5.3.1 Games received the highest satisfaction score but lowest “hits”
Participants indicated that they liked the games and that a game should be included every week but online statistical data indicate that few participants actually played the games. The games were not connected to the teaching point and were intended to simply introduce
students to optional games, which could be played in English if they had time or an
opportunity to do so and it seems that this simplicity may have actually been detrimental to enhancing student interest and motivation. In comparison to the kinds of games that are available to these students even on their smartphones, the games provided – such as a
concentration game where users click on matching vocabulary words or pictures – may have seemed juvenile or childish. In addition, the participants can and do engage with others online and perhaps this would have made these games more attractive but that kind of functionality was beyond the scope of this thesis.
In terms of SCT, the importance of engaging with friends for social enjoyment as well as group and peer learning are borne out by these findings. It may be that participants chose to delay their return home on Friday nights as this was the last class of the day, in order to spend more time with friends in this classroom. In terms of explaining why games were considered positive but underutilised, perhaps games with more social contact – namely pair or groups games – would have been better utilised but that was beyond the scope of the study and the abilities of the researcher to implement.
Recent research suggests that online gaming is becoming more prominent in the EFL classroom. Bawa, Lee Watson and Watson (2018) suggest that Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are motivating for students and there is a wide range of game types and content, which the authors indicate is an important factor in the participants’ decision to play. There are concerns in terms of complexity given the some of the technical challenges faced by some in this study. However, this stemmed largely from using desktop PCs so if the game can be accessed from a smartphone, that may help to alleviate the concern. Perhaps in the future there will be more opportunity to examine this as a possibility.
5.3.2 Participants did not engage asynchronously.
In considering another, seemingly unrelated and unexplained finding, students stayed after class and came early to complete homework, thereby strengthening this study’s findings that the social aspect which existed in the physical classroom is important and may not have been sufficiently present in the study’s online activities. Many of the findings suggest that this behaviour on the part of participants suggests a preference for working with friends and peers, a social aspect which is stronger in the classroom than if they were using their PCs at home.
One alternative conclusion could be that students simply wished to complete the homework immediately in order to enjoy the weekend or to be sure not to forget to complete it later. An additional consideration would be that students do not possess a PC or tablet at home but results from the pilot study indicated that more than 95% of respondents indicated they had a modern computer or tablet and high-speed internet access at home. However, given the social bonds that seemed to exist with this group of students, and comments stated repeatedly that participants liked working with friends, it seems likely that the majority of participants stayed to complete the activities together, enjoying the help offered by peers and friends and to enjoy the camaraderie.
Furthermore, from the perspective of connectivism and SCT, mobile devices allowed participants the freedom to engage with homework activities remotely, but they chose not to do so. This may be partially explained by the nature of the online activities, which required opening a browser, logging in to the website, and sometimes working with small text in activities such as drag-and-drop. This would have made using mobile phones challenging, and perhaps in this case, less desirable compared to sitting with friends just before or after class to complete the activities together.
5.3.3 Contact with the instructor was positive but online engagement was low Participants scored instructor communication the highest of all survey scores. The instructor was active in the classroom and, due to the BL environment, it was easy to move around and provide feedback individually or in small groups when necessary, which
respondents noted they liked. This was generally the extent of the teacher contact during the in-class session, but participants indicated they found it beneficial with the highest scores of all categories (Table 5.1).
However, as mentioned earlier, the instructor tried repeatedly over the five weeks to engage all participants in a rich dialogue in the online session but few responded to the instructor’s posts or replies to their posts. It appears that the online environment was not conducive to engaging discussion but the respondents still scored this contact high for instructor satisfaction. It is possible that participants may have appreciated that the instructor responded to their post even though they did not reply or that they had a positive feeling about the instructor which carried over from the classroom portion but it seems confusing that the scores for online interaction were high when actual contact was very low.
Table 5.1 Satisfaction scores from the exit survey
1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 Solo Activities Pair Activities Discussions Homework Games Instructor communication in class Instructor communication online Instructor Feedback Overall Online Activities