The Summary Journal 9

Improving Technological Pedagogical Content and Knowledge (TPACK) of Pre-Service English Language Teachers

Source: International Education Studies, Vol. 9, No. 5, 2016

By Ceylan Yangın Ersanlı

Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Education, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun, Turkey

Teaching and learning is defined as a complex activity that draws on many kinds of knowledge (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p. 1020). In the past, teaching and learning environment is defined as an intersection of two main domains; pedagogical and content knowledge (PCK). The idea was first proposed by Schulman (1986). PCK refers to the unique form of professional knowledge that teachers possess in making the content knowledge accessible to the students through some pedagogical methods (Chai, Koh, & Tsai, 2013). Today, with the effects of educational technologies, Shulman’s idea is built on by adding a new technology component. With the emergence of technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) technology-supported courses have gained priority. In very broad terms TPACK can be defined as a framework which synthesizes digital technologies into classroom teaching and learning. The core components of TPACK are content knowledge (CK), pedagogical knowledge (PK), and the technological knowledge (TK). These three basic forms of knowledge have overlapping parts namely; pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), technological content knowledge (TCK), technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK) and the TPACK.

Though many teachers do not ignore possible benefits of using digital resources to help students’ academic achievement, several studies indicate teachers may be reluctant to use or integrate technology to support their classes (Conlon & Simpson, 2003; Cuban, 2001; Watson, 2001). Among several reasons, not knowing how to effectively use technology can be cited as a major cause. Knowledge about technology is complex and dynamic. The ever-changing nature of technology requires constant up dating. Staying current might be time consuming for teachers. Yet, it is inevitable for teachers to acquire TPACK. To this end, a constructivist approach is thought to be effective in that knowledge is constructed through interactive experiences with the world and others. A perspective assuming experience as a necessary condition for the acquisition of knowledge might infer that training and workshop sessions help pre-service teachers acquire and improve TPACK.

This study aims to explore the effectiveness of a five-week workshop and training sessions on Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) of pre-service English language teachers. The study employed a mixed design involving qualitative and quantitative research methods. The participants of the study were 59 pre-service teachers in an English Language Teacher Training Program in a state university.

The results indicate a statistically significant improvement of TPACK scores both male and female pre-service English language teachers. The journal entries clearly indicate an increase in several possible applications or websites that can be used in the classroom with more effective and to the point objectives. The pre-service English teachers have also displayed better performance in manufacturing and tailoring language learning/teaching materials with specific goals.

The Summary Journal 8

Enhancement of Performance and Motivation through Application of Digital Games in an English Language Class

Source: Teaching English with Technology, 18(1), 77-92, 2018

By Saovapa Wichadee and Fasawang Pattanapichet

Application of games for educational purposes has been observed for many years with an aim to increase students’ motivation, which is an important, pervasive determinant of learning behavior (Schunk, Meece, & Pintrich, 2013). That is, a game-based learning context helps to shape a higher level of motivation of an individual (Ebrahimzadeh & Alavi, 2017). Games have significant role to play to change a traditional teacher-centered classroom to learner centered classroom. The use of games in class provides the students with an exciting learning experience (Icard, 2014). Accumulating points and getting a sense of competition-driven systems such as competing for prize and ranking are typical features in gamification (Burke, 2014). Therefore, students become attentive because games make their learning more enjoyable (Chou, 2015).

This current study aimed to determine how game-based learning affects students’ learning performance and motivation as well as investigate their views on gamification. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design. The participants are 77 students who registered for EN013 (3 credits) in semester 1 of the academic year 2017 at a private university in Thailand.

The findings reveal that the gemification technique not only increased students’ motivation but also enhanced their learning outcomes. This indicates that the application of digital games can transform any contents that are boring or difficult like aspects of grammar or vocabulary to be interesting and easier to understand. Games can make students enjoy attending the class. Since the game concerns winning and losing, instructors need to inform them of the real purpose of gamifying language activities. That is, what they can gain more than competition and enjoyment is learning something new such as grammar and vocabulary knowledge.

                                                                                                                            

The Summary Journal 7

Associations among Teachers’ Attitudes towards Computer-Assisted Education and TPCK Competencies

Source: Informatics in Education, 2017, Vol. 16, No. 1, 1-23

By Meltem Huri BATURAY, Sahin GOKCEARSLAN, Semsettin SAHIN

The current study investigates the attitudes of teachers towards Computer-Assisted Education (CAE)  and their knowledge of technology, pedagogy, and content via TPACK model that assess the competences for developing and implementing successful teaching. In the study the participants’ attitudes and competencies were collected with use survey research designs as procedure in quantitative research in which the researcher administer a survey to a sample or to the entire population of people.  

There were 280 teachers from different subject who are working in a FATIH project pilot area at different K12 schools in Karaman, Turkey participated in the study. Convenient sampling technique was implemented for sampling procedure.

The results of the study indicate that teachers’ attitude towards CAE scores much higher than their TPACK scores. There is a low level positive correlation between their TPACK competencies and their attitudes towards CAE. Particularly, teachers’ competencies of Technology Knowledge (TK) and Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK) have much higher relationship with their attitudes towards CAE when compared to other competencies. Attitude toward CAE is observed to differ by gender. As for TPACK competencies, TK and Technological Content Knowledge (TCK) differ by gender. The TPACK framework explains 20% of attitudes towards CAE. TK is the construct having the highest effect in explaining the attitude towards using CAE.   

