Examining teacher presence as a facilitator of autonomous English learning by Japanese university students outside of class

2019 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K20816
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Institution: Waseda University
• Principal Investigator: Tran Phuong 早稲田大学, 国際学術院, 助教 (60822236)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: social interaction / task engagment / teacher presence

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

There was a considerable variation in the amounts of Quizlet activities and the listening activities produced by the learners over the interaction period. While possibly attributable to motivational reasons or teacher’s support, some of the learners sent very few messages to LINE group, while others produced numerous messages. It also appeared that learners of a higher proficiency were more likely to produce higher numbers of messages and higher numbers of Quizlet and the listening activities, but the direct relationship was not investigated in this study. Learners themselves appeared to enjoy LINE interactions and the website esl-lab.com which was expressed in the interviews, and many learners indicated that they would continue to study on the website esl-lab.com in the future.
In conclusion, it was evident that the online social interaction tool had the potential to promote task engagement with the support of teacher presence. In addition, through the social interaction platform, the teacher and the students could establish a more open relationship. Another advantage was that the social interaction tool allows the great number of the teacher presence role in supporting students’ learning, which could lead them to engage more into the designed tasks. This may be concluded that there is an intertwisted relationship between the role of the teacher presence and the role of online social interaction that make the success of students’ task engagement.