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Design

Heloisa Collins and Rosinda Ramos

KEYWORDS: course design, business English, writing

AFFILIATION: Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil

E-MAIL: hcollins@bra000.canal-vip.onsp.br

Introduction
This paper focuses on the discussion of requirements for an interactive design of a Computer-Mediated Distance Learning (CMDL) course in English for Specific Purposes (ESP).

Such requirements constituted a problem for these course designers both from the point of view of the items of design directly related to a BBS-sponsored course and from the point of view of the profile of the clientele, in this case Brazilian business people taking a Correspondence Course in English. Business people in Brazil, among other types of professionals involved in ESP courses, stand out as those who show special preference for CMDL courses. As Boyle (1994:116) points out, 'the teaching of ESP would seem to be an area in which distance teaching methods could make a useful contribution, insofar as students are often relatively few in number, geographically dispersed, and with responsibilities at work and at home that cannot be neglected'.

Distance learning is, then, of interest to adults with a high level of motivation, who may prefer to study at a time that is convenient to them, at a pace that suits them and in a place and manner of their own choosing (Keegan 1990).

Justification
In the context of ESP, DL has been reported as a 'neglected mode of instruction' (Boyle op cit:115). In fact, little has been written about ESP at a distance (Lambert 1991). Reports and articles about CMDL courses are even more scanty.

However, attention to CMDL design issues has been gaining importance due to the recognition that CM pedagogical interaction is a promising new type of communicative event. This attention signals that designers realise that they must not adopt a naive transfer of previous experience to this new mode of social interaction. Materials designed for the traditional classroom will be presented to students with the support of face-to-face interaction. If these materials are simply carried into the CMDL situation, where immediate negotiation of meaning is not possible, failure of some kind will certainly follow.Our observation of input materials of two very recent CMDL courses (Damski 1994 and De A'Morelli 1995) confirmed these impressions. Although exceptionally rich in terms of the amount and quality of content, those programmes show little concern for the learning human on the other end of the line. Questions such as 'How much are students prepared to cope with each time?' and 'How relevant is this course from an interactional point of view?' do not seem to have been very important. Those programmes successfully provide their students with interesting and possibly useful manuals, but cannot claim to offer a satisfactory interactive context for promoting learning.

Therefore, issues such as the 'language of instruction', 'length and clarity of tasks' and 'adequate flow and amount of input to students', though relatively non-problematic for the experienced designer of face-to-face courses, assume special relevance in the body of topics that deserve further investigation, analysis and discussion in this new context.

Such questions, therefore, need to be addressed (cf pilot experiments at the Catholic University of São Paulo: Ferreira 1995, this session; Sa 1995, forthcoming MA dissertation; Avollio 1996).

Aims
The paper will address the following items of CMDL course design:

1. the process of wording 'instructions to tasks' and 'introductions to input materials', as well as of organising both into a coherent instructional unit;
   
2. the analysis of the final drafts of instructional units from the point of view of their interactive value;
3. the description and discussion of the type of impact such materials had on students.

Methodology

Data

1. Successive drafts of the process of design, with special emphasis on 'the language of instruction', 'the language of introductions to input materials', 'the organisation of the units';
2. Samples of interactions between students and teacher

Analytical Procedures
Data analysis procedures were as follows:

1. Analysis of the transformation (re-writing) of drafts with special attention to:
   1.1 linguistic markers of the background, assumptions and knowledge (BAK) (Woods 1992) underlying previous experience in course design, and
   1.2. linguistic markers of development of awareness of the new design context;
2. Analysis of formal linguistic choices with an interactive function in the final drafts of each instructional unit, according to a systemic-functional perspective of language (Eggins 1994) and recent research related to interactive efficiency (Collins & S. Thompson 1994; S. Thompson and Collins 1994; G. Thompson and Thetella (1995) .
3. Analysis of the amount of student participation (number of private and public messages sent to the course conference) and of the amount and type of students' questions about the instructional units (technical-operational questions were not considered).

Results

Results indicate that
Successful face-to-face course designers tend to rely heavily on previous experience. Initial drafts of Instructions and Introductions to Input Materials are marked by background, assumptions and knowledge related to negotiations of meaning in the traditional classroom. As the awareness of the specific requirements of a CMDL course becomes more explicit, 'instructions' and 'introductions to input materials' in later drafts reveal an attempt to anticipate the queries and needs of a concrete, distant interlocutor. Likewise, organisation of tasks and input materials, initially planned on the traditional basis of information+odelling+production, gradually assumes a structure based on interaction.

Formal linguistic choices with an interactive function, as observed in the final drafts of the 'instructions' and 'introductions to input materials', assume a dominant role and are displayed through a complex web of interpersonal features from different systems. In that sense, they are different from information-based instructional units that tend to use imperatives (a choice within the mood system) as almost the only interpersonal choice.

At this point, results of the impact on students are still being analyzed. Initial observation of the data reveals that students' questions tend to be related to a critical awareness of what it means to write for different purposes and different audiences. Although this matches these designers' expectations, further analysis is needed to detail and enlighten the initial observations.