METHODS
This chapter describes the research design of this study. There are five parts in this chapter. The first part explains the rationale of this study. The second part
describes the settings of this study. The third one introduces the participants of this study. The fourth part explains data collection and analysis of this study. And the last part is about the trustworthiness of this study.
The Rationale
This study aimed to understand the participants’ perceptions on an English online tutoring program in an elementary school. It was appropriate to apply a
qualitative research design for this study, since I was interested in how the participants thought about the English online tutoring program and what their experiences were during the process. To collect the data, I interviewed the participants through open-ended questions. As Merriam (2016) suggested, qualitative research could help researchers understand how people interpreted their perspectives and thoughts in their mind. In this study, as an English teacher and administrative staff member in an elementary school, I also needed to know how I could make an English online tutoring program successful. Therefore, I chose to interview the online students and the online tutors in this English online tutoring program.
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Setting
The present study took place in a remote area elementary school in Tainan City.
The whole school had twenty-nine students in total and each grade had four to six students. The second to sixth grade students needed to take English classes for two periods per week. But from the 2017 school year, the first graders should receive English lessons for one period per week. Most of the students’ families were in lower social economic status and more than 90% of them did not have extra English
learning after school. The school did not receive the government’s budget to hire native English speaking teachers. To enhance the students’ English ability and
increase their exposure to English, the school implemented an English online tutoring program, which was sponsored by the Rotary Club from September, 2017.
Participants
The participants for this study included three groups. First, the elementary students were voluntary and mainly from fourth, fifth and sixth graders. They are called online students in this study. Second, the online teachers were university students who took a service learning course. They are called online tutors in this study. Third, a supervisor from the elementary school to set up computer device and video conference software before the program began.
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Online Students
In the first week of the first semester in 2017 school year in elementary school, the academic affairs office made an announcement and sent a notice to each of the fourth to sixth grade students. There would be an English online tutoring program for ten weeks, from October to December, 2017. The notice was shown in Appendix A-1 and was translated in English by the researcher in Appendix A-2. The consent form was shown in Appendix B-1 and was translated in English by the research in Appendix B-2.
This program started at 4:10 pm and ended at 5:00 pm. The fourth to sixth graders were allowed to enroll in this program with their parents’ agreement. Each student had different English proficiency levels and various English prior knowledge.
There were seven online students attending this program, including one boy and six girls.
Online Tutors
Seven online tutors were enrolled in this English online tutoring program as a service learning course at the university. They were all female university students and majored in English. Five of them were sophomores and the other two were juniors in the university. Before the English online tutoring program began, every online tutor was given English online teaching materials and a teachers’ guide, both of which were
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designed by Flomo Education Foundation. All the materials and the teacher’s guide were printed in a small handbook for the online tutors to prepare teaching contents before the first lesson. During the lessons through the video conferencing, an online tutor taught an online student and kept records about what they taught during the lessons.
The Supervisor of the Elementary School
To implement an English online tutoring program at an elementary school, the administration staff member needed to arrange some related affairs, for instance, managing the video conferencing schedule and classroom rules, arranging online students’ enrollments, installing related video conferencing device at the computer laboratory, and solving problems during the process. In this study, I was the
administration staff member as well as an English teacher at the elementary school, so I was in charge of the above mentioned affairs in this study.
The administrative support from the supervisor was divided into two stages.
First, during the preparation stage, the supervisor needed to make an announcement to the fourth, fifth and sixth graders and encourage them to enroll the English online tutoring program in the evening. The supervisor had to check computers and internet, and to help install the software of video conference at each computer.
Second, during the ten weeks of video conference, the supervisor accompanied
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the online students at the computer laboratory to help them solve technology problems, answer their questions, make announcements, manage the classroom behaviors, and keep diary or records. Furthermore, communications between the supervisor and the leader of online tutors were sometimes necessary if there were any unexpected issues to be discussed or any problems to be solved.
Data Collection
There are four ways to collect data in this study. First, to understand how the online students interacted with their online tutors during the class, I collected classroom observation records. Second, the online tutors were requested to keep teaching journal whenever the online tutoring class was finished. The journals recorded what they had learned during the video conferencing time. Third, I tape-recorded the online students’ conversation with their online tutors at the final
presentation which was held on 20th December, 2017. Fourth, I interviewed the online students, and the online tutors to understand their perceptions and opinions.
Classroom Observation Records at the Elementary School
In the process whenever online students and online tutors interacted through the video conference, I recorded what happened at the computer laboratory. The records contained how the online students performed, the learning contents that the online tutors presented, what the online students did, how the online students reacted with
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their online tutors, how the online students felt about the English lesson, and if there were any accidental problems in the computer laboratory. The contents of classroom records are listed in Table 3.
