Instructional Technology

The social nature of Web applications have the potential to empower education. These applications provide a learning environment in which students can construct their learning, collaborate with others, generate ideas, edit and distribute their material, and more. The better way to seed Web applications into the learning environment and to make them effective educational tools is to implement them in the pre-service teachers programs. This research aimed to investigate the influence of knowledge and experience of Web applications, perceived ease-of use, perceived usefulness, perceived pedagogical support, perceived risk, and colleagues’ influence on the faculty’s decision to adopt Web applications in their teaching within the pre-service teacher programs. Two hundred forty-nine faculty participated in this study by filling an online questionnaire that was self-designed and was distributed to a random proportional stratified sample of the faculty who teach at the colleges of education...

Distributing learning completely through mobile courses is a new trend. Social presence has been identified as a significant predictor of learner satisfaction with online learning. It is a key element that improves learner satisfaction with online learning (Cobb, 2009; Reio & Crim, 2013). This study explores whether social presence is inherent in the mobile learning environment. Results revealed that social presence was a significant predictor in learners' satisfaction as were gender and number of courses learners had previously experienced. INTRODUCTION The last decades have shown a huge improvement in technology that impacts human life directly and changes the way people deal with information. A new wave of education has arrived with the revolution of technology, especially when people replaced their static phones and desktop computers by ones that can move with them everywhere. Mobile devices in general, and particularly smartphones with their ability to access the internet, ...

A new trend towards the flipping classroom approach is emerging in the field of education and is increasingly being applied quite broadly. This study aimed to investigate whether the filliped classroom approach has an impact on students’ achievement as well as their satisfaction with their experience in the course. This research adopted the quasi-experimental design for collecting its data. The results were analyzed through a Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) to detect any difference between the means of the experimental group, who were taught by using the flipped classroom approach, and the control group, who were taught by the traditional approach of teaching. The result showed that there are significant differences between the means of the two groups with regards to students’ achievement and satisfaction.

This paper will examine how Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction (1992) may appear, perhaps inadvertently, within commercial games that guide the user from novice to expert player. By employing a qualitative artifact analysis methodology, we examine a popular action adventure video game to determine if game designers encourage players to build game expertise by employing similar events to Gagne’s instructional design model. We demonstrate that our artifact of analysis does consistently employ Gagne’s events, though often in a manner unique to a digitally mediated space. We conclude that an experiential game setting has the potential to be a platform for instructional delivery.

This study investigates preservice teachers’ discourse about CALL in a required CALL class which combines theory and practice. Thirty-three students in a Linguistics MA program CALL course were observed over a 10-week quarter. For all of these students, it was their first formal exposure to CALL as a discipline. