E3SL: Easing the English Education Experience 

 TCSPP Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Grant Report

E3SL is a program designed to provide multilingual students with the support they need to be successful in their academic pursuits at TCSPP. To do this, the program works two-fold: (1) providing an interactive immersive English language learning support module, and (2) providing a professional development tool to assist instructors in learning how to provide writing feedback to support multilingual writers in the classroom. This two-pronged approach is necessary to truly create an inclusive community where multilingual writers can feel understood, respected, and supported in their academic pursuits. The module will provide self-paced lessons the students can use to receive feedback and advance in their learning. This will be paired with the automatic feedback tool and accompanying professional development for instructors, allowing them to give more substantial and informed feedback to the students to further their progress.

Meet the Team

 

GOAL 2:  Prepare for Generational, Global, and Regional Population and Demographic Changes

Today’s US education system comprises roughly 5 million English language learners (ELLs), about 10% of all public school students, nearly double the percentage of a decade ago and continuously increasing (NEA, 2019; Quintero & Hansen, 2017). To support this growing population and their higher education needs, the American Council on Education’s (ACE, 2021) recent report with guidelines for higher education institutions to use to support greater inclusion and success of international students. The ACE suggests five tenets designed to create better support systems that protect and develop diversity and inclusion in academic institutions: Sustainability, Responsiveness, Networking, Humanism, and Equity. The E3SL program suggested herein fully manifests all five of these components.

 

  • Sustainability

    Creating a living module that will host four tools – language, grammar, writing, and speech – which students can consistently use to achieve their language learning and receive writing support, creating sustainable support. The modules will be interactive, but asynchronous, allowing students to continuously advance their learning.

  • Responsiveness

    Addressing the needs of TCSPP’s international students by mitigating the gap in their support services. Currently, only the Online Campus offers a multilingual writing support specialist. This web-based language support module will allow Tall CSPP international to receive the same support.

  • Networking

    Creating a space for international students to connect to support resources consistently across campuses and creating a professional development tool that will support future microcredentials for instructors to become more knowledgeable in supporting multilingual students.

  • Humanism

    Providing tools, including translanguaging assistance, that explain the linguistic differences between students’ native languages and academic English to help them progress, respecting both languages as complete linguistic cultures with no superior. The goal in this tool is to help the students feel respected, honoring their multilinguistic identities.

  • Equity

    Elevating the writing support TCSPP provides through access-focused language and writing support. Given that all native English students have access to a writing support specialist who can give them the support that they need, TCSPP must advance with a program like this in order to ensure that all international students are provided with equitable access.

 

Strategy 2: Strengthened, Developed, and Expanded Academic and Student Support Structures and Services that Meet Evolving Student and Community Needs

The E3SL program fills a gap in the TCSPP support services for multilingual students. Despite enrolling hundreds of international students, there is no centralized, interactive support for students who do not speak English as a first language. Only the Online Campus specifically employs a multilingual writing specialist. The E3SL program provides all of the Online Campus Writing Center’s multilingual writing support in an interactive 24/7 format that supports the multilingual community as it grows with consistent and specialized support designed to help multilingual writers successfully integrate feedback. The modules provide the contrast between students’ native linguistic cultural expectations and academic English that students need to fully linguistically acculturate to the expectations of Western higher education without detrimental ‘replacement’ or ‘correctional’ ideology.

 

Sample: The E3SL Grammar Module

 

 Strategy 3: Develop and Bolster the Infrastructure and Support Needed to Reduce Inequities in Outcomes Across Diverse Racial and Ethnic Populations, Socioeconomic Statuses, and People with Different Abilities Through Modernizing Services, Practices, and Policies

Despite the multilingual student population increasing nearly trifold over the past few decades in the United States, there have not been corresponding changes in how classrooms or higher education instructors are trained to support their multilingual students beyond the classic writing center referral. This has left a large gap in equity in education for multilingual students, who do not receive the same level of instruction or support resources as their native English speaking counterparts. The companion instructor course for the E3SL program provides faculty with in-depth instruction on how to support their multilingual students in the classroom, how to use the extensive library of support resources provided by the Online Campus Writing Center, and how to use the Online Writing Center’s automatized feedback tool to provide evidence-based feedback on students’ assignments.