Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 70, January 2014, Pages 291-300
Computers & Education

Examining effectiveness of communities of practice in online English for academic purposes (EAP) assessment in virtual classes

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.08.016Get rights and content

Highlights

  • This study examined the effect of blogs in a collaborative context on enhancing EAP students' perceptions of learning.

  • Data were collected through a questionnaire of perceived learning, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation.

  • The findings confirmed the difference in perceived learning of EAP students following the use of blogs.

  • The implications for EAP writing instruction through more collaborative modes of education and assessment are discussed.

  • Online framework of assessment for EAP students of IT studying at IUSTVC was developed.

Abstract

The literature on English for academic purposes (EAP) methodology highlights the significance of learners' engagement in learning language (Hyland, 2006) in mainstream general and online contexts. Blogs have been recommended in many studies as having the potential to bring the sense of community and collaboration in online classes. Therefore, this study sought to investigate whether blogs in large classes would help students enhance their perceptions of learning. To this end, Forty-two undergraduate students of Information Technology (IT) at an Iranian university participated in a weblog writing course in order to promote collaboration and reflective learning. Instrumentation included a questionnaire of perceived learning and sense of community, semi-structured interviews, and participant observations. The findings revealed a significant difference in perceived learning between the students with low sense of community and those with a high sense of community. Based on the qualitative findings of the study, we suggest an assessment framework incorporating constructivist and social-interactionist theories of learning in order to treat students as members of a community of learning. The findings may promise implications for gearing EAP assessment to more collaborative modes in online courses and suggest a model framework for the assessment of students in EAP online classes.

Introduction

When education is witnessing a change from a traditional, campus-cantered, full time system to an online virtual mode, the evaluative system should also be modified (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000). Online courses require a different framework for evaluation (O'Reilly & Morgan, 1999). Generally speaking, it is argued that online courses promise different approaches to teaching/learning methodology (Yang, 2011). For instance, Churchill (2009) demonstrated that blogging can contribute to perceived learning. In his study of a group of postgraduate students studying M.Sc. in Information Technology in Education, Churchill (2009) stated that students' sources of motivation for using blogs included: (1) regular learning tasks which require students to present their research in their blogs, (2) blogs being used as an assessment requirement and (3) regular blogging of their teacher. Furthermore, Churchill (2009) believes that assessment is an important factor for motivating the students to engage in the blogging component of the course; 92% of the students in this study reported that they were blogging because blogging was an assessment requirement and also 79% stated that if blogging is a part of assessment requirement, they would blog in the future. In addition, 83% of the students in this research indicated their willingness to blog in the future if required to do so by the facilitator. However, 54% of the students seemed less willing to continue blogging in the future on their own to support their learning without being required to do so by the facilitator or a course instructor.

Further, the impact of variations of social presence on perceived learning was studied by Caspi and Blau (2008); in this study, the students who posted more messages showed a higher level of perceived learning. Similarly, So and Brush (2008) reported that higher levels of collaboration predict higher levels of perceived learning. Goldman, Cohen, and Sheahan (2008) too investigated the effect of using blogs on perceived learning and nearly half of their subjects reported that blogging enhanced their learning.

Online communities are learning communities (Cuthell, 2002) and the students are expected to learn to adapt themselves to the norms, rules, and etiquette of the corresponding community (Lave & Wenger, 1991). A similar sense to the sense of belonging is the sense of community which triggers perceptions of acceptance, care and respect (Willms, 2000, Yasuda, 2009).

Garrison et al. (2000) proposed a model for online education based on cognitive presence called 'the cognitive presence' or 'the practical inquiry model'. Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2001) defined cognitive presence as “the extent to which the participants in any particular configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained reflection and discourse in a critical community of inquiry” (p.5). This model has four phases (see Table 1). In this study, for class instruction the practical inquiry model was used. This model seems to have the potential for creating an educational community of inquiry and mediating critical reflection and discourse. It was hoped that this model would help facilitate a community of inquiry in a virtual learning context.

