Effects of Technology Enhanced Learning Materials and Engagement Factors on Learning Outcomes and Motivation in SLA

2015 Fiscal Year Research-status Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K02732
• Research Institution: Tokai University
• Principal Investigator: アシユクロフト ロバート 東海大学, 外国語教育センター, 講師 (20631790)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): Robert Cvitkovic 東海大学, 外国語教育センター, 講師 (00412627) [Withdrawn] ; Praver Max 静岡大学, 情報学部, 講師 (60598712) [Withdrawn]
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: TEL / vocabulary / TED video / NAWL / deliberate learning / game-based learning / motivation

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

The academic year 2015-2016 was largely taken up with developing the treatment conditions and finalising the experimental design of the project. An online tool has been developed and specially tailored to deliver the treatments, and collect and store the resulting data. Specifically, a web-domain has been set up and the website architecture put in place. The interface contains thousands of English videos of short academic talks on a wide range of topics. Data on length, words per minute, gender of speaker, Flesch-Kincaid (F-K) readability score, and a number of subjective measures from the researchers as to which videos will be the most motivational for Japanese university students has been collected and collated. Analysis of this data has begun and should be complete within 1 month. The domain also hosts a relational database management system (RDMS) which is ready to store the data collected during this research project and held for subsequent statistical analysis.

Current Status of Research Progress

3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.

Reason

The project is slightly behind schedule because the treatment conditions are still in the final stages of development. However, the basic infrastructure of the website is in place and operational, and we are confident that we will be able commence preliminary data collection by the autumn of 2016. The project research tool can be viewed live at the following URL: “www.talkcorpus.com”. Currently there are over 2000 short video presentations from the creative commons Technology Education & Design (TED) archive for research participants to choose from. This will be reduced to 12 videos based on length, words per minute, gender of speaker, Flesch-Kincaid readability score, number of views on the official TED website, and TTR (Type-Token Ratio), along with subjective measures of motivational impact. Once this is complete, we will be ready to begin pilot data collection. The tool will facilitate the systematic collection of data on the relative effectiveness of 3 computer-based vocabulary learning tools. Specifically we want to understand the ‘tough measure’ vocabulary gains in the New Academic Word List (NAWL) items contained within a given TED video resulting from different Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) vocabulary activities.

Strategy for Future Research Activity

It is hoped that the web-based research tool will be ready to begin pilot data collection in the autumn of 2016. The 3-form experimental treatments will be distinct TEL(Technology Enhanced Learning) vocabulary tools, specifically developed for the purposes of our research during the first year of the project. Each vocabulary-learning tool will be fundamentally distinct in terms of its pedagogical approach. The site will then stream the video content, followed by a series of comprehension questions. The app will deliver the pre-test of NAWL(New Academic Word List) vocabulary from the video transcript. There will be 4 treatment cycles in total, including a control. The analysis will allow us to investigate the degree of correlation between treatment, vocabulary gains, the relative gains with certain parts of speech, and student English proficiency level. Following the treatments, and the final delayed post-test, subjective measures will be administered in order to ascertain the participants’ views of the vocabulary activities and how the activities might be improved.

Causes of Carryover

The funds received for the forthcoming financial year will be used to purchase additional software and hardware required in order to complete the computerized web-based tool to be used to collect data and to administer treatments for the project from the autumn of 2016. We have brought additional personnel onto the team to assist with web-site development, design and programming. Members of the research team will also use funds to attend a number of language-learning conferences with the aim of refining the research approach yet further and in order to obtain feedback on our approach from experts in the field.

Expenditure Plan for Carryover Budget

The funds received for the fiscal year 2016-17 will be allocated into three broad areas. Firstly, additional IT hardware and software are required in order to complete the web-based research tool, which is at the centre of the project. Second, additional programming and web-design expertise has been recruited to our team in order to fully realise those features of the web-based research tool envisaged in the research plan. Thirdly, members of the team will attend a number of international language-learning conferences in order to fine tune our research approach and to obtain feedback on our research from experts in the field.