Avalon College delivers English language and school preparation programs with a full boarding school experience for primary and secondary students, aged 10 to 17 years. The College is situated on a historic, rural property by the sea, and its students are well cared for by experienced and dedicated professionals. We congratulate Avalon College on the successful Quality Endorsement of its two courses: Online English Language Preparation for Primary Schools and Online English Language Preparation for Secondary Schools. Traditional face-to-face courses were redesigned to be delivered online through the ClassIn application, a bilingual Learning Management System (LMS), which has been configured to cater for young learners and also to service the students’ parents, guardians and agents. International students are currently engaged remotely from China and Thailand and are also learning locally. Course design and delivery is geared towards helping students succeed in mainstream school programs.
The ClassIn application was seen to be working well in the observation lessons. Of particular note was the thorough staged and scaffolded online orientation, which includes email introductions, pre-registration forms, and confirmation checklists. The online programs benefit from good navigation and signposting, as well as a variety of learning tasks and modes. Additional learning technologies, such as Vocaroo, Kahoot and WeChat, have been implemented into the courses to engage students’ differing technical skills. There is also provision for team teaching using breakout rooms, which is highly commendable.
