Estilos de comportamiento

Although learners‘ engagement was the focus of a number of studies in internet- assisted learning environments (e.g. Belz, 2002; Ware, 2005; Clayton et al, 2010; Yang, 2011), ‗work to date has not examined distinct components of engagement‘

(Sun and Rueda, 2011: 4). To address this gap, Sun and Rueda conducted their empirical research with engineering students and explored ‗how motivational and learning factors were related to student engagement in a distance education setting‘ (ibid.). The relationship between motivational factors and learners‘ engagement was therefore highlighted. Also, the engaging potential of the internet as a medium of communication (but not as a source of materials) was investigated. ‗It was hypothesised that situational interest, computer self-efficacy and self-regulation positively affect three types of engagement (behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement) of students participating in distance education classes‘ (ibid). The problem, however, was that the measures they used in their study did not specify the reasons for engagement. In other words, they were general measures (see table 3-6). According to Fredricks et al,

The problem is that most measures do not distinguish a target or source of engagement. In some measures the target is quite general, such as ―I like school‖; in others, the social and academic aspects of school are combined. This melding makes it impossible to determine the actual source of engagement. In addition, most of the self-report measures of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement do not specify subject areas. Incorporating domain-specific measures can help to determine to what extent engagement represents a general tendency and to what extent it is content specific … Furthermore, measures are rarely attached to specific tasks and situations, instead yielding information about engagement as a general tendency. Thus it is difficult to ascertain to what extent engagement is a function of individual differences or contextual factors. Finally, current measures do not tap qualitative differences in the level of engagement, making it difficult to distinguish the degree of behavioral, emotional, or cognitive investment or commitment (2004: 69).

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The current research, therefore, addresses all these problems identified by Fredricks et al (2004) by investigating engagement not as a general tendency but rather as content-specific; i.e., learners‘ engagement with internet materials. It also adopts a qualitative approach that allows investigating the differences in learners‘ engagement with internet materials and the reasons behind that.

Behavioural Engagement Emotional Engagement Cognitive Engagement

I follow the rules of the online class.

I have trouble using the online class.

When I am in the online class, I just ‗act‘ as if I am learning.

I am able to consistently pay attention when I am taking the online class. I complete my homework on time.

I like taking the online class.

I feel excited by my work at the online class. The online classroom is a fun place to be.

I am interested in the work at the online class.

I feel happy when taking online class.

I feel bored by the online class.

I check my schoolwork for mistakes.

I study at home even when I do not have a test.

I try to look for some course-related information on other resources such as television, journal papers, magazines, etc. When I read the course materials, I ask myself questions to make sure I understand what it is about.

I read extra materials to learn more about things we do in the online class.

I do not know about a concept when I am learning in the online class, I do something to figure it out.

If I do not understand what I learn online, I go back to watch the recorded session and learn again.

I talk with people outside of school about what I am learning in the online class.

Table 3-6 Sun’s and Rueda’s (2011) survey measures for learners’ engagement

Some research studies identified factors that facilitate learners‘ engagement in IALL environments but they were all conducted in distance learning settings. Computer self-efficacy (e.g. Bates and Khasawneh, 2007), the good quality of technology (e.g. Webster and Hackley, 1997), multimedia (e.g. Sun and Rueda, 2011), novelty (e.g.

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Flowerday et al, 2004), and motivational factors such as interest (e.g. Kanuka, 2005; Dembo et al, 2006) were all positively linked to learners‘ engagement in distance

learning environments.

Some other IALL studies, whose main focus was not originally on engagement, reported the strong emergence of engagement (e.g. Taylor et al, 2005; Jeong-Bae, 2007). Taylor et al. (2005) examined 'the use of drop-down menus with lexical and grammatical models in frames to support writing in German' (cited in Snyder and Alperer-Tath, 2007: 357). With the drop-down menus, 'learners could decide individually when to consult the models to solve different problems in their writing and to think through something on the screen, working at their own pace, with support‘ (ibid.). The results of this study showed that 'these menus also supported greater student engagement in the writing task, evinced not only in the video recordings of their activity in class, but also by the increased creativity of student output' (cited in Snyder and Alperer-Tath, 2007: 357-8). Although students were intended to be working individually on their writing, they helped each other in a variety of ways that showed their engagement in the task:

Video data revealed how much verbal interplay there was between those

sitting near each other; they checked hypotheses, short-circuited dictionary use through asking those near them and, in one particular case, a student assumed the role of teacher and tutor with his neighbor. He leaned over, operating the partner's mouse, to illustrate where all the past participles were, carefully checking each sentence and gently correcting an error in the formation of one past participle. (Emphasis added, Taylor et al., 2005: 446- 7).

