English Camps: A positive response to a common challenge faced by English teachers in Sri Lankan schools

Abstract

00:00:03:03 - 00:00:40:22 Amanda Hi folks, and welcome to our presentation Sustaining Services and Reducing Harassment in a Rural Sri Lankan University. My name is Amanda Tomanek and the other presenter that you will hear from later on is Dr. Nadee Mahawattha. So first, who are we as we get started here? Again, my name is Amanda and I am currently the Academic English Language Specialist at the Cal State San Marcos Writing Center, where I assist international students and other students who speak English as an additional language with their writing requirements at our university. 00:00:41:05 - 00:01:15:09 Amanda I am also a former Global Teaching Fellow from Tokyo International University Global Teaching Institute, where I taught both English as a Foreign Language and academic literacy courses in the English Medium Instruction program that they had there. Dr. Nadee Mahawattha is the senior lecturer of Management Studies at Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka, and her research interests include academic literacy and interdisciplinary collaboration between language lecturers and subject area lecturers, 00:01:15:15 - 00:01:44:16 Amanda again in those English medium instruction programs. Now, how did two people from such different backgrounds get linked up for this particular presentation? Well, it all starts back in Japan, and I want to give you a brief overview of that, because that will be very important to some of the things that Nadee tells you about later on. You'll hear Nadee reference PAW, which stands for Peer Advisors for Writing. 00:01:44:23 - 00:02:15:06 Amanda This is a peer tutoring, small writing center that was created at Tokyo International University to support those academic literacy courses. My colleagues Daniel Scharf and Vanessa Armand are the ones who kind of got that off the ground, and I was a lecturer teaching the research writing course that was part of that academic literacy program. I referred my students to the program quite frequently, and then my students were often recruited to become PAWs 00:02:15:06 - 00:02:45:14 Amanda once they had finished the required courses. Dr. Romola Rassool, who works in Sri Lanka and is a colleague of Nadee's, had a daughter who was studying in Japan and her daughter became a PAW. She spoke highly of the academic literacy program and the PAW program to her mother. And that kind of got the wheels turning for her mother of how a program like this or academic literacy in general might be beneficial to the Sri Lankan higher education program. 00:02:46:20 - 00:03:14:14 Amanda Dr. Rassool was able to secure some money from a World Bank funded project to improve higher education across Sri Lanka. And this was the AHEAD Project Workshop series. The workshop series was initially Daniel and Vanessa--obviously they had come up with PAW and done a lot of work on the academic literacy program. But the workshop series ended with two workshops for how to set up a writing center, 00:03:14:14 - 00:03:39:24 Amanda Since many of the faculty attending the previous workshops had shown interest in doing so at their universities. So Daniel and Vanessa asked me to join because at that point, this was February 2022, I had been working in an American university writing center for almost three years, while the two of them had either been doing other work or working primarily in Japan. 00:03:40:00 - 00:04:20:16 Amanda So I jumped in there with some of my experience being in an American university writing center. So in the workshop, why did I bring online tutoring to that? Tutoring in general, especially peer tutoring, was not a familiar concept culturally to all of the faculty who were attending these workshops. And as we were talking to them, I heard more about the challenges and concerns they had in their context, lack of

