With the major technological advances, teachers need to adapt their classes using more management platforms online. In our society, it is important that students develop a critical opinion about technologies. ENA is an important application for University teacher and it will be analyzed by a future ESL teacher.
What is ENA?
ENA (l’environnement numérique d’apprentissage) is an integrated online portal where teachers can easily develop a course portal with the help of simple and user-friendly tools. It is based on an approach established by the course syllabus by which the teacher creates his website and his course syllabus simultaneously, in a single operation. ENA is accessible to all teaching members and students of Laval University.
How Does it Work?
First, if a teacher wants to create a website on ENA, he needs to make a request to his support team. When it is approved, his website is created and the students that are registered at Laval University have accessed to it by default. Teachers can give their portal access to their colleagues or to external stakeholders. The access to the portal can be done using this address: https://www.ena.ulaval.ca/.
Then, the teacher consults the list of classes where he is the person in charge. To register to the portal, he needs to enter his institutional ID, which means his IDUL and his password. One identified, he can consult the list of classes where he is the responsible. He simply needs to click on the title of a class to access his website.
A class website includes different areas. In the middle, one can find the contents presented by the teacher. On the left side, a first menu allows access to different areas of the syllabus. A second menu allows access to the tools like forums, online questionnaires and a calendar. For teachers, a contextual menu authorizes to modify easily the content of each page. This menu provides access to a toolbox that allows a teacher to add easily new elements to the page. He simply needs to select the element that he wishes to add, then he slides it and finally he moves it to the desired place. Thus, the teacher can add a text or some files and he confirms to publish it. The desired information is then integrated to the page. In this way, the teacher can quickly add images, files, news and other multiple content types. The layout of a page can therefore be customized according to the needs of each course.
ENA is based on an approach established by the course syllabus. The information placed in each page such as the introduction and the objectives are listed in the website. Once all the subsections are completed, the system compiles the information and automatically generates a syllabus in PDF format. The website and the syllabus are both created simultaneously.
Several tools are also available in ENA. Communication tools such as the forum facilitate public and private exchanges between teachers and students. Several forms of formative and summative evaluation are proposed as well. After having defined an evaluation, his deadline and his averaging, a deposit box allows the students to submit their work in digital format. Thus, the teacher can follow up the work deadlines and the correction of individuals or groups work.
The survey tool allows a teacher to create an online evaluation with different types of questions. The student enters his answers and then consults his results. Statistics are also generated for the entire group. It is possible for a teacher to create working teams by defining the required number of students. The students themselves can also do groups’ formation by sending invitations to join their teams.
ENA interacts with several other institutional systems. For example, it is possible to write down the ISBN number of a volume to automatically complete the description of information. Students can then check its availability at the library or at the COOP. Finally, a course website offered on ENA can compile the evaluation results, convert them into academic rating and transmit them directly to the studies management system, capsule.
In brief, ENA provides an interface that is easy to use and a variety of functionalities allowing the function and the activities of the class.
My Opinion on ENA as a Future ESL Teacher
ENA is an easy, free and useful tool to use for teachers but also for students. I have been using ENA since 2014 and I have never had any problems with it. If I were a teacher at Laval University, it would be pleased to work with it. This platform is well developed and it gives access to a variety of tools. There are videos and PDF documents to help people who may struggle using it for the first time, but in general it is pretty simple.
What is wonderful about ENA is that teachers can put all the homework on ENA. Every student can access to all the documents the teachers posted. It is very useful for the students who always forget to take down their homework. With ENA, they can access it online and see everything they have to do or read before the next class. They can also see when they need to hand in an assignment or when they will have an exam or a test. Also, students can ask each other questions in the forum section, which helps the weaker students or the ones who missed a class to understand better. Teachers can also interact with the students in the forum.
One thing that is disappointing is that only university teachers and students can use it. Furthermore, the students as well the teachers need to be registered at Laval University. Also, there are updates approximately every week and during this time, the portal is inaccessible, which is inconvenient.
In general, I think that ENA is a great platform for both students and teachers and I would recommend it to anyone at Laval University.
dorothygrenier 