2018 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Inclusive Practices to Improve Fairness and Performance on EFL Exams
| Project/Area Number |
17K03042
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| Research Institution | Akashi National College of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
ハーバート ジョン・チャールズ 明石工業高等専門学校, 一般科目, 教授 (60435435)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
REHMAN ANIS・UR 鹿児島工業高等専門学校, 一般教育科, 講師 (30780994)
taquet david 函館工業高等専門学校, 一般人文系, 准教授 (50710901)
HIGA MARSHALL 松江工業高等専門学校, 人文科学科, 准教授 (50736923)
ピレッジ マークアンドリュー 神戸市立工業高等専門学校, その他部局等, 准教授 (60735273)
COOPER T・D 富山高等専門学校, その他部局等, 准教授 (70442449) [Withdrawn]
ジェンバ トメック 大分工業高等専門学校, 一般科文系, 助教 (70706986) [Withdrawn]
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| Project Period (FY) |
2017-04-01 – 2020-03-31
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| Keywords | Inclusive Practices / Visual Perception |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
We were able to apply lessons from our pilot study and peer feedback from the Council of College English Teachers to improve our research design. The changes made included a focus on two specific comparisons. Tests with white backgrounds versus ivory backgrounds and tests with a conventional text format versus a 1 sentence per line format. And, we were able to integrate our research design into our course syllabi at 2 institutions in order to use an authentic testing environment from which to gather our research results. Our findings suggested that there was no significant difference between the perceived effects of background color, but there was a noteworthy difference in the effects of a 1 sentence per line text format over a conventional format. Related eye-tracking was also conducted.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
The cooperation between schools and the researchers and the enthusiasm shared between the team-teachers and their participating students was better than expected. And, the participants went into the test environment as prepared as they could be. Therefore, we were able to see the impact of different test formats on the seemingly well-prepared test takers.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
This year, we will look at other test designs and test item types to make further comparisons of the crowdedness of content and its effect on test takers. In addition, we plan to improve upon our methods of eye tracking data collection to better assess student performance by actually tracking their eye movements on paper rather than on a digital form of our tests. We will also further develop the online course we used to support our core research effort and to prepare our participants for testing. The final product of this online course will be shared as an open course for the community of Moodle users worldwide.
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| Causes of Carryover |
In April 2019, three team members participated in the IATEFL 2019 Conference in Liverpool, England. It was the presentations and networking at the IATEFL 2016 Conference that inspired the ideas for this research project. So, it seemed fitting to bring our results back to this conference. In September, one co-researcher plans to take his follow up research involving tracking eye movements on paper to ISATE 2019, an international conference in Tokuyama, Japan. Then, in February 2020, two co-researchers plan to present the Moodle course developed as part of this project to the community of Moodle users at the MoodleMoot 2020 in Kumamoto, Japan. Three or more publications are expected to come out of project this year as well.
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