human resources being one of those; not enough faculty, not enough support staff, which Dr. Mahawattha will talk about more in a few moments. 00:04:21:07 - 00:04:50:04 Amanda Another thing that they shared was that they had rolling blackouts. They had power failures that made it difficult to continue in-person services on top of some of the concerns that they were already facing during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. They were also facing extreme economic and political turmoil, some of that being connected to the blackouts, and for some of the more rural universities, because of a lack of public transportation, there could be weather related access 00:04:50:04 - 00:05:10:04 Amanda Issues. With a tree is down across the road, students wouldn't be able to then make it into campus to come in for tutoring, even if an in-person tutoring center did exist. As I was hearing all of these concerns that they were facing, I thought back to some of the concerns that my own university had faced during the pandemic. 00:05:10:04 - 00:05:42:13 Amanda And as we were coming back to more in-person support here in California, we have a lot of rolling blackouts related to the wind or the wildfires. Right. We have a lot of students who are facing economic challenges that may make it difficult for them to afford gas or parking on campus. Right. So at our university, even as we came back to more in-person services, I had felt it was important for us to continue both synchronous video calls and asynchronous support for students. 00:05:42:13 - 00:06:21:06 Amanda So I shared about that in the workshop, and especially Dr. Mahawattha was very interested in transitioning that to their program at their universities, which is exactly what Dr. Mahawattha did in the year since we presented that workshop to them. So Dr. Mahwattha will share a little bit more now about the history of higher ed in Sri Lanka, her context, some of the challenges, as well as how using online tutoring support allowed them to move forward during a very challenging time. 00:06:21:06 - 00:06:48:09 Nadee Hello, I'm Nadee Mahawattha, senior lecturer in English language teaching at the Department of Marketing Management Faculty of Management Studies Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka. I would like to discuss the case study of Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka on the topic sustaining services and reducing harassment in a rural Sri Lankan University. First, I would like to give a brief introduction to Sri Lankan 00:06:48:09 - 00:07:32:22 Nadee higher education as it helps to understand the necessity of asynchronous mode of delivery in the context. Sri Lankan higher education is mainly state governed and free for all students who get the state university entrance. Thus the entrance examination GCE advanced level is highly competitive and the number of students who get qualified is considerably limited. Only the students who get the highest exit score will be selected to the 17 state universities in Sri Lanka. There is another important point that we need to focus. 00:07:33:04 - 00:08:01:13 Nadee Almost all the degree programs are conducted in the English medium, except for a few mother tongue medium of instruction degree programs conducted in the arts faculties. On the other hand, the majority of students, for about 98%, according to statistics, get their school education from their mother tongue, either Sinhala or Tamil. But they have to transition into English medium instruction 00:08:01:20 - 00:08:46:23 Nadee soon after they get their university admission. Further, there is no common support for students to make this sudden change and sudden shift mode, and often this sudden abrupt transitional challenge from mother to another medium. The English Medium is identified as massive structural challenge for both the students and lecturers in the system. We are seriously in need of improving student academic literacies

and writing practices in different disciplines, especially in my case writing in the fields of finance, business, marketing, banking and insurance, ethics for business, and hospitality and tourism. 00:08:46:23 - 00:09:22:00 Nadee So we have been longing for writing center services. And I was lucky enough to get training on this about two years ago. So I have got a chance to work with the writing center experts, namely Daniel Scharf, Vanessa Armand, and Amanda Tomanek, from Canada and the U.S. respectively. So I realized how important it is to have asynchronous writing practices and especially the PAW program, Peer Assistant Writers, 00:09:22:00 - 00:09:57:06 Nadee in my faculty, the Faculty of Management Studies due to several reasons. As stated earlier, the majority of students are not familiar with the writing practices in higher education by the time they get the university entrance. And usually back on that, we get a huge number of students, about 400 to 500 student batch, the students in one batch, where we get only one or two English lecturers to handle all of these students. 00:09:57:13 - 00:10:45:09 Nadee We lack human resources, so this concept of PAW was really useful for us. Anyway, we all were forced to shift into the virtual mode of teaching due to COVID 19 pandemic, we didn't have any choice, so we continued asynchronous programs in our faculty. Soon after the pandemic, we were supposed to start lectures in-person, but unfortunately we have had to face the worst economic crisis in the Sri Lankan history, so we could not go ahead with the physical lectures due to the lack of well, we didn't have any mode of public transport our traveling, especially to our rural universities. 00:10:45:09 - 00:11:34:01 Nadee So this asynchronous PAW and writing practices helped us to continue with the programs and writing support in the faculties as it is, as it is expected. Apart from that, all our State University administration feels an additional challenge, too. That is a prevailing subcultural practice of “ragging” of freshers by the senior students. This is not a mild and friendly way of getting to know each other as it is supposed to be, but it has gone to such an extension over a long period of time that the senior students harass freshers mentally, emotionally and physically. 00:11:34:14 - 00:12:06:03 Nadee Though there are rules and regulations regarding ragging prevention, still, this subcultural practice continues in the system. As a result, the university administration try with many strategies, for example, to minimize the contact of freshers with the seniors for about at least one year. Against this background, this asynchronous PAW program and writing practices are really beneficial and effective in our context. 00:12:06:14 - 00:12:34:11 Nadee In addition, our culture in Sri Lanka often does not encourage the close contact of young girls and boys in their early young age, especially with the ragging culture in the universities, with the freshers. And also they are new to the higher education culture and surrounding, and also they are away from their parents for the first time in their lives, 00:12:34:11 - 00:13:28:11 Nadee Very often coming to hostels. So there are a number of psychological insecurities for them and this is a new situation for them. And so especially in the Sri Lankan context, girls are considered the most vulnerable. Thus when they are in their first year, this asynchronous PAW and the writing practices have become an ideal platform for us to overcome these ethical issues in our context, maybe unique to us sometimes, keeping these students physically distant, but to continue with the PAW program and writing practices as they are. Further, we make sure to get the presence of an assistant lecturer while they are doing their online sessions. 00:13:29:03 - 00:13:51:09 Nadee Then it would be like, you know, ethically also safe. So we believe that asynchronous practices are beneficial and effective, especially in rural universities like ours, with the number of social, cultural, and

