This semester, I worked on a course conversion for EDC 2400: Teaching Emergent Bilinguals.  One of the biggest challenges was to examine the wide range of materials that are available online and select them to ensure that not only do they address the content of the course, but also that they present multiple means of representation, giving learners various ways of accessing new content. As I redesigned the course syllabus, I included materials that are to be assigned as homework or used during class, as well as additional resources that might be useful for students and other instructors. I included videos, blogs, podcasts, and articles that can be accessed through the library or Internet.

I have taught this course or similar courses for a few years and as I was doing the research for the conversion process, I found that there has been an increase of content available for each topic. However, one of the main challenges that remains is finding videos that model classroom practices that students can collaboratively analyze and learn from.

An important aspect of this course is to learn about pedagogical strategies for teaching emergent bilinguals. Since this course doesn’t require field work in the classroom, it is important to find ways for students to connect how the theories and practices that they learn from readings are implemented in real classrooms. To this end, three of the course assignments are classroom practices analysis. For these assignments, I was able to use videos and websites that show how New York City teachers in a variety of settings implement pedagogical practices designed to support emergent bilinguals.

Overall, the process of curating materials for the course was helpful in clarifying what are the essential components and how each artifact contributes to the learning goals of the course.