Involving Students in Mobile Learning Content Development

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25370628
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: Shimane University
• Principal Investigator: Wang Shudong 島根大学, 外国語教育センター, 准教授 (50435046)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): IWATA Jun 島根大学, 医学部, 教授 (00280438) ; Jarrell Douglas 名古屋女子大学, 文学部, 教授 (60226363) ; TEI Rai 島根大学, 外国語教育センター, 特別嘱託講師 (50710993)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: Mobile Language Learning / content development / student involvement / content quality / evaluation / challenges

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We started to involve students in developing materials for a mobile English learning project in 2013. In the first stage, students were paid to write short essays, make grammar and vocabulary quizzes, and create learning animations. In the second stage, we called for volunteer contributions from subscribers in the hope of sustaining a project by the students and for the students. The data collected highlighted several areas 1) Mobile learning materials are usually short and focused, making them suitable for development even by students. 2) The content developed by students is perceived to be as readable by their peer users as teacher-generated materials. 3) Without proper instruction and training, students tend to contribute e-learning content that needs substantial editing by teachers. 4) Even with an offer of payment, few students are motivated to contribute content. How to sustain student participation in content development is found to be a major challenge in the project.

Free Research Field

教育工学, Computer Assisted Language Learning