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Aila ReN 2011- Peters et al

by hayoreinders on Aug 31, 2011

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Presentation at our symposium at AILA in Beijing for the Research Network on CALL and the Learner (www.callandthelearner.info)

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Presentation at our symposium at AILA in Beijing for the Research Network on CALL and the Learner (www.callandthelearner.info)

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Diapo 3 - MethodologyThis study was conducted during the fall 2006 semester in French language departments at the following five Canadian universities: University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI), Dalhousie University (Dal), University of Ottawa (UofO), University of Alberta (UofA), and, Simon Fraser University (SFU). Each of these universities had language laboratories that varied in equipment and resources and which were used for different purposes depending on language course requirements.These five universities reflected different organizational models. Some universities had a dedicated French department, combining their French as a Second Language with their French or linguistics department (Dal, SFU). Others had French as part of a second or modern languages unit (UofO, UPEI), while the Faculté Saint-Jean at the UofA taught FSL courses on a French language campus. Some have more language students, SFU and UofO with about 1,200 or more each, midsized range at around 600 students (Dal) and some had fewer language students such as UPEI, with about 150 students registered in courses. Differences were also apparent in the availability of technology and resources. For example, only one of the language departments at the universities surveyed had a dedicated specialist in the field of language teaching and technology. In general, using technology in a language class was rarely compulsory and while its use was encouraged by the department, it was usually left to the professor to choose whether to assign multimedia lab work or not.The following information was provided by a professor at each of these institutions.University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI)The University of Prince Edward Island had a dedicated language laboratory, with limited equipment. Its use was compulsory at least once a week for many classes. Classrooms sometimes had a cable connection to the Internet and a PC data-projector. The following types of technological activities were done by the students: Internet browsing for sites on grammar, culture, news and media, and travel. Software was available to create presentations and send email. Written assignments were always typed using computers. The French department had courses at all levels and the use of computers and technology was encouraged by the department. The university provided professors with a computer, CD burner and Internet connection. There was also access to a shared printer and scanner. Course management systems such as WebCT or Blackboard were not available to the instructors at the time of the study.Dalhousie University (DAL)The multimedia laboratory in Dalhousie University was open seven days a week and was reportedly well-attended by students both during and outside of class. Technology was used for grammar activities, resource materials, translation, email and one of their courses provided access to sound files on-line over the Internet. Instructors of the French department were encouraged to teach language courses using multimedia technology, however, this was not compulsory. Many professors preferred the more familiar traditional teaching methods to the additional workload of creating new multimedia activities and implementing them. WebCT was available but it went mostly unused.University of Ottawa (UofO)The Second Language Institute of the University of Ottawa was equipped with multimedia language laboratories and classrooms. While once-a-week attendance at the language lab, under the professor's supervision, was a compulsory part of all language courses, not all language courses were taught in multimedia classrooms. The most common use of technology was to improve receptive skills (listening and reading) as well as pronunciation, and grammar. Students also had access to the language lab resources outside of their classes. A WebCT platform was supplied by the university but was rarely used by the language teachers.University of Alberta (UofA)At the University of Alberta, classes were usually given in multimedia classrooms containing audio and video apparatus but were not always equipped with a multimedia projector. Students had access to a multimedia language lab but at the time of our study, the language lab was not functioning properly and students could not listen to or record an audio document. The most common technological activities dealt with pronunciation, oral comprehension, writing, vocabulary and grammar. Lab work was usually not a compulsory part of their course work and had to be done outside of class time with no supervision. A WebCT platform was supplied by the university but rarely used by the language teachers.Simon Fraser University (SFU)Simon Fraser University had multimedia language labs and language teachers reportedly made good use of them. Certain applications, such as writing, listening and testing with Can8, were required in some courses, while others applications such as pronunciation exercises with Can8 and grammar activities were optional. Students had access to a multimedia lab which was compulsory for some language classes. Students went many times a week to the multimedia language lab during their classes, as directed by their professor, as well as outside the class period. WebCT was available for the professors and it was used by them. Furthermore, instructors reported that they would like a greater variety of multimedia materials available to their language classrooms.
