s posts or if they are starying away from the main purpose of the class. You can delete inappropriate posts as needed and monitor any issues that arise.



WhatsApp is a great tool that helped me in the time of the coronavirus spread as though we were using Microsoft teams, the inconvenience of the internet made students lost. Students began to support each other through the WhatsApp groups, answer questions, send material, links, and explain to each other hard or vague material. Whenever students felt they had to contact me directly, they sent me privately. It was an enlighting experience in which I understood that WhatsApp is highly supportive and should be used in coordination with other educational platforms as students master using it and they feel more connected.

No comments:

Post a Comment