Learner autonomy and the role of technology

1. Learner autonomy and the role of technology TDG Project 6000302: Christoph Hafner, Lindsay Miller, Richard Kong, Connie Ng http://www1.english.cityu.edu.hk/acadlit

2. Outline • Background and rationale • Student video • Action taken • Observations • Reflection

3. Background and rationale

4. EN2251: Communication Skills I • Discipline-specific English course with students from BCH and MA • CILO 2: Orally present the theory, method and findings of a quasi-experiment, making effective use of verbal and non-verbal delivery techniques. • CILO 3: Write a scientific report, making effective use of appropriate language, organization and academic referencing conventions

5. English for Science Project RATIONALE Scientific presentations and reports (such as lab reports) are frequently based on observations which test a hypothesis. In this project you will make some observations of your own and report them, first in the form of a scientific documentary (Assignment 1), then as a ‘lab report’ to your tutor (Assignment 2).

6. Rationale for the innovation • How can we motivate students to reflect on and improve their spoken English? • As teachers of English literacy, how do we prepare students to participate in globalized online spaces, which utilize new forms of multimodal representation?

7. Student video Click here to view video

8. Action taken

9. Modify English for Science Project • In class presentation > Scientific documentary • Focus on: • Oral presentation • Multimodal representation • Appropriate communication for a scientific audience

10. Technology and support

11. Observation

12. Data sources • Questionnaire (anonymous, open/closed items) • Focus group interviews • Students (21) • Programme leaders in BCH, MA (4) • Students’ comments in course weblog • Student work

13. Areas of interest Data was coded and organized via MaxQDA: • Authenticity • Autonomy • Creativity • Technology • Language Skills • Motivation • Multimodality • Project process • Suggestions and advice • Teamwork and collaboration • Time management

14. Motivation 1 [The most enjoyable thing about the video project is] to learn to make a video, because such work is new to me and I find it interesting to learn it. [Questionnaire ID54]

15. Motivation 2 It's very different than what we’ve done in the past year. We only did presentations and probably like lab projects. This is very different to us. So, it is challenging but I think it's at the same time makes you to be more creative. You can be like add your own creativity into it instead of just reading and writing. [Focus group, Jane]

16. Authenticity of task [The most useful things learned were] the procedures & element to make a documentary. I think as a 21 university graduates, it's better if we have some knowledge of multimedia production. [Questionnaire, ID33]

17. Authenticity of audience: Because—um, a lot of people may read it not just our class-- classmates, so I would do it--I will pay more effort to do it and I also will treat the documentary as a real documentary because it’s just like the documentary done by BBC or some others although the topic is quite simple or quite basic, so I think that. [Focus group, Joyce]

18. Independent learning (practice) I also have record many times as I was responsible for the discussion part and [pause] and every time I record and then I listen to my voice, I just think that my pronunciation, my intonation is not good enough and I try to record it again and again. The process is quite, umm annoy. [Focus group, Cath]

19. Independent learning (resources) That’s [the resource website is] one thing, but most of the time we Google it. [Focus group, Terry] I would download some software from the internet and just read the instruction, how to use it and try, and trial and error. So this is my way to overcome the technical problem. [Focus group, Dan]

20. Teamwork and managing the learning process From this project, I learned how to know our own strength and weaknesses so that to divide the job or divide different people into doing different kinds of the assignments… So, um, also, I think my group have very good teamwork because, uh, for me, I'm working as for editing and Pat, uh, working as actor and Robert for researching some information and writing the scripts. So I think it’s very effective. [Focus group, Vee]

21. Peer teaching For example, actually the script of the theory part is written by Janet and I’m going to edit it. And if she don’t explain the words to me, what is the theory about, and I must consume so much time on understanding the script… And so, she helped me out. [Focus group, Nancy]

22. Reflection on learning Finally we have finished our filming! I think we all have done well in this project as most of us have never done this before! Watching the documentaries of other team we can know more about the inadequacy in our video. For example, Bob’s group does impress me the most! The filming technique is prefect [sic] and the video shows well balanced in both entertainment and academic aspect. [Blog post, Mark, October 19th, 2009 at 7:57 pm]

23. Way ahead

24. More sophisticated topics • Working with BCH, MA to come up with new topics for different sub-specialties • Some guiding principles for these topics: • Easily relatable to students’ worlds • More sophisticated science, but not too sophisticated • Retain the focus on English skills development

25. Technical support • Further develop our resources for students, e.g. with additional instructional screencasts on animation

26. Further dissemination • Please visit our website or get in touch: http://www1.english.cityu.edu.hk/acadlit