economic challenges with little support from our administration. Thank you.

2 nd Documentation ◤PAW ▪ PAW = Peer Advisors for Writing ▪ Peer tutoring for students in academic literacy courses at TIU ▪ Started by Daniel Scharf and Vanessa Armand ▪ Dr. Romola Rassool’s daughter was a PAW ▪ Spoke highly of academic literacy and the PAW program ◤AHEAD Project Workshops ▪ World Bank funded project for higher education in Sri Lanka ▪ Workshop series ▪ Initial workshops by Daniel Scharf and Vanessa Armand ▪ 2 workshops for setting up a writing center ▪ Daniel and Vanessa asked me to join ◤Why Online Tutoring? ▪ Tutoring—especially peer tutoring—not a familiar concept to all ▪ Concerns and challenges in their context ▪ Lack of human resources ▪ Frequent blackouts and power failure ▪ Economic and political turmoil ▪ Weather-related access for rural universities ▪ Connection to what I did for CSUSM ▪ Synchronous and asynchronous ◤History of Sri Lankan Higher Education ▪ State governed and free for all admitted students ▪ 17 universities ▪ Requires an examination and is highly competitive ▪ Few students are admitted ▪ Primarily English Medium Instruction ▪ 98% of students get education in Sinhala or Tamil ▪ Must transition to English for degree program ▪ Limited support for this transition ▪ Large challenge for students and faculty ◤Adoption of PAW ▪ Majority of students unfamiliar with writing practices ▪ 400-500 students per class ▪ 1-2 lecturers to handle these ▪ PAW assisted ▪ Adopted online PAW during COVID-19 shutdown ▪ Continued online support after planned return to in person ▪ Supported students unable to reach campus ◤“Ragging” ▪ Initially a friendly initiation ▪ Over time, escalated to harassment ▪ Upperclassmen harassing lowerclassmen mentally, emotionally, and physically ▪ Administration attempts to reduce contact between freshmen and upperclassmen to prevent ragging ▪ Culture also does not encourage older and younger students’ interactions ▪ PAW recruits have often been freshmen/underclassmen ◤How Online PAW Helped ▪ Online PAW allowed tutoring to occur while keeping upperclassmen and underclassmen physically separate ▪ Faculty supervisors present in writing center space with PAWs while tutoring occurred ▪ Allowed students unable to attend in person services for a variety or reasons to access support