Investigation into the Motives and Perceptions of Implementing Blended Teaching in a Chinese Higher Education Context

As a pedagogical approach in practice, blended teaching is generating unprecedented opportunities in higher education, but also poses new challenges. Whether teachers’ application of blended education can achieve steady and sustainable development is gaining increasing attention. This research examines whether teachers’ application of blended education shows sufficient motivation for sustainable development, by exploring the motives influencing blended teaching practices; examining the effectiveness of a blended course design that integrates automated essay scoring online; and describing the specific blended teaching situation in the given context. This can help develop knowledge of the motives affecting the implementation of a hybrid approach, improve teaching performance and quality in the given context, and add more value to the pedagogical practice by concentrating on its implementation. This dissertation includes a pilot study and three main experiments, as part of the project leading to a doctorate in Education. It employs quantitative and qualitative methods, and analyses the data collected from questionnaires, interviews, and triangular cross-verification of observations and informal conversations. The pilot study tested the feasibility of the intended qualitative thematic approach and provided parameters for designing the questions for the focus groups in the main study, through applying Creswell’s thematic analysis approach. Based on the pilot study results, the first experiment is a quantitative intervention in the given context. To apply the blended approach to college English writing as an intervention, a small-scale study involved 71 student participants divided into two groups, to compare an automated essay-scoring supported hybrid course design with traditional manual marking. This experiment examined the effectiveness of the blended approach and measured the attitudes of students with different scores. Statistical analysis reveals that students are not disadvantaged by the hybrid course (p<0.01). Both groups showed a significant improvement in performance (p<0.05). Students hold differentiated attitudes towards human scoring and automated essay scoring in a blended course design, correlating to their writing performances (p<0.05). The second experiment conducted two online focus groups with 14 teachers; it used thematic analysis and pattern identification techniques to identify the motives influencing the adoption and implementation of blended teaching, based on the participants’ narratives and descriptions. Between the two focus groups, the pandemic was found to affect the motive of technical skills, obliging all potentially suitable participants to practise online teaching for a whole semester. The two groups’ data were analysed separately before being combined to extract the results. Thus, the eight identified motives were inductively categorized into three dimensions (attitude, external environment, and subjective controllability). The analysis further explores the themes of conundrums and tentative countermeasures identified from the second focus group, observations, and informal online conversations. In the third experiment, a questionnaire survey, based on Neumeier’s parameters, was distributed to 166 teacher participants. The results presented the specific situation of implementing blended teaching, such as online platforms, time spent online, and mixed course design. The influencing motives were tested and measured by multiple linear regression methods in SPSS, with data collected from 187 valid questionnaires. Finally, a regression equation model identified the degrees and ranking order of influences, with the motive of self-efficacy being dominant (0.464), followed by social pressure (0.216), and perceived utility (0.183). Based on the research findings, this research proposes suggestions regarding blended teaching practices, such as resource construction and teachers’ professional development

European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN). Conference Proceedings

Erasmus+ Programme of the European UnionThe powerful combination of the information age and the consequent disruption caused by these unstable environments provides the impetus to look afresh and identify new models and approaches for education (e.g. OERs, MOOCs, PLEs, Learning Analytics etc.). For learners this has taken a fantastic leap into aggregating, curating and co-curating and co-producing outside the boundaries of formal learning environments – the networked learner is sharing voluntarily and for free, spontaneously with billions of people.Supported by Erasmus+ Programme of the European Unioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The impact of emotions on student participation in an assessed, online, collaborative activity

