2017 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Engineering English for the Growth Mindset in the Knowledge-Creating Classroom
| Project/Area Number |
17K00482
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| Research Institution | Shizuoka University |
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Principal Investigator |
V WILKINSON 静岡大学, 情報学部, 教授 (40240626)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
Chandler Damon 静岡大学, 工学部, 准教授 (70765495)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2017-04-01 – 2020-03-31
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| Keywords | experiential learning / team work / mentoring / role development / leadership / support management / eye contact / activity theory |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Academic English in two sections was designated as a trial run for actual 2018 and 2019 sessions. A central goal was to get students to actively speak and listen to English in a relevant context. The presence of English speaking mentors in the experimental group seemed motivating. For mind-set, we investigated team structure, syllabus design, differentiation of groups into Control and Experimental. Tentative results indicate future directions for refining teamwork and developing leadership roles. The results also indicate effective methods of evaluating student progress via periodic tests and a final exam.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
1: Research has progressed more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Because of our trial-run in 2017, we are slightly ahead of schedule. In Academic English for EE Engineers, we were aiming to engineer the organization of class to encourage creativity and innovation by utilizing the model of “flipped classroom.” To do this we managed the class by establishing the Experiential Learning approach (PI keyword). We organized 1) a syllabus of 1 (preparation) + 3 Mini-Conference Poster Presentations 2) the students into small groups for group work to develop the the assigned concept 3) the MOODLE as on-line platform for classwork, extra materials, taking attendance, and posting ppt presentations, etc. These tasks are now being used to guide the 2018 experiment.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Based on our trial run, we have decided to focus more of the effort on design, documentation, and presentation, rather than actual hardware construction. Thus, students will now devote more time to preparing presentations for conferences, while still benefiting from the face-to-face communication with the professors and other English speakers. Responding to feed-back from conference participants, we have determined that we will administer a sequence of comprehension quizzes after each session. Finally, we will administer a final exam. The same quizzes and exam will be administered to each group. We believe that this will give us clear differences between control and experimental groups.In 2019, via a separate class taught by the investigators, interested teams will have the opportunity to build the robots and further develop their English skills for a potential real competition.
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| Causes of Carryover |
We were able to save money by having volunteers from the Hamamatsu Active Seniors Network serve as partial mentors. Also, as mentioned in our revised research plan, our focus is on design rather than construction, thus actual robot parts are not yet necessary. Instead, will use the difference for dissemination of the research at conferences. We will also use the remaining funds to support the purchase of robotics parts for select interested teams.
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