Although the main focus of Taylor et al.‘s study was on supporting writing, engagement strongly emerged. It was observed on the individual level of ‗increased

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creativity of student output‘ and also between learners as evident from the quotation above.

In contrast to Taylor et al.‘s findings, a study by Ware and Kramsch (2005) explores ‗in some depth the gradual disengagement of a student participant in a German- English telecollaboration project caused by misunderstandings that may have been reinforced in part by the distance of the technology-based communication' (cited in Snyder and Alperer-Tath, 2007: 350). Other studies were conducted to investigate engagement in telecollaborative distance learning environments (e.g., Belz, 2002; Ware, 2005). They indicated similar outcomes for some students. Although it ‗can never be guaranteed‘ (Pritchard, 2006: 180), enhancing engagement ‗needs to be taken seriously if effective learning is to take place‘ (ibid.).

These mixed results also confirm the assumption recognised within the field of IALL by authors like Warschauer (1997), Kern and Warschauer (2000), and Egbert (2005) that technology alone does not guarantee engagement and learning, but ‗the pedagogy applied in the use of technology can‘ (Snyder and Alperer-Tath, 2007: 351). Thus, the internet should be used appropriately ‗to maximize engagement for the greatest number of learners' (ibid.). Taking into consideration learners‘ perceptions is very important to develop appropriate pedagogy that could engage them. Snyder and Alperer-Tath argue that ‗there is a need for approaches to engagement from a student perspective, looking at their views on the experience of participating in CALL activities' (ibid.) as looking at ‗behaviors alone may mislead

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researchers regarding what is happening psychologically for learners‘ (ibid.). The current research responds to Snyder‘s and Alperer-Tath‘s call by taking learners‘ views into consideration when developing appropriate internet methodology.

Although it did not take learners‘ perceptions into consideration, the only study I could find that intervened with the internet to engage EFL learners and investigated their engagement as a construct was by Yang (2011). According to Yang, ‗one of the most significant challenges facing English as a foreign language (EFL) education is how to enhance students‘ engagement in the target language (L2 or English) for meaningful purposes in and out of the classroom‘ (2011: 181). He claims that ‗in Taiwan, the big class sizes of 50–60 students in college have resulted in an academic disengagement, since students have fewer opportunities in these contexts to communicate with the teacher in the L2‘ (ibid.). In order to engage EFL students in the context of a big class, Yang ‗developed a system, which is an online situated language learning environment, to support the students, the teachers, and the teaching assistants (TAs) to communicate synchronously and asynchronously in and after class‘ (ibid.). The internet was used as a medium of communication to support learners‘ engagement through creating extra opportunities for teacher-learner interactions.

The results of this study indicate that students‘ engagement is enhanced during student–teacher interactions in situated language learning. In synchronous communication, the students exhibited emotional engagement in expressing their thoughts and opinions regarding the drama in the discussions with the TAs at E-meeting. They also exhibited cognitive engagement in acquiring knowledge of L2 vocabularies and sentences with the help of TAs‘ scaffolding. In asynchronous communication, the students engaged in predicting the ensuing plots and solving the problems in the drama while

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writing an essay for Vote Opinion. They also exhibited deep thinking in their evaluation of the TAs‘ revisions and engagement in revising their essays (ibid. 195).

Rather than using the internet as an engaging medium of communication to create extra opportunities for teacher-learner interactions, the current research used the internet as an engaging source of materials to address learners‘ personal needs and interests in the context. The different types of learners‘ behavioural, cognitive, affective and social engagement were facilitated not only through intervening with internet materials but also through a continuous action research process of developing appropriate internet methodology that continuously sought to improve the conditions for learners‘ engagement.

In this chapter, I provided a review of the literature on IALL to highlight how and why to use the internet in language learning settings including its use as a source of materials. I also reviewed the literature on Learners‘ Engagement, the focus that strongly emerged out of the experiences and perceptions of learners using supplementary internet materials. The literature on Internet-Assisted Learners‘ Engagement was also reviewed.

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Chapter Four Research Methodology

Action research is ‘chameleon-like’. It is difficult to make firm plans in advance about the underlying questions or steps in the approach, because the process must vary according to how the research resonates with changes and improvements in practice.

Burns (2009: 127)

4.1.

Introduction

This chapter aims to provide the methodological framework within which this research operates. It comprises four main sections; the research type, tradition, methods, and analysis. The research type is qualitative and will be discussed in 4.2. Section 4.3 justifies action research as the most appropriate research tradition for this study. Methods of data collection will be discussed in 4.4. In 4.5, the focus will be on describing the methods used for analysing the qualitative data in this research.