Apart from a model for online teaching and learning, a model is also needed for online testing. In this regard, Palloff and Pratt, 1999, Palloff and Pratt, 2001 proposed one of the most popular models of online assessment which regards the importance of the group, the tasks, the technology and the facilitator (see Table 2).

Palloff and Pratt, 1999, Palloff and Pratt, 2001 model of online assessment was used in this study to make sure that each student would participate in the learning process, the tasks would promote a sense of collaboration while encouraging critical thinking, and the facilitator would create an environment for learning through interaction. The online tools were also evaluated for ease of use, since from a teaching and learning perspective, online tools promise the potential to enhance the students' engagement and provide an environment for collaboration and creation of knowledge (Arslan & Sahin-Kizil, 2010). One of the main tools which a great majority of university students are familiar with is the weblog. Weblogs are also very useful because they provide support for student interactivity and collaboration (Godwin-Jones, 2006, Miceli et al., 2010). Moreover, previous research has identified the potential of blogs to enhance collaborative learning (Churchill, 2009, Ducate and Lomicka, 2008, Ellison and Wu, 2008, Shim and Guo, 2009, Xie et al., 2008).

In Iran, online English language teaching is dominated by traditional methods of language teaching (Atai, 2006, Atai and Dashtestani, 2013). Atai (2006) argues that textbooks are the only materials used in Iranian EAP courses and they follow a limited range of fixed instructional activities and exercises for all academic disciplines without any concern for the nature of the academic field. When it comes to virtual teaching, there are many different methods and procedures that can make English learning easier; in order to improve the quality of online language teaching at Iran University of Science and Technology Virtual Campus (IUSTVC), we worked for making a learning community through using blogs. The core principles of learning communities as echoed in the literature are active learning, student engagement, and student responsibility. This study intends to see if the students' engagement in groupblogs and their degree of sense of community would affect their degree of perceived learning. As a part of their task students were to use their blogs to publish their own work, discuss group assignments, peer review each other's work, collaborate on projects and manage their digital portfolios. Moreover, to better assess the students in online classes, this study also tried to present a framework for assessment that could be implemented in an actual online course.

Section snippets

Research questions

The students in this study were considered as participants and co-constructors of their own communities of practice. So the following research questions were raised:

  • 1.

    Does the use of blogs in an online EAP class enhance the IT students' perceived learning?

  • 2.

    Is there any significant difference in the degree of perceived language learning of EAP students based on the degree of sense of community in online classes?

  • 3.

    What is an optimal online framework of assessment for EAP students of IT studying at

Context of the study

We examined the students' perceptions of experiences with blog integration in an undergraduate class at Iran University of Science and Technology Virtual Campus (IUSTVC), located in Tehran, Iran. As part of their regular assignments, the students were encouraged to engage in weblog conversation related to themselves and their interests. Each student was required to submit one post and five comments per week for a period of 13 weeks. Since it was a groupblog, all the students wrote in the same

Quantitative data analysis

For the quantitative part of this study, a questionnaire was administered to the 42 students of the class and using an independent t-test, the mean difference in perceived learning between students with a low sense of community and students with a high sense of community in an online environment was examined. The sense of community of the students was calculated by computing the mean score of the items in the questionnaire that were related to this dimension. Participants were divided into two

Discussion

When online courses are incorporated into the curriculum, the medium of distribution and organization of the course shapes not only its content but also the way the students are evaluated. The forms of assessment, such as quizzes and exams, that are very common in traditional classes, give a partial picture of the students' performances in online courses. Consequently, the important factor in online courses is the creation of co-constructed knowledge (O'Reilly & Morgan, 1999).

In a similar

Conclusion

This study confirmed effectiveness of blogs as an effective technology in education. The useful blog-based activities for English language learning included: reading blogs of others and leaving comments, and reading feedbacks received in relation to the posted tasks. What encouraged students to continuously use the blogs was the learning tasks that the students were to post on their blogs on a regular basis, the weblog being an assessment requirement, the constant blogging of the facilitator

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