As the above model presents, the codes centred on the concept of learner autonomy are divided into two groups. In the interviews, I did not plan to ask questions directly addressing learner autonomy, but surprisingly, students brought it up themselves when they were commenting on the course and describing their learning experience. The first group, the psychological construct of autonomy comprises three major themes– motivation, learner autonomy and strategies. The second group regarding autonomy of situation reports students’ comments on course design and use of the online platform. Resistance to autonomy will be treated as a separate theme as it responds to both groups.
5.4 Conclusion
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the purpose of separating data collection and data analysis methodology is two-fold, firstly, to present the audit trail of how I approached my data, and secondly, to share my experience of using NVivo. In this chapter, I have presented first the theoretical rationale supporting my analysis of the data in 5.1. Next, in 5.2, I presented the data analysis procedure of the diaries and reflective accounts, pedagogically motivated data, with the focus on the application of I-statement analysis. In 5.3, I presented how I approached my interview data, the added data, step by step with screenshots of NVivo 7. In the following three chapters (6, 7 & 8), findings from data analysis will be reported and further discussed according to my research questions.
6 Chapter Six The roles of collaboration and reflection in fostering learner autonomy
Aiming to provide answers to the research questions in my study, I will discuss the teaching-learning alignment in two chapters—the role of collaboration and reflection in this chapter and issues related to online modality in the next chapter (Ch 7). I will first revisit my research questions so as to lay down the structure for the following sections.
As stated in 2.4, my research questions cover three aspects, students’ learning, my role as a teacher and my role as a researcher, and are subdivided into six questions listed below.
I. Regarding collaboration and reflection:
1. How do collaboration and reflection foster students’ development of autonomy in this online listening course?
2. How do I scaffold students’ learning, e.g. reflection, in a way that will not hinder students’ development of autonomy? (How much intervention is enough?)
II. Regarding the online modality:
3. How does learning in different modalities, face-to-face or online, have an impact on students’ learning? (Advocates of the use of technology tend to argue that the use of technology creates a better learning environment that fosters autonomy. How true is this statement?)
4. How do I manage the three courses with different degrees of online learning? And how do I apply what I learn from one course to the other? III. Regarding my role as a researcher:
5. How do the insights gained from I and II contribute to our understanding of how autonomy develops and can be enhanced in a technology- enhanced (supported/mediated) environment?
6. How does my role as a researcher provide a different angle to look at student’s learning and my teaching? How does my role evolve?
This chapter addresses the first two questions pertaining to the roles of collaboration and reflection. In 6.1, summaries of findings will be provided to pull different datasets related to the same theme together. Pedagogically motivated data will be presented first to portray the picture of learning before added data, in which reasons and explanations were offered by the students. In 6.2, the roles of collaboration and reflection in relation to learner autonomy will be discussed respectively drawing from both the summarised findings and the current literature. Since this chapter is comparatively longer, a short summary is provided in 6.2.1, 6.1.1.3, 6.1.2.3 and 6.2.3 to highlight the key findings regarding collaboration, reflection and their relationship to autonomy.
Questions 3 and 4 investigating the impacts of online modality on students’ learning and my teaching will be addressed in Chapter 7. Questions 5 and 6 which add a third dimension including my role as a researcher and the contribution of my study to the current body of knowledge will be discussed in Chapter 8.
6.1 Summaries of findings: The roles of collaboration and reflection
As mentioned above, this section addresses the first aspect of students’ learning investigated in the roles of collaboration and reflection in fostering the development of learner autonomy. In 6.1.1, findings from different data elicitation tools will be summarised first. In 6.1.2, the roles of collaboration and reflection in mediating students’ development of learner autonomy will be further discussed in relation to theoretical issues in the current literature.
