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Research Express@NCKU Volume 25 Issue 7 - January 3, 2014 [ http://research.ncku.edu.tw/re/articles/e/20140103/2.html ]
Task Design and Its Induced Learning Effects in a Cross-institutional Blog-mediated Telecollaboration
Wen-Chun Chen
1, Yu-Chih Shih
2, Gi-Zen Liu
3,*1 National Chung Cheng University 2 Fu-Jen Catholic University 3 National Chung Kung University gizen@mail.ncku.edu.tw
DOI:10.1080/09588221.2013.818557 Computer Assisted Language Learning
W
hen it comes to online language learning, the question is no long whether technology is effective, but rather how to go about creating and mediating effective learning context. This research intended to investigate the three major constituents in a blog-mediated project and their relationship with each other: task design, time effect, and students’ communicative language output in a cross-institutional collaboration. Thirty- four college-level English learners from two distant schools in Taiwan participated in the telecommunication and become keypals with each other dyadically.This research highlighted the social networking nature of Web 2.0 by locating idea units (operationalized as the index of communication quality) in students’ semiformal weekly discussion, instead of focusing on syntactic complexity of conventional written modality. Aiming at authentic and idea-laden interaction in the target language (English in the case of the research), a task-based approach was adopted for online topic discussions;
participants were virtually connected as a cyber-learning community. The overarching theme Self-Awareness paved the way for students to higher order thinking and reflection on the differences between subcultures in Taiwan. Additionally, the pragmatic use of foreign language was prioritized as the core of their performance.
In this research, language learners’ output performance (the quantity of idea units, dependent variable) was hypothesized to be affected by task design (task type and duration of time, independent variables) (Figure 1).
Students’ response to cross-institutional collaboration mechanism was revealed. Qualitative and quantitative data were both elicited through four data collection instruments: a perception survey, blog message archives, and self- and peer-appraisals. The findings indicated that closed-ended task type (compared to open-ended ones) and duration of time were both significant in eliciting the amount of IUs. As a result, the contributions of this study include: (a) shedding some light on the academic and educational capacity of blog-mediated telecollaboration, (b) revealing multiple factors that might affect the telecollaborative mechanism with the use of weblogs for language learning purposes, (c) evaluating interactive blogging activities’ educational value for complementing formal-writing training, and finally (d) serving as an example to diversify the writing genres in language education curriculum.
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Figure 1. Project Design and Data Collection
