Hui-Chin Yeh

Graduate School of Applied Foreign Languages, National Yunlin University of Science & Technology, Yunlin, Taiwan // hyeh@yuntech.edu.tw

Sheng-Shiang Tseng

Graduate Institute of Curriculum and Instruction, Tamkang University, New Taipei City, Taiwan // u9241346@gmail.com

Yu-Sheng Chen

National Jhuo-Lan Senior High School, Miaoli // m10141008@yuntech.org.tw

ABSTRACT

To extend the recent growth of literature on using peer feedback through blogs to enhance students’ speaking performance, this study investigated the effects of online peer feedback via blogs on the speaking performance of college students studying English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Participants comprised 45 EFL college students, from two classes English Conversation and English Listening and Speaking, who were required to practice English speaking by recording a series of video clips and giving/receiving peer feedback on their speaking performance. Students also reflected on their experiences at the end of the semester. The collected data included the students’ scores on their first and final video clips, their blog entries, and their self-reflection sheets. Based on the differences in scores on their first and final clips, the students were classified into groups who made more progress (MP) and less progress (LP) respectively. After receiving peer feedback through blogs, only the MP group showed significant progress in the development of the content of their videos, including introduction, supporting points and conclusions while both groups showed significant improvement in the delivery area except for vocabulary use and grammar. It was also found that those responding more actively to peers’ problematic feedback gained more progress in the revised clips. Several pedagogical implications are also discussed.

Keywords

Online peer feedback, Video Blogs, Speaking performance

Fu Yun Yu

Institute of Education, National Cheng Kung University , Taiwan // fuyun.ncku@gmail.com

Shannon Sung

Education Studies Program, Spelman College , USA // ssung@spelman.edu

ABSTRACT

This study examined whether different identity revelation conditions result in different online targeting behavior among peer-assessors through a pretest and posttest quasi-experimental research design. Students from six fifth-grade classes (N = 196) participated in online learning tasks where they generated and selected peer-generated questions to review and assess in their respective identity revelation modes—real-name, nickname, and anonymity. Several findings were obtained. First, there was a high redundancy rate for both high- and low-targeted assessees under the pre-treatment (control) and treatment conditions for all three identity revelation modes. Second, the non-significant results of the chi-square tests indicated that the identity revelation modes and assessee redundancy were neither considerably related for the high- nor low-targeted assessees groups. Third, the results from the ANCOVA on the number of peer-feedback messages each student received showed no significant differences among the three identity revelation treatments. Fourth, the Wilcoxon tests confirmed that there were no significant differences in the assessee rankings in terms of the number of times their generated questions were assessed between the pre-treatment and treatment conditions for all different identity revelation modes. Finally, the results from participants’ responses to the checkbox question revealed almost the same ranking pattern regarding factors dominating their targeting behavior (with the question-author ranked last among all factors), despite the various different identity revelation modes. In sum, identity revelation modes were not found to affect peer-assessors’ targeting behavior in an online peer-assessment activity.

Keywords

Identity, Online targeting behavior, Peer-assessment

Siu Cheung Kong

Department of Mathematics and Information Technology, The Education University of Hong Kong // sckong@eduhk.hk

ABSTRACT

The study looked into how school partnership generates benefit. It aimed to identify the structures of partnership among collaborating schools and to examine elements that can contribute to sustainable e-Learning development. Six cluster project cases were purposefully selected from an e-Learning pilot scheme in Hong Kong to investigate how school partnership functions in e-Learning implementation through semi-structured focus group interviews. The findings identified five types of partnership structures that were adopted by the six e-Learning cluster projects, namely, a traditional leader-centered team leadership; a fusion of traditional leader-centered and distributed team leadership; a distributed-coordinated team leadership; an intermediate form of distributed-coordinated and distributed-fragmented team leadership; and a duplicated distributed team leadership structure. Elements including mutual benefit, active school engagement with dynamic communication and interaction, reasonable team size, and co-building of online sharing platform for channeling ideas and actions efficiently are critical to keep e-Learning school partnership sustainable.