In this section, findings related to collaboration and reflection will be reported. Even though I moved my focus away from collaboration to reflection in the middle of my fieldwork (see 4.2.2), I did not remove the two collaborative tasks in the course design. Therefore, collaboration still emerged as a salient theme in data analysis. I will start with pedagogically motivated data, the interaction recorded on the online platform EngSite first. Students’ comments on the tasks in the interviews will be drawn upon later. In discussing the role of reflection, I rely on pedagogically motivated data, the listening diaries and reflective accounts. Two levels of analysis will be reported, a horizontal one and a vertical one. The horizontal analysis looks at the eight I-statement categories across the three classes; whereas the vertical analysis presents three case studies to elucidate the process of reflection by depicting the
individual routes of learning. Lastly, the interview data focus on the benefits and challenges of diary keeping from the students’ perspective.
6.1.1 The role of collaboration
In this course, there were two types of collaborative tasks with different pedagogical goals. The first one was the weekly online discussions, a CSCL (Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning) task, and the second one was the group recording project at the end of the semester. Under the overall objective of understanding authentic listening materials, collaborative task one aimed to provide students an opportunity to work together online in achieving a more rounded understanding of the listening task on a weekly basis. With some guiding questions, students were encouraged to approach and explore the listening tasks on their own. I did not provide a list of vocabulary or explanations for them to start with. Thus, the weekly online discussion was designed as an opportunity for them to collaborate through synchronous online discussions on MSN and asynchronous threaded discussions. In collaborative task two, the purpose was to encourage creativity and to develop ownership; students were asked to work as a group to apply what they had learned from the previous listening tasks we worked on and produced a recording with their own selected topic. They were allowed to adopt scripts but they had to acknowledge the source to avoid plagiarism. At the end of the semester, the recording was presented in front of their peer classmates as the final project to replace an in-class multiple choice listening exam.
In the following sections, pedagogically motivated data, including the message boards on the EngSite and one online chatroom discussion, will be presented first to look at how this interactive space was utilised by students. Added data will then be presented to summarise students’ comments in the interviews, in which they evaluated their collaborative learning experiences and explained why they did or did not participate.
6.1.1.1 Pedagogically motivated data: Interactive space in EngSite
Already in the Fall semester, I faced the challenge of stimulating the online discussion. It seemed that despite their frequent use of ICT in their daily lives, students were not comfortable when it came to discussing coursework online. In the Spring semester,
the situation had not improved much in all three classes. Even though I encouraged them to interact online, the weekly online discussions still did not have a fruitful result. Table 6-1 shows the numbers of messages left inEngSite.
Table 6-1 Numbers of Messages on EngSite
Class A Class B Class C
Message boards
Messages From me: 29
From Ss: 18 From me: 17 From Ss: 0 From me: 8 From Ss: 0 Threaded Discussions 1. Course Orientation 4 0 0 2. Self introduction 4 3 30 3. Travel 4 6 4 4. Movie 0 4 5. Storytelling 1 2 6. Radio Diaries 1 12 25
7. Speech (Steve Jobs) 1 21 3
8. Music & songs 1 5
9. Recommended websites 7 Chat room Number: Participants: Length: Posts(lines): 1 9 98 mins 359
In Class A, since it was an e-learning course with only three face-to-face meetings, the weekly online discussions were designed as an essential component of learning. However, as the above table shows, the numbers of posts are actually the lowest among the three classes. Furthermore, these posts mostly had very few replies. In other words, it could hardly be counted as collaboration with the limited interactivity. In the two B-learning classes (Class B & C), even though the numbers were comparatively speaking higher, the situations were not better in terms of interactivity.
Class B was held mostly in a traditional classroom with blackboard and chairs. After the midterm week, I planned two extra sessions in the computer lab to allow students direct access to computers so that I could assist them in solving the technical problems. This explains the two highest numbers of posts under the topic of radio diaries and speech. Sadly, despite the higher numbers of posts, the interactivity remained quite limited. Class C, the one-month blended learning class, was a listening course conducted in the lab for freshmen in the English department. Each student had a computer with Internet connection at the desk, which explains why it has the highest numbers of posts. However, since it was only a four-week project at the very end of the semester close to their final exams, the online discussions were still not as interactive as I expected. In sum, the interactive space inEngSiteremained quite inactive in all three classes.
Among the three classes, only Class A had one synchronised discussion, a text-based discussion in the chatroom. We only managed to run one group session in the beginning of the semester on March 28th. The topic for discussion was a podcast from What’s Up in Taiwan, a website that collected interviews with foreigners in Taiwan. The table in Appendix 5 outlines the changes of topics and the amount of time spent on each topic in this particular online discussion.
