Slides presented at the Innovative Language Teaching and Learning at University: Enhancing the Learning Experience through Student Engagement conference. Friday, 28th June 2013 School of Arts, Languages and Cultures University of Manchester Manchester Conference Centre. Abstract: Higher Education practitioners are facing great challenges in the current economic climate. One is ensuring that students remain deeply engaged in their learning experience. Another is equipping them with a set of skills that will enable them to thrive in a context where “the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing” (Siemens, 2005). Over the last decade, connectivist learning theories (Siemens, 2005; Kop & Hill, 2008) have demonstrated that digital literacy (Martin & Madigan, 2006) and participatory literacy (Jenkins, 2006) are essential to the development of students as lifelong learners and engaged citizens. This presentation reports on the deployment of a learning system which is designed to foster vocabulary building through collaborative processes. It utilises tasks which contribute to Open Educational Resources (OER) (Casserly & Smith, 2008). This system combines the collaborative productivity application Google Drive© and the cross-platform, web 2.0-enabled vocabulary-building application Quizlet©. The speaker will outline how this student-led, tutor-curated learning system was used to complement and expand on an existing vocabulary-building application. Areas such as the impact on students’ learning experiences and their views on mobile and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) learning (Craig, 2011), will be explored. Attitudes towards Open Educational Resources and likelihood of further contributing to them will also receive particular attention in this presentation.

1. Bring Your Own Vocabulary
Engaging students in vocabulary learning
with mobile & collaborative technologies
Manchester, 28th June 2013. #iltlu13
CCBY-NC3.0
Benoît Guilbaud
www.benguilbaud.com
Twitter: @benguilbaud

2. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 3.0 Unported licence (CC BY-NC 3.0).
More details at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.
@benguilbaud, 2013
#iltlu13

3. BenoîtGuilbaud,2013
#iltlu13

4. Sydney Uni CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Context
Oh la la !

5. Context
• Specialised language teaching: medical, business - prevalence of lexicon
• Three undergraduate classes / 36 students / one semester
• Fortnightly formative vocabulary tests + final summative test
• 31 existing lists (2,917 entries) (+ 9 new lists (484 entries) created in 2013)
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6. Motives for change
• Time required to produce new lists
• Opportunity to increase student engagement
• Expanding on existing software solution (Interlex)
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Platform

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© Quizlet.com

9. Platform
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Feature Interlex
Compatibility PC only, installation required Cross-platform / web-based
Mobile access No Yes
Connectivity Offline Web 2.0
Content Student-generated, tutor-curated Collaborative
Interface Good Better

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© Quizlet.com

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© Quizlet.com

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© Quizlet.com

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© Quizlet.com

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Compiling lists

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© Google.com
Google Drive

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Rationale

22. Micro
• Learning new words
• Researching vocabulary
• Creating revision lists
• Encouraging independent
learning
• Fostering participation
(Craig, 2011, Jenkins, 2006)
• Producing OERs
(Casserly & Smith, 2008)
• Promoting networked learning
(Couros, 2011, Siemens, 2005)
• Developing digital literacy
(Martin & Madigan, 2006)
Macro
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Evaluation

24. Evaluation
• End-of-semester questionnaire
• 53 open and closed questions
• 42% respondents
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18/06/2013 11:19Survey Results
Page 1 of 14https://selectsurveys.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/PrintOverview.aspx?SurveyID=9lK34l83
1. Please enter your full name (Optional) (NB: all survey results will be anonymised entirely)
Total Respondents 14
(skipped this question) 15
2. Which of the following units were you enrolled on in 2012-13?
Response
Total
Response
Percent
Points Avg
Medical French level 1 7 35% n/a n/a
Medical French level 2 9 45% n/a n/a
Business French
"further" level
4 20% n/a n/a
Total Respondents 20 100%
(skipped this question) 9
3. "I understand that my answers may be used and quoted anonymouly for the purpose of the present research study." Click here
to read more.
Response
Total
Response
Percent
Points Avg
Yes 20 100% n/a n/a
Total Respondents 20
(skipped this question) 9
4. From which devices did you usually access Quizlet? Tick all answers that apply.
Response
Total
Response
Percent
Points Avg
University PC 9 53% n/a n/a
Personal
computer
(including
laptop)
17 100% n/a n/a
Smartphone 5 29% n/a n/a
Tablet 0 0% n/a n/a
Printed lists 1 6% n/a n/a
Other, please
specify
0 0% n/a n/a
Total Respondents 17
(skipped this question) 12
5. From which device did you access Quizlet the most?
Response
Total
Response
Percent
Points Avg
University PC 1 6% n/a n/a
Personal computer
(including laptop)
14 82% n/a n/a
Smartphone 2 12% n/a n/a
Tablet 0 0% n/a n/a
Printed lists 0 0% n/a n/a
Other (as specified
above)
0 0% n/a n/a
Total Respondents 17 100%
(skipped this question) 12
Quizlet survey 2013
Respondents: 29 displayed, 29 total Status: Closed
Launched Date: 05/06/2013 Closed Date: 16/06/2013