Keywords

E-Learning, Partnership structures, School education, School partnership, Sustainable elements

Flavio Manganello

Institute for Educational Technologies, Italian National Research Council, Genoa, Italy // manganello@itd.cnr.it

Carla Falsetti

Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy // c.falsetti@univpm.it

Tommaso Leo

Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy // tommaso.leo@univpm.it

ABSTRACT

Web enhanced active learning has been demonstrated to be an effective approach in Engineering Higher Education, as it provides students with more flexibility in dealing with the development of skills related to professional knowledge. However, students require a sufficient level of self-efficacy and control over their own learning, which might impact negatively on their effort and academic performance. Therefore, promoting self-regulated learning among students would help them to develop effective strategies they could adopt in planning, monitoring and evaluating their learning process. In this paper, a web-enhanced active learning approach is proposed which integrates a self-regulated learning strategy that supports Control Engineering students in managing their learning process. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a three-year quasi-experimental study was performed in the context of an undergraduate Automatic Control course at the Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy. This involved 418 students and 4 teachers. Both quantitative and qualitative measurement tools were used for the evaluation. The results of the study confirmed the effectiveness of a learning design specifically tailored to implement self-regulated learning features in a web-enhanced active learning approach for undergraduate engineering students. Moreover, the qualitative-quantitative evaluation model proved to be effective in capturing and gauging a more comprehensive and detailed picture of the triggered self-regulated learning dynamics.

Keywords

Engineering education, Material knowledge, Self-regulated learning, Active learning, Web-enhanced learning

Wim Westera

Open University of the Netherlands, Valkenburgerweg, The Netherlands // wim.westera@ou.nl

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to improve the design methods for serious games (games for learning) by identifying a set of well-established pedagogical misconceptions and presenting design guidelines to avoid these. It analyses the pedagogical principles and models that are commonly used in serious game design, and contrasts these with evidence and advances in instructional psychology and instructional design research. The paper particularly focuses on (1) the concept of experience-based learning, which many serious games comply with, (2) the concept of learner motivation, which most games strongly claim to support, and (3) the score systems that many games use to track and display progress. Structural design weaknesses are exposed and countered with a large body of research evidence from the literature. A set of practicable design guidelines are presented that help to avoid the pedagogical flaws and contribute to improving the design methods for serious games.

Keywords

Serious games, Applied games, Game design, Learning effectiveness

Tien Chi Huang

Department of Information Management, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan // tchuang@nutc.edu.tw

Mu Yen Chen

Department of Information Management, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan // mychen.academy@gmail.com

Wen Pao Hsu

Department of Information Management, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan // andrew780110@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Augmented reality (AR) technology has recently been applied to outdoor learning in an attempt to overcome the drawbacks associated with traditional teaching environments. This study conducted an experiment designed to examine how augmented reality (AR) technology in mobile devices can be used to generate virtual objects to create a context-aware, AR-enabled guided tour application for outdoor learning. The participants were 70 elementary school students (average age: 11 years), who were randomly divided into control and experiment groups. The results showed the proposed system provided learners with a friendly, interactive interface and rich, engaging media to improve learning performance and stimulate the students’ internal motivation to learn. The system’s quantification of the learning motivations noted in Keller’s ARCS model and Kolb’s learning style theory can be used to improve the design of the learning materials. In conclusion: (1) The proposed system and activity helps stimulate learning intention via the pursuit of outdoor learning objectives, (2) the AR technology provides learners with contextual information related to the outdoor learning environment, and (3) the benefits of the proposed model do not differ for students with different learning styles.

Keywords

Augmented reality, Ubiquitous learning, ARCS, Motivation, Learning styles

Ting Wu

Southwest Jiaotong University, China // tingwoo@126.com

Peter Albion

University of Southern Queensland, Australia // peter.albion@usq.edu.au

ABSTRACT

Facing calls for greater emphasis on STEM education in primary school classrooms, teachers may be anxious because of limited exposure to STEM in their own education. The Australian Curriculum: Technologies is new and many teachers are not familiar with its content. Hence both in-service and pre-service teachers (PSTs) require preparation. This research used a case study method to investigate factors influencing PSTs’ use of Remote Access Laboratories (RAL) with activities intended to develop their capacity to teach STEM in primary schools. Results highlighted the importance of PSTs’ experience of STEM in their own education and showed the benefits of hands-on learning and scaffolding to support preparation of PSTs for teaching STEM subjects.