p. 624ParticipantsA total of 71 students enrolled in French languages courses at the five universities volunteered to participate in the research. Although the number of students is small and is not enough to generalize to all language students in Canadian universities, the findings do show trends and tendencies. There were 20 students (28.1%) from Dalhousie University while the other four institutions were represented by 12 (16.9%) to 14 students (19.3%) each. Most of the participants were women (86%) as seems to be usually the case in French classes in Canadian universities. The participants were typical undergraduate students mostly in the 18 to 21 age group and only five students were older than 25 years. The University of Alberta students had no older students. The majority of our participants were native English speakers (82%) and 52% of them spoke another language as well. About half of the students were following programs in the Arts or Humanities, smaller groups were registered in Sciences or Social Sciences, while a very small percentage of them were in Education or Administration Studies. When asked about equipment owned, all but two students had a computer with an Internet connection at home. About 50% of the students owned a scanner, 50% a web cam, 70% a USB memory stick, and 70% owned an mp3 player.As for time spent working on their computer for their French course in general, 30% of students reported spending five to ten hours a week, 41%, reported spending two to three hours a day, while 26% reported spending more than three hours per day. The students at DAL and UofA seemed to use the computer slightly less than students at the other three institutions while according to responses, the UPEI students used their computer slightly more than the rest.Most students, 91.4%, used computers in their language classes; however, at Dalhousie University, this percentage was slightly lower (75%). Computers were used mainly to write assignments, and to communicate with others by sending e-mails, both representing 98.6%. Computers were also used to download documents (70%) and music (74.6%), and to do research (87.3%). Around one third of the students reported playing computer games, accessing CDs, and doing scanning. In general they did not create web pages or do any programming (less than 10%).
Our research team chose to use a construct analysis methodology in order to elicit the most authentic responses from the students. Indeed, Kelly’s (1955) construct analysis offers the participants the possibility of constructing their own representation of the phenomena being discussed — in our case, the use of technology in language learning. Participants were asked to provide elements (in our case, the technology-based activities) and the constructs or characteristics of these elements according to their beliefs.To begin the construct analysis, students were asked: ''Which technological activities have you used in your French language learning?'' Individually, they listed three or four activities that they had experienced in their language classes. Then together, students grouped the activities that were similar while discussing the criteria for grouping and further defining the elements. Throughout this discussion, the researcher did not intervene other than to ask for clarification. After the elements had been regrouped, the constructs were elicited by com- paring three elements. Students were required to explain how one element was different from the other two, producing a bipolar construct. For example, students could say that wikis and blogs are different from online grammar exercises in that the latter are more re- lated to traditional language learning than the former, which are newer types of technology- based activities for that purpose. The bipolar construct would then be traditional versus newer technology-based activities. Once this was done, students rated all the elements for each of the constructs, on a scale of 1 to 5. Three constructs were imposed on all groups: infrequent versus frequent, dislike versus like, and useless versus useful. In total, twenty focus groups were organized, four groups in each of the five universities. Each group meet- ing lasted approximately two hours.
Article pgs 624-625 Activities for expanding knowledge base(approfondir les connaissances des étudiants2) Form-focused activities(Améliorer la maitrise de la langue)3) Course management systems(faciliter la gestion de leurscours)
Maintain/Improve ContinuumOnline tools such as dictionaries, translation software can help confirm hypotheses and learn new information about a languageThe first continuum (Figure 1) is based on the goal of the students when doing the information-seeking language activity. Students described how information-seeking language activities can be used to maintain as well as improve their language knowledge. Students explained that searching for information using online tools such as dictionaries, translation software, and verb conjugation websites helped them confirm their hypothesis about a word or a conjugation. Looking up information on various websites, along with reading or listening to the news, assisted them in learning new information about the language.Figure 1 Continuum for ‘maintain’ and ‘improve’S1 – “The English French dictionary and the computer for grammar learning are the same.... Because, on the same website you can get a lot of information. These two resources are for grammar as well as for use as a dictionary.”S2 – “It’s to improve more so the quality of French.” S1 – “The quality of your French whereas this one you’d be almost like expanding your French.” ... S1 – “So the criteria would be quality, it’s like quality versus knowledge.” S2 – “Well, this one is quality of language and this one is more expansion...to acquire more knowledge.In this continuum, the students seemed to indicate that information-seeking language activities in the classroom helped to maintain their knowledge rather than improve it.
Consolidating linguistic elements vs improving knowledge baseThe second continuum (Figure 2) represents how information-seeking languageactivities provide students with an opportunity to check or gather information. The actions of the students are the focus of this continuum. For example, activities such as checking information on lexical and grammatical items help to confirm and consolidate the linguistic elements already known. Searching the Internet, on the other hand, is viewed here as gathering information that helps to improve the students’ knowledge base.S1 – “Reading online newspapers, I think it’s a, it’s a fun way to do, to do research because it’s current and it’s often relevant, you know. So if you have projects that look for that kind of information I think that newspapers are a good way to get it.”Figure 2 Continuum for ‘check’ and ‘gather’ As with the maintain/improve continuum, the students indicated that they checked information much more often than they actually gathered it. R – “So I’m just randomly putting them out there. La pomme, verb sites for conjugation and WebCT. Which two are the same, which one is different?”S1 – “I would think WebCT is different because WebCT is more like, to get exercises from your, from your class, like from your professor and these ones are more like, checking your own work and things like that.”R – “So WebCT would be for getting information, and the other two would be for checking information?In other words, the students tended to visit their course management system quickly to verify information before going to surf the Web extensively.Les étudiants ont indiqué qu’ils avaient davantage tendance à vérifier l’information en ligne qu’à recueillir de nouvelles informations. Ceci signifie qu’ils utilisaient fréquemment les outils de traduction, de correction en ligne et, plus rarement, les sites du cours des professeurs où ils pouvaient aller recueillir l’information qui y avait été mise à leur disposition.