Compared with the asynchronous threaded discussion, this chatroom discussion was a lot more interactive and closer to the type of collaboration I expected to happen. A lot was discussed during these 98 minutes. However, among seven participants, it was noticeable that the three more active students dominated the discussion. After this first experience of chatting online, very few students returned to the following online discussion. I speculate that this first-time experience was not rewarding so that they did not continue to participate in the synchronous discussions.
The above table only briefly summarises the main topic of discussion by listing the posts that directed the discussion, but in fact, since students were typing simultaneously, oftentimes there were more than one topic going on in the chatroom. I had to admit that for me as a moderator, it was a bit overwhelming to divide my attention and to respond to both content questions and technical problems all at the same time. The 98-min discussion seemed like three hours long to me! Furthermore, I expected that students had already finished listening so that they could bring questions regarding this first authentic listening material we tried, an interview with the manager of Domino’s Pizza in Taiwan, Mr. Oelkers. I had prepared some
questions beforehand to guide the discussions; however, those questions failed to stimulate further discussions. Students took the discussion to a very different direction from my plan, talking about sightseeing places and food-related topics. I found it almost impossible to maintain the discussion under one single topic, and none of the topics I prepared was discussed. Out of this frustration, I did not rate this experience a positive one. Further critical commentary regarding students’ perceptions of this online modality will be explored in 7.2.2.
6.1.1.2 Added data: Interviews
In the interviews, students comment on the two collaborative tasks. Collaborative task one, the online discussion one, received more diverse comments; whereas task two, the group recording project, received more positive comments. Three major themes emerge from students’ comments on collaborative task one, readiness for the use of ICT, the transparency of the cyber space and sense of ownership. The following table presents the positive and negative comments together.
Table 6-2 Comments on Collaborative Task One
Themes Positive comments Negative comments A. Readiness for the use
of ICTs
1. I’m surprised by the convenience of modern technology. The face-to-face discussion can be replaced by MSN in this course.
Scott (Class C, Fall)
1. The technical problems experienced are quite off-putting.
Alice (Class A, Spring)
2. Found it too troublesome to log into EngSiteto leave messages.
Doris (Class B, Spring)
3. I just don’t have that habit to discuss online.
Zack (Class B, Fall)
4. I still prefer having discussions in person, I do not feel comfortable to do that online.
Han, Zoe (Class A, Spring) B. The transparency of
the cyber space
2. I can ask questions about
what I did not understand when talking to the teacher and classmates online.
Karen (Class A, Spring)
3. I think discussion is pretty
important. I find it helpful to discuss what I don’t know.
Lin (Class B, Spring)
5. I still prefer communicating via emails which allows more privacy.
Lily (Class A, Spring)
6. You have to be more careful when leaving a message online and it takes more time to think.
Jennifer (Class A, Spring)
C. Sense of ownership 4. I feel a greater sense of
participation when responding online. Because I like English, I ask myself to read a little bit
7. It depends on whether I am interested in that topic or not. If not, I will only read the posts.
everyday.
Ming-Fan (Class B, Spring)
8. If the teacher asks me to do it, I will.
Betty (Class C, Spring)
9. Most of the time, I only read them. Because a lot of these questions ask why, which require quite a lot of thinking. It’s too much trouble to think.
Tom (Class B, Spring) The use of technology is perceived by students differently depending on which side of
the coin they looked at. For instance, the same use of the forum can be interpreted as convenient or troublesome. The underlying reason is their readiness for the use of ICTs. Prior experiences with the use of ICTs in this aspect become a factor influencing students’ willingness to participate in the online collaborative tasks. The following excerpt from one interview with students in Class A exemplifies some of the negative comments listed in table 6-2. It highlights the impacts of the previous experiences with ICTs. When students had previously experienced technical problems which resulted in the failure of meaningful communication, they carried this impression with them and tended to give up more easily.
Excerpt 6-1 Reasons for Not Participating in Online Discussion (Class A, Translated)