CREATING ONLINE LEARNING SPACES FOR PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS: A MACEDONIAN-USA COLLABORATION
Research Article
CREATING ONLINE LEARNING SPACES FOR PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS: A MACEDONIAN-USA COLLABORATION
ABSTRACT
This paper reports on an exploratory study of a 7-week pre-service online teaching course between a
Macedonian and a USA university. The main aim of the project was to explore teaching from new
perspectives, enable networking between prospective teachers from the two cultures and promote
teacher research among the students, while developing their global competences. The course employed
two online environments and a video-conferencing platform to facilitate interaction. It was moderated
by the students’ instructors, one from each culture. This paper outlines the structure of the course and
presents a selection of the materials which were specifically designed for the purposes of the course. It
then goes on to review the students’ learning experiences on the course. A preliminary thematic analysis
of the Macedonian students’ reflective entries revealed that they enjoyed juxtaposing their local teaching
contexts to their counterparts’, while learning about how the two contexts compared with regard to the
teaching methodologies used and the kinds of learning spaces created. The students also benefited from
learning about each other’s cultures more generally, including adjusting to each other’s time zones. This
paper rounds off with suggestions about how international online collaborative endeavours like the one
described here could be improved.
ONčEVSKA AGER, E.,
(2022). CREATING ONLINE LEARNING SPACES FOR PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS: A MACEDONIAN-USA COLLABORATION. International Journal of Education and Philology, 2(2), 6-12. Arrival Date Posted By:https://ijep.ibupress.com/articles/creating-online-learning-spaces-for-pre-service-teachers-a-macedonian-usa-collaboration