The researchers may further investigate TPACK competencies and attitudinal changes of teachers during and after the project with repeated measure research design or as a longitudinal study. Besides there is a need for further research investing the associations between TPACK knowledge, teacher beliefs and attitudes at different contexts.

The Summary Journal 6

Nonnative English-Speaking Students' Lived Learning Experience with MOOCs in a Regular College Classroom

Source: International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning Volume 18, Number 5

By Moon-Heum Cho and Moonkyoung Byun

Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea

     Very little is known about how nonnative English-speaking students learn in MOOCs. Several researchers have argued that MOOC developers and educators should consider their needs. Because most MOOCs are offered in English (Shah, 2015a), the language barrier is a concern (Colas, Sloep, & Garetta-Domingo, 2016; Reilly et al., 2016; Sanchez-Gordon & Lujan-Mora, 2014). Nonnative English-speaking students read more slowly than native speakers and likely to play a video slowly to understand instructors' lessons (Reilly et al., 2016) and may require more time to learn the content, sometimes falling behind (Sanchez-Gordon & Lujan-Mora, 2014). Nonnative English-speaking students tend to achieve lower scores than English-speaking students in MOOCs (Engle et al., 2015; Reilly et al., 2016).

     The goal of this study was to examine English-speaking students' lived experiences when MOOCs were adopted as a learning activity in a regular college classroom. The phenomenological method implemented to examine those experiences in 24 Korean college students. Phenomenology is an approach used to uncover the meaning of human experience as people live in (van Manen, 2007). Bruyn (1966) held that "phenomenology serves as the rationale behind efforts to understand individuals by entering into their field of perception in order to see life as these individuals see it". The phenomenon under study in this paper is nonnative English-speaking students' experience taking a MOOC as a learning activity in a regular college classroom because the researchers aimed both at exploring and interpreting their experiences with a MOOC and because phenomenology supports descriptive and interpretative analysis.

     The researchers collected students' learning experiences from multiple data sources to validate and triangulate the findings. These multiple data sources included one-on-one interviews, an open-ended online survey, observation notes on the MOOCs, weekly online journal entries, and social interaction via KakaoTalk.

      Six themes emerged from data analysis as the finding of this study: wonder and interest, novel learning and teaching practices in a MOOC, preference for video style, learning strategies, motivation to learn in a MOOC, and need for face-to-face interaction. Implications for integrating a MOOC into a regular college course are also presented.

The Summary Journal 5

Exploring Students' Learning Journals with Web-Based Interactive Report Tool

Source: 14th International Conference on Cognition and Exploration Learning in Digital Age (CELDA 2017)

By Yuta Taniguchi, Fumiya Okubo, Atsushi Shimida and Shini'ichi Konomi

     In this article, the researchers examine about students' learning journal with use an interactive report tool. For researchers, students' journal writing could be useful resources for teachers to grasp their understanding and see their own teaching objectively. However, reading a large number of journals throughly is not always realistic for teachers. Although various automatic analysis methods have been proposed to understand learning journals, they does not necessarily fit needs of teachers and tend to overlook minor opinion.

     This research uses a web-based interactive report tool for journal entries, which provides word-based navigation mechanism and shows patterns of word usage. The researchers also consider a kind of keyword that helps them to understand a wide variety topic of journal entries. The graphical user interface displays such as keywords as entry points of journal exploration. The keywords are shown in ranking tables for each week, and it can be seen how the usage of words varies from week to week and also show frequent adjectives for every week, which presents the temporal change in sentiment.

     The measurement proposed in (Taniguchi et al., 2017), which identifies weekly keywords. Minor opinions or topics are relatively difficult to notice when they read students' journals in a limited time. Most of the journal entries usually share the common topics, and thus they skip some redundant entries. The important measure balance between minor and major topics by taking into account both frequency and the week-specificity of a word, where week-specificity is computed from the week frequency of the word in dataset. Since minor opinions, highly related to particular course topics tend ti include week-specific word, it can be efficiency ignored redundant entries by choosing entries that includes weekly keywords.

The Summary Journal 4

Using a Blog to Facilitate Extensive Reading: An Exploratory Study

Source: The IAFOR Journal Education Vol. 1 - Issue 1 - Spring 2013

By Magadalene Meow Khee Chew and Chaterine Cheng Kiat Lee

          Research shows that Extensive Reading (ER) has many benefits for language acquisition. The researcher were making ER appealing to the digital generation which it is pertinent to look to the social media embraced by today's youth. This study explored the use of the blog as a space to share peer-selected reading material to enhance reading motivation among English Language learner. This paper employs the qualitative approach with a detailed explanation of the findings from the questionnaire administered and the focus group interviews conducted.

          The participants involved two groups of students at private university in Malaysia. The groups were taught by one of the researchers in two separate semesters. Twelve students on remedial English language programme made up the first group and the second group comprised 18 students in a foundation programme.

The result showed that the students were positive about the use of the blog for reading beyond the classroom but required tangible rewards and complementary activities to reinforce their motivation to participate. Most significantly, the results of this study indicate that the blog is a viable tool for facilitating ER.