Table 3
Contents of Classroom Observation Records
Category Contents Students’ classroom performance Students’ attention to the lesson
Students’ behavior
Lesson contents Learning materials, games, movies, etc.
Interaction with online tutors Students’ speaking and reacting Students’ emotion
Problems Classroom behavior
Technology Others
Teaching and Learning Materials
Every online tutor got the teaching materials designed by Flomo Education Foundation before the English online tutoring program began, and also needed to prepare for the lesson at least one hour before the lesson time. The teaching contents consisted of vocabulary, pronunciation, sentences, related activities, videos, games and quizzes and so on. There were seven units during this ten-week program. Online tutors could adjust the teaching schedule according to their online students’ individual abilities and they didn’t have to finish all units if the online students’ English abilities were not good enough. The teaching and learning contents designed by Flomo
Education Foundation are presented in Appendix E.
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The following photo shows an online student doing an interactive practice.
The following figure shows that an online student was watching a video played by her online tutor.
Teaching Journals from the Online Tutors
Every online tutor kept a teaching journal individually. The teaching journal recorded what and how the online tutors taught, what the online students learned,
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which part of the lesson the online students liked the best, and how the online tutors reflected after the lesson. The online tutors also had to address the problems and solve the problems during the lesson. The contents of their teaching journal are shown in Table 4 below.
Table 4
Online tutors’ Teaching Journal
Category Contents
Attendance Date and time
Present or absent Teaching contents Materials
Methods and activities Reflection
Online students’ performance Interaction with online students Accidental issues
The Final Presentation in the Last Week
This English online tutoring program aimed to reinforce the online students’
English ability, especially speaking. To understand how well the online students could perform after the ten-week video conferencing lessons, there was an ending
presentation held at the last week. In this last lesson, every online student needed to talk with his/her online tutor in English for about 30 to 60 seconds. Each pair of online student and online tutor took turns to finish their conversation. When each pair was talking, I stood beside them and recorded their conversation by my mobile phone.
By doing so, I could easily see what each pair talked about and how much time each pair used.
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Semi-structured Interviews
According to Merriam & Tisdell (2016), interview can help researchers collect data which cannot be observed, and it is a good way to understand people’s feeling, interpretation, and thoughts toward past events. Interview is efficient to collect data for a qualitative research project.
To understand the participants’ perceptions about the program, semi-structured interviews with the online students and with the online tutors were held. Every participant was interviewed individually. To ensure all the details to be completely recorded, the researcher tape-recorded the participants’ answers with their agreement.
The questions for the participants are attached in Appendices D and E.
Data Analysis
This study followed a qualitative research design. Multiple resources of data were collected such as teaching journals from the online tutors, classroom observation records from the researcher, interview with the online tutors and with the online students. When analyzing above collected data, I adopted the following procedures (Ely et al., cited in Liang, 1995, p.38).
1. Reading all the raw data repeatedly to develop detailed knowledge of them.
2. Noting initial impressions of the data for later reference.
3. Listing tentative categories based on repeatedly reviewing the data in step 1.
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4. Refine categories through studying the outcomes of step 2 and 3 and referring to the raw data of step 1.
5. Organizing data under the still-tentative categories and revising categories if needed.
6. Selecting verbatim narrative of my student informants to bridge the raw data to the categories.
7. Studying the results of step 6 and revising them if needed.
8. Writing each participant’s story from my point of view by linking data in and across categories.
9. Integrating the findings about each person.
10. Comparing the findings for patterns, differences, and unique happenings.
Trustworthiness
As Lincoln and Guba indicated (1985), the trustworthiness of a research project helps it to be worthy being trusted. It is important to establish the trustworthiness of a qualitative study. For this study, I employed three techniques which have been often used by qualitative researchers to establish its trustworthiness, which were prolonged engagement, persistent observation and triangulation (Lincoln and Guba,1985).
First, to get the data with wider scope, I adopted the prolonged engagement. As the observer at the computer laboratory during the ten-weeks lessons, I had been the
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online students’ English teacher in general English classes for one and half school years. Through the prolonged engagement with the online students, I was able to obtain related data about their English performance in this program.
Second, to obtain the depth of the data collection, I employed persistent observation. As Lincoln & Guba (1985) suggested, the qualitative researchers can
“identify those characteristics and elements in the situation that are most relevant to the problem of issue” (p.304). In this study, I observed all the online students in the computer laboratory for the whole ten-week lessons. This continuous observation process helped me better understand the online students’ characteristics and obtain more supporting data for this study.
Third, to ensure the correct understanding of the data, the technique I adopted in this study was triangulation. The qualitative researchers can use various methods, investigators, sources of data and theories to enhance the credibility of their
researches. (Merrium & Tisdell, 2016). In this study, I collected multiple data, such as my observation records in the video conferencing lessons, the interview records with the online students and the online tutors. Then, I checked the collected data to ensure the internal validity of this study.
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