At a Glance
Institution:
Douglas College
Instructor:
Kimberly Sutherland
Course Name:
Basic French I & II; Intermediate French I & II
Course Material in Use:
Terrell, Deux Mondes, 8e
Resource in Use:
Connect
Course Type:
Face-to-face, online
Integration:
Blackboard
Course Enrollment:
176 students
The Challenge: Improve Engagement in Online Learning
Before implementing Connect into her Basic French and Intermediate French courses, Dr. Sutherland had difficulty engaging students to complete their twice weekly class material practice assignments involving written and listening components. She also found she had limited time available to manually correct these practical assignments.
Dr. Sutherland selected Connect as her course’s digital learning platform because of its ability to assign both written and listening practice assignments. She had never used any digital learning platforms like Connect in her courses previously, so she was hesitant at first to take the step to try Connect. However, she found the implementation process easy and smooth once she decided to adopt the platform.
“I had wonderful technical support during this learning process and continue to have great support when I need it.”
Connect has been in use in Dr. Sutherland’s French courses since March 2020. She assigns a total of 20% of student grades to Connect assignments including written and listening exams for which she uses Connect’s integrated question bank. She also leverages the grammar tutorials as part of class material that students complete face-to-face before they begin class.
She has found Connect easy to use for both faculty and students with a good variety of assignment types for practicing both written and listening skills. She also notices that students make regular progression in their skills when using Connect assignments and are able to get plenty of practice with the ability to attempt an assignment multiple times until a deadline.
“Students like to try and get the best possible score so will usually try multiple times, which means with each attempt they learn from previous errors.”
Since using Connect in her Basic and Intermediate French courses, Dr. Sutherland has found that students are more engaged and participate in their practice assignments more regularly. This improves their overall progression in the course. Connect’s autograded assignments have also freed some of Dr. Sutherland’s time that she previously spent manually grading assignments, allowing her to spend more time helping students in need and going over examples. This also gives her students feedback on their assignments quicker so that they can apply their learning to future assignments in a timely manner. Her students have also praised Connect to Dr. Sutherland, saying it helps them with their practice and progression in her course.
“The more engaged and assiduous students are, the more rewards they get, both in terms of skill and grade.”
Instructor Profile
Dr. Kimberly Sutherland teaches Basic and Intermediate French I and II at Douglas College. She received her Honours Bachelor degree in English and French from the University of Swansea, Wales, her Maîtrise en lettres modernes (M.A.) from Université de Bretagne occidentale, Brest, France, and her Ph.D. from the University of Swansea, Wales. Her areas of interest include modern and contemporary French literature, French cinema and Francophone culture, as well as Intercultural Communication.
Recommendations from Dr. Sutherland
For instructors who are new to Connect, Dr. Sutherland recommends setting up their assignments before the start of the semester. This makes the first semester smoother when everything is available beforehand. She also recommends requesting help from the Connect team to help set up courses.
“They’re really knowledgeable, in my experience, and saved me time. My rep provided videos and screenshots to help me through setting things up for subsequent semesters.”
The biggest reason that Dr. Sutherland has enjoyed using Connect is that it gives her students control over their own learning and saves her time on correcting assignments.