There is growing recognition of the importance of emotions in academic online learning contexts. However, there is still little known about the role of emotions in social and collaborative online learning settings, especially the relationship between emotions and student participation. To explore this relationship, this study used a prospective longitudinal research design to follow 46 distance learning students throughout a 3-week assessed, online, collaborative activity. This approach allowed the fluctuating and dynamic aspects of emotions to be explored as well as the relationship between emotions and student participation in the collaborative activity. Self-report data were gathered using a semistructured online diary at five time points throughout the task (once at the start of the collaborative activity, three times during the activity, and the final entry after the activity had finished). Findings revealed that learners generally perceived pleasant emotions (such as relief, satisfaction and enjoyment) to have positive impacts, or no impact, on participation, whereas unpleasant emotions (such as anxiety, frustration, and disappointment) were generally perceived to have negative impacts, or no impact, on participation. Interestingly, however, anxiety, and to a smaller extent frustration, were perceived by a number of students to have positive impacts during the activity. To conclude this paper, implications for educators are highlighted

Research, Literacy, and Communication Education: New Challenges Facing Disinformation

The information that comes through digital media and social networks is increasing. This potential access to almost infinite information makes it difficult to select relevant content with a good understanding. It is therefore necessary to generate research that thoroughly analyses the phenomenon of communication and information in the digital age. For this reason, this monograph presents different research studies that highlight the need for greater media literacy and education in order to prevent the existence and dissemination of fake news. Citizens must know how to deal with disinformation and be able to detect the source of bad intentions behind information. Therefore, people need to be aware of the new communication challenges in order to determine what is important, which media they can trust, and where information has been misused or manipulated. In conclusion, society must be prepared to face new challenges related to misinformation. An educated and digitally literate society will be able to face these problems and be prepared to face the new communication challenges, including interaction with social networks, new audiences, new media, fake news, etc

Investigating language corpora as a grammar development resource

The digital era has brought new concepts and transformations into language development and has given rise to technology-based approaches to learner autonomy. It has shifted the focus from deductive to inductive learning, where the concept of ‘noticing’ (Schmidt, 1990) language forms is promoted. Literature suggests that this type of student-centered self-discovery of lexico-grammatical patterns can be greatly aided by corpus linguistics methods, specifically ‘Data-Driven Learning’ (DDL) (Johns, 1986; Braun, 2005; O’Keeffe et al, 2007). It reports on the valuable potential of DDL for developing learners’ multi-literacies and cognitive strategies, particularly raising their awareness of lexico-grammatical patterning (O’Keeffe and Farr, 2003). However, insights from corpus-based studies have not been widely applied in teaching practices (Reppen, 2022; Zareva, 2017). It has also been proposed that DDL enhances accurate representation of language, raises cultural understanding, provides learners with the freedom to explore and discover the language, and fosters learner autonomy, thus making them more effective language learners (Flowerdew, 2015). This affordance led to the design of a longitudinal experimental study which aimed to provide useful skills and processes in the use of language corpora as a grammar development resource in the pre-intermediate EFL classroom in an Armenain context outside of higher education. The evaluation data included pre-, post-, progress-, delayed post-test data, and Learner Autonomy Profile (LAP) form, the statistical analysis of which revealed the beneficial impact of the computer-based inductive approach of DDL on the learners’ grammar competency, independent learning skills, as well as the contribution of cognitive strategies to proceduralization of knowledge. It also included semi-structured interview data, which uncovered the learners’ increased engagement in the learning process, the positive change in their attitudes towards their own learning, and the ways of demonstrating autonomous abilities in working with concordances. These data also brought to light some of the fears and challenges of using DDL, as well discussing its theoretical and pedagogical underpinnings aligned with psychological processes of learning. The findings will serve all the participants of this hugely important ELT sector - researchers, language educators and learners. They will gain insights as to what is necessary to tap learners’ implicit long-term knowledge, to prepare them both psychologically and practically for independence so that they can be armed with confidence, interest in discovering the language, knowledge about their own learning, and understanding of how to make use of their learning styles and strategies. Keywords: conventional/technology-enhanced EFL classroom, corpus linguistics, data-driven learning (DDL), inductive/deductive grammar learning, direct/indirect written feedback, explicit/implicit knowledge, language awareness, learner autonomy.N