Receive/Search Continuum.Online tools such as dictionaries, translation software can help confirm hypotheses and learn new information about a language.When students did information-seeking language activities, they saw themselves either as searching for information or receiving it (Figure 3). The students’ level of engagement is the focal point of this continuum. Were they passive when they were receiving information? Or, were they actively searching for it? Figure 3 Continuum for ‘receive’ and ‘search’. If students needed to fill a gap in their knowledge, they actively searched for the information. Wilson (1999) hinted at the concept of “level of engagement” when he reported that students could visit a website but have no intention of using the information found there. Our data shows that students were more active when they searched the Internet for information (for example, locating a translation for a word), while students who visited their course management system felt that they were passively receiving information rather than actively searching for it. S1 – “If you think about it like that, there’s nothing that can be more convenient, I can’t think of anything that can be more convenient than WebCT. ”R1 –“No, of course.” S1 – “I can’t imagine us having all those things just printed out, the teachers giving us, you know, the huge package of everything because there would be lots of stuff, even worse if we had to look for all that stuff, find it by ourselves on the Internet, that would be awful and really time consuming.” S2 – “I mean comparatively relatively to anything else I’d say WebCT, it’s the easiest.The results for this continuum were not surprising considering that the students reported that they did not consult the course website to receive information from their teacher. However, students mentioned that web-based information-seeking activities were not assigned very frequently in their language class. With these results one would assume that information-seeking language activities would be equally weighted on the receive and search continuum. However, this does not take into account the online form-focused activities during which students, by their own initiative, actively and frequently searched the Internet for spelling, definitions, and translations. This is why information-seeking activities for language learning are more search- than receive-oriented.
Specific information to complete Continuum for `facts' and `culture‘.A final distinction must be made in the nature of information that was gathered or received by the students. Students viewed as polar opposites activities that involved searching for facts and activities that related to culture (Figure 4). When doing form-focused activities, for example, students specified that they were looking for specific information on language, how to spell a word, or how to conjugate a verb. On the other hand, when reading or listening to online news, the information gathered was much more likely to be culture-related. Both of these are needed to have a well-rounded language learner.R – “Internet and reading French magazines...” S1 – “That’s a 5 for culture.” S2 – “All of these provide information as well as culture,... as opposed to blank reading like an encyclopedia.”When looking at the frequency of use of the information-seeking language activities, it is obvious that students look for factual information much more frequently than cultural information. This was because fact-finding form-focused activities were done much more frequently than activities focusing on cultural information that was neither required nor often assigned. The use of these bipolar continuums shed some light on web-based information-seeking activities for language learning among Canadian university students. It also allowed us to examine students as active participants in their learning.
When students were asked in which information-seeking activities they were engaged for their language learning, they reported that consulting course management websites was the least frequent activity, followed by activities to expand knowledge. Form-focused activities were used most frequently and perceived as most or very useful. From their descriptions of these activities, a continuum of characteristics emerged, based on the goals pursued, the actions undertaken, the level of engagement of the students, and the nature of the information gathered. Despite the small sample size of participants, an important limitation of this research, the results do provide some insight into language-learning trends in Canadian universities. Stu- dents entering universities are technologically savvy. They have opinions of what is useful for language learning and have developed their own methods of using the web for information seeking. Teachers should become aware of their students’ preferences and adapt accordingly. In the language classroom, teachers should assign web-based information-seeking activities that incorporate a wider range of goals such as maintaining and improving the language or searching for factual or cultural information. This will ensure that students expand their searches to a greater variety of sources. The teacher should provide clear instructions and focused search criteria. Teachers should take advantage of technology’s collaborative spaces. Students constantly communicate and share personal information through technology. These skills could be transferred to a classroom setting. For example, during information-seeking activities, individual students could relay information found to the group, thus sharing content and web- search skills. Such activities would not only take into account scheduling issues for students but would also guide them in using the web more efficiently for their subsequent searches. With regard to course management systems, the information housed within the CMS should be crucial for successfully completing the course. Teachers should therefore organize course content and activities so that students have to check their CMS regularly to gather all the information necessary for their language learning. Teachers could also make students responsible for the development of the content delivered via the course management system, as this would actively involve the students in their web learning.

Aila ReN 2011- Peters et al — Presentation Transcript

From the mouths of Canadian University Students: Web-based Information-Seeking Activities for Language Learning
Martine Peters
Alysse Weinberg
Nandini Sarma
Mary Frankoff
ResearchQuestions
What type of information-seeking activities are done by students for their language classes?
2) How do the students characterize these types of activities?
Methodology
5 Canadian Universities
- Large and small
- East to West coast
- Diversity of CALL use
Group interviews
Questionnaires
71 participants of French as a second language;
18-21 years of age;
50% in Arts and Humanities programs;
69/71 had computer & Internet connection;
91% used CALL for their language courses (26% 5-10 hrs/week; 41% 2-3 hrs/day; 26% 3hrs+ /day);
Assignments & writing emails (96%), downloading documents for research (87%).
Participants
Instruments: Group Interviews 1
Construct analysis (Kelly, 1955) : participants construct their own representation of the phenomena being discussed.
Provide elements (technology used in language learning).
Identify constructs (characteristics) of the elements according to their beliefs.
19 two-hour group interviews (3- 4 in each university);
Varying numbers in each group;
3 imposed constructs:
Infrequent vs Frequent
Dislike vs Like
Useless vs Useful
Further constructs elicited during discussions.
Instruments: Group Interviews 2
Instruments: Questionnaire
Presentation of types of CALL activities;
Questions on
technology-based activities done
frequency of use and usefulness;
other activities not on the list.
Results: Information Seeking Activities
1. Activities for expanding knowledge base
2. Form-focused activities
3. Course management systems
Activities for Expanding knowledge base
Searching for information for language projects
Not often required
Done individually
Personal use
Written work
Students responsible for the search
Global activity, many aspects of the language
Because it helps a lot, especially on topics you’re not really sure about and the teacher just throws at you so you can just go on the computer and just do your research.
Activities for Expanding knowledge base
Reading/listening/viewing online news
Not required frequently
Indifferent to this activity
Individual activity
Not very interactive nor creative
Class-oriented, controlled by the professor
Not done for personal use or pleasure
I just never really needed to do it for university.
Form-focused activities
Online dictionaries
Used very frequently and very useful
Useful for target words (local)
Students are actively engage
Computer efficient
Not imposed by their professor, related to their needs
I use a lot of electronic dictionaries because they are a lot more specific than just my basic French English dictionary.
Online spell-checkers
Very frequent and useful
Done individually
Goal to improve students’ writing
Specific aspects of the language
School work, not pleasure
High level of involvement
Form-focused activities
You’re gonna see what you’re doing wrong so you can improve it but you’re not necessarily expanding your knowledge, you don’t learn new words, you don’t learn new concepts.
Online translation
Mentioned by 4 groups but very frequent and useful
Work, mechanical
Interactive (offers suggestions)
Individual activity
Not cultural
New type of computer-based activity
Form-focused activities
I was using it before a lot, for example when my French was very weak, like very, very weak, and so I would write the text in English and translate it with that to French.
Verb conjugation
Mentioned by 4 groups but very frequent and useful
Mechanical
Non- contextual, classroom use only
Easy to use, not pleasant to work with
Form-focused activities
Conjugation is more work than pleasure. You just don’t conjugate verbs for fun!
Mentioned by 8 groups
Rarely visited but useful (accessibility)
Personal and individual
School-oriented
Information source and learning tool
Course management systems
It’s very easy to kind of find things, it’s broken down in chunks.
I find that it keeps me organized, lets me know like what I have to hand in, what’s coming up.
Continuum 1: Reasons for using information seeking activities
Continuum 2: Actions accomplished by the students
Continuum 3: Level of engagement in the task
Continuum 4: Type of information looked for
Teachers should become aware of their students’ preferences and adapt accordingly.
Recommendations
Recommendations
In the language classroom,
teachers should assign web-based information-seeking activities that incorporate a wider range of goals;
teachers should provide clear instructions and focused search criteria;
teachers should take advantage of technology’s collaborative spaces;
the information housed within the CMS should be crucial for successfully completing the course.
Limitation: small sample size of participants
Results do provide some insight into language-learning trends in Canadian universities.
Students are technologically savvy
They have opinions of what is useful for language learning and have developed their own methods of using the web for information seeking
Conclusions
Conclusions
Ongoing research is required to provide teachers with current information, including research on web 2.0 activities for information seeking.

Aila ReN 2011- Peters et al

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Aila ReN 2011- Peters et al — Presentation Transcript