Wiki-based Collaborative Writing Activities in ESL Contexts

Driven by Vygotsky\u27s sociocultural theory and the notion of the zone of proximal development (ZPD), and Long\u27s interaction hypothesis, the study investigated how intermediate-level international students at an urban U.S. Mid-South university interacted in wiki-based collaborative writing. students\u27 perspectives toward the integration of wikis in writing assignments and why they hold such perspectives were also objectives of the study. Eighteen students in small groups of three were asked to collaboratively write three different paragraphs, namely, summary, compare/contrast, and classification.Using a triangulation mixed-methods approach, the data were collected over 8 weeks. Pre-and post-survey questionnaires were adminstered using an online survey website to get the students\u27 opinions. A password-protected class wiki was set up to help students collaborate on the writing prompts. Because not all participants had used wikis before, the researcher gave a training session and asked students to do a mock writing activity. For simplicity and a friendly-user interface, PBworks.com was chosen from several free wiki sites. Following the course syllabus design, the writing instructor chose the writing prompts and asked the researcher to post them online in a timely-manner.Key findings of the study revealed that the majority of students hold positive attitudes toward wiki-based collaborative writing although it was the first time for all the students to work on wikis. The reasons behind students\u27 positive attitudes included, but are not limited to, the fact that students helped and scaffolded one another to develop one well-written product and the opportunity to collaborate anytime and anywhere on the class wiki. Another interesting finding indicated that students\u27 attention to form (i.e., grammatical surface structure) and meaning (i.e., content) is affected by the writing task. The study\u27s results accord with previous studies. The study concluded with several suggestions for future research studies

The written production of ecuadorian efl high school students: grammatical transfer errors and teacher's and learner's perception of feedback

346 p.El objetivo de esta tesis doctoral es investigar los errores gramaticales de transferencia en la escritura en inglés como lengua extranjera de alumnos de secundaria ecuatorianos (n=180) y su grado de prevalencia en comparación a los errores léxicos de transferencia. Así mismo, se intenta comparar la variación de los errores gramaticales de transferencia obtenidos en tres grupos de alumnos clasificados de acuerdo a su nivel de dominio de inglés según el Marco Común Europeo (A1, A2, B1) y la variación de dichos errores entre dos tipos de ensayo: narrativo y argumentativo. Finalmente, se desea conocer las percepciones de los estudiantes y profesores con respecto a la retroalimentación en la escritura de inglés como lengua extranjera proporcionada en las clases. Todo esto se realiza con el propósito de contribuir a tratar de cumplir una parte de las metas del Ministerio de Educación del Ecuador relacionadas a la búsqueda de una mejora en el nivel de dominio de inglés como lengua extranjera en estudiantes de educación secundaria

Innovative learning in action (ILIA) issue four: New academics engaging with action research

This edition of ILIA showcases four papers which were originally submitted as action research projects on the Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Practice and Research programme. Within the programme we offer an environment where participants can explore their unique teaching situations – not to produce all-encompassing approaches to Higher Education (HE) practice but to develop an ongoing dialogue about the act of teaching. In effect, there are no generalisable ‘best’ methods of teaching because they never work as well as ‘locally produced practice in action’ (Kincheloe, 2003:15). Thus rather than providing short term ‘survival kits’ the programme offers new HE teachers a ‘frame’ for examining their own and their colleagues’ teaching alongside questioning educational purpose and values in the pursuit of pedagogical improvement. This ‘frame’ is action research which Ebbutt (1985:156) describes as: …The systematic study of attempts to change and improve educational practice by groups of participants by means of their own practical actions and by means of their own reflections upon the effects of their actions… We promote ‘practitioner-research’ or ‘teacher-research’ as a way of facilitating professional development for new HE teachers, promoting change and giving a voice to their developing personal and professional knowledge. Teachers as researchers embark upon an action orientated, iterative and collaborative process to interrogate their own practices, question their own assumptions, attitudes, values and beliefs in order to better understand, influence and enrich the context of their own situations. The action researcher assumes that practitioners are knowledgeable about their own teaching situations and the fact that they are ‘in-situ’ and not at ‘arms length’ as the value-neutral, ‘scientific’ researcher is often claimed to be, does not invalidate their knowledge. Thus, practitioners are capable of analysing their own actions within a ‘reflective practitioner’ modus operandi. Action research is on-going in conception and well suited to examining the ever-changing and increasingly complex HE practice environment. Findings from action research are always subject to revision since it intrinsically acknowledges the need to constantly revisit widely diverse teaching situations and scenarios across everyday HE practice. Teaching is not predictable and constant, it always occurs in a contemporary microcosm of uncertainty. Action research provides an analytical framework for new HE teachers to begin to engage with this unpredictability on a continuing basis, that is its purpose and also its perennial challenge. The papers presented here describe how four relatively new HE teachers have begun to address the challenge of improving their practice within their locally based settings utilising the action research ‘paradigm’