Keywords

Remote access laboratories, STEM education, Pre-service teachers

Sheng Shiang Tseng

Graduate Institute of Curriculum and Instruction, Tamkang University, New Taipei City, Taiwan // u9241346@gmail.com

Hui Chin Yeh

Department of Applied Foreign Languages, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Yunlin, Taiwan // hyeh@gemail.yuntech.edu.tw

ABSTRACT

Project-based learning (PBL), a learning-by-doing practice, has been used for enhancing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ language skills. However, the extent to which and how EFL teachers develop or improve Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) competencies while experiencing PBL remain unexplored. For this study an 18-week PBL project was designed to improve EFL teachers’ CALL competencies. A total of 12 EFL prospective teachers were recruited to participate in a sequence of activities: class observations, group discussions, and the design of lesson plans. Pre- and post- TPACK (technological pedagogical content knowledge) surveys were administered to measure participants’ improvement of CALL competencies. Qualitative data, including class observation notes, lesson plans, group discussion records, and reflective essays, were collected to triangulate and complement survey results. The survey results showed that the prospective teachers demonstrated higher levels of CALL competencies after the PBL project. Using the qualitative data, this study explicitly documented the benefits which prospective teachers may obtain and the problems they may face when participating in a PBL project. The findings can help future teacher educators understand how to design and implement effective teaching training for CALL competency development.

Keywords

Project-based learning, CALL competencies, Teacher training

Yu Fen Yang

School of Applied Foreign Languages, National Yunlin University of Science & Technology, Taiwan // yangy@yuntech.edu.tw

Ruey Fen Harn

School of Applied Foreign Languages, National Yunlin University of Science & Technology, Taiwan // g9841705@yuntech.edu.tw

Gwo Haur Hwang

Program in Interdisciplinary Studies, National Yunlin University of Science & Technology, Taiwan // ghhwang@yuntech.edu.tw

ABSTRACT

Many students who study English as a foreign language (EFL) have difficulty transferring linguistic features between languages while writing. This study aims to investigate how college students improve their EFL writing with text revisions by using a bilingual concordancer (Chinese and English). A sample of 32 college students consented to participate in a writing program. According to pre-test scores, they were grouped into an experimental (N = 15) group, which used the bilingual concordancer, and a control (N = 17) group, which used Yahoo’s Chinese-English online dictionary. The results of the study indicate that the experimental group made greater improvement in text revision than those in the control group, as they raised metalinguistic awareness to evaluate word choice and sentence construction, by viewing authentic language examples retrieved from the bilingual concordancer. The bilingual concordancer also provided the experimental group with rich linguistic contexts to compare the differences between two languages and induce the rules of the target language (English), which lead to a reduction in errors due to the interference of the native language in EFL writing. In contrast, the control group relied mostly on limited sample sentences listed in the online dictionary, and lacking contexts resulted in little writing improvement.

Keywords

Authentic language examples, Bilingual concordancer, Language interference, Metalinguistic awareness, Text revision

Hong-Zheng Sun-Lin

Graduate Institute of Information and Computer Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei City, Taiwan // hzsunlin@gmail.com

Guey-Fa Chiou

Graduate Institute of Information and Computer Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei City, Taiwan // gueyfa@ntnu.edu.tw

ABSTRACT

This study examined effects of gamified comparison on sixth graders’ performance of algebra word problem solving and attitude toward algebra learning. Seventy-two sixth graders were invited to participate in a four-week experimental instruction and assigned to three groups: gamified comparison, comparison, and control. The results showed (1) a significant effect on solving similar problems: the gamified comparison group performed significantly better than the comparison group and the control group respectively, and the comparison group performed significantly better than the control group; (2) a significant effect on solving transfer problems: the gamified comparison group gained significantly higher scores than the comparison group and the control group respectively, and the comparison group gained significantly higher scores than the control group; (3) a significant effect on students’ learning attitude: while no significant differences found on students’ confidence, the gamified comparison group made significantly more positive responses than the comparison group and the control group in terms of enjoyment, motivation, and perceived value. This study proposed a feasible combination of game rule and comparison strategy, as well as exploring implications for teachers’ teaching design and students’ gamified learning activities.

Keywords

Gamification, Comparison, Algebra word problem solving, Learning attitude