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Findings

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Vocabulary learning

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“Quizlet was useful to my learning”
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Very useful
Useful
Neutral
Useless
Very useless

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“I found that quizlet motivated me to
revise vocabulary”
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Strongly agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly disagree

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Increase in time spent revising vocabulary
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Much more time
A little more time
About
the same
Less time
Much less
time

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Place of use
Very often Often Sometimes Rarely Never
Public transports
Home
University
& library
Outdoors
Work
Around
campus

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Length of revision session
AVERAGE MAX
40 mins 100 mins

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Class-generated vocabulary lists

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“collaboratively creating vocabulary lists
is a good way to encourage student engagement”
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Strongly agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree

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how important is it that students are
included in the design of study materials?
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Very important
Important
Neutral
Unimportant
Very
unimportant

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Issues with class-generated lists
occurring “often”
Technical problems 7%
Late entries (delaying test revisions) 33%
Duplicate entries 20%
Inaccurate entries 20%
Irrelevant entries 26%
% of respondents agreeing

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Issues with class-generated lists
occurring “often”
Technical problems 7%
Late entries (delaying test revisions) 33%
Duplicate entries 20%
Inaccurate entries 20%
Irrelevant entries 26%
% of respondents agreeing

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Open educational resources
& sharing

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Very likely
Likely
Neutral
Unlikely
Likeliness of sharing
own learning resources

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Very pleased
Pleased
Neutral
Pleased to share class-made resources

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Bring Your Own Device

41. Views on BYOD
• Free choice of learning device is favoured.
• University-sanctioned platforms should be widely compatible.
• Despite empirical evidence that students enjoy using their own
devices in class, survey responses show reluctance to bring
devices to class.
• BYOD may create discrepancies in access to learning.
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Conclusions

43. Conclusions
• Experience very positive overall
• High level of student engagement and satisfaction
• Several positive comments in unit satisfaction survey
• Summative test results show very effective learning
• Importance of thorough curation of contents by tutor
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44. Comments
“Provided there is appropriate oversight this is a fantastic resource.”
“Overall I have found this a great tool to use to learn vocabulary and
I hope to continue using it in the future.“
“I love the Quizlet tool.”
“Great learning tool.”
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45. References
• Casserly, C.M., Smith, MS.S, 2008. Revolutionizing education through innovation: Can openness transform teaching and
learning? In: Iiyoshi, T. & Kumar V. (eds), 2008. The collective advancement of Eduction through Open Technology, Open
Content and Open Knowledge. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press.
• Couros, A., 2011. Why networked learning matters. Education in a Changing Environment (ECE) 6th International
Conference, Creativity and Engagement in Higher Education, 6-8 July 2011, University of Salford, Greater Manchester, UK.
• Craig, D.V., 2011. Encouraging Participatory Culture and Language Learning: Assisting ELLs in Becoming Part of the
Digital Youth. In: TNTESOL Journal, 4(1) pp. 84-93.
• Jenkins, H., 2006. Convergence culture: where old and new media collide. New York; London: New York University Press.
• Kop, R., Hill, A., 2008. Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past? In: International Review of
Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3) [Online]. Accessible at: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/
viewArticle/523 [accessed 27th June 2013].
• Martin, A., Madigan, D. (eds), 2006. Digital Literacies for Learning. London: Facet publishing.
• Siemens, G., 2005. Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. In: International journal instructional technology
and distance learning, 2(1) [Online]. Accessible at: http://itdl.org/journal/jan_05/index.htm [accessed 27th June 2013].
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