Locked Up: Parallel Correctional Officer, Deputy, and Inmate Decision-Making Experiences in County Jails

Recidivism is a complex phenomenon. Greater than 65 percent of incarcerated adults return to jail within three years. While numerous empirical studies focus on factors that contribute to recidivism, there is limited existing research that examines decision-making as one of these factors. The purpose of this study is to address this gap in the literature and develop an understanding of the influence of decision-making processes on inmates and correctional officers and deputies in the California criminal justice system. An exploratory 2014 pilot study at three California county jails found correctional officers and inmates faced similar challenges related to decision-making as a result of their interaction with the criminal justice system. The current study explores a) the decision-making experiences of inmates who reside in jails; b) the decision-making experiences of formerly incarcerated persons; c) the decision-making experiences of correctional officers and deputies who work in jails; and d) the potential opportunities to exercise decision-making skills in jails for inmates, correctional officers and deputies. A qualitative approach using adapted phenomenological data analysis techniques, a decision-making questionnaire, and focus groups were used to explore the types of decisions correctional officers, deputies and inmates make on a daily basis and how their experiences compare to one another. Findings suggest the jail environment has an equally negative impact on correctional officers, deputies and inmates. The need to evaluate the human experience of all three groups is evident. The findings further affirm the Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment discoveries on the parallel life experiences of inmates, correctional officers and deputies. As a result, the Peshon Reciprocal Interaction Decision Model, which may be used to evaluate the decision-making experiences of these populations in spaces of tension, conflict and use of force is proposed. This study also offers insights that can inform officer training and inmate preparation for release

Online consultation on experts’ views on digital competence

The objective of this investigation was to provide another perspective on what it means to be digitally competent today, in addition to reviews of literature and current frameworks for the development of digital competence, 5 all of which constitute part of the wider IPTS Digital Competence Project (DIGCOMP). Some common ground exists at a general level in defining digital competence in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitudes, which may be hierarchically organised. However, this does not provide the clarity needed by teachers, employers, citizens – all those who are responsible for digital competence development, be it their own or other people’s ‐ to make informed decisions. Further work is needed to create a common language that helps to enhance understanding across the worlds of research, education, training, and work. This will make it easier for citizens and employers to see what digital competence entails and how it is relevant to their jobs and more generally, their lives

ASK FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL: PART II. RESULTS OF A DESIGN STUDY

In \u27ASK for Information Retrieval: Part P1, we discussed the theory and background to a design study for an information retrieval (IR) system based on the attempt to represent the anomalous states of knowledge (ASKs) underlying information needs. In Part 11, we report the methods and results of the design study, and our conclusions

Cross-domain priming from mathematics to relative-clause attachment: a visual-world study in French

Human language processing must rely on a certain degree of abstraction, as we can produce and understand sentences that we have never produced or heard before. One way to establish syntactic abstraction is by investigating structural priming. Structural priming has been shown to be effective within a cognitive domain, in the present case, the linguistic domain. But does priming also work across different domains? In line with previous experiments, we investigated cross-domain structural priming from mathematical expressions to linguistic structures with respect to relative clause attachment in French (e.g., la fille du professeur qui habitait à Paris/the daughter of the teacher who lived in Paris). Testing priming in French is particularly interesting because it will extend earlier results established for English to a language where the baseline for relative clause attachment preferences is different form English: in English, relative clauses (RCs) tend to be attached to the local noun phrase (low attachment) while in French there is a preference for high attachment of relative clauses to the first noun phrase (NP). Moreover, in contrast to earlier studies, we applied an online-technique (visual world eye-tracking). Our results confirm cross-domain priming from mathematics to linguistic structures in French. Most interestingly, different from less mathematically adept participants, we found that in mathematically skilled participants, the effect emerged very early on (at the beginning of the relative clause in the speech stream) and is also present later (at the end of the relative clause). In line with previous findings, our experiment suggests that mathematics and language share aspects of syntactic structure at a very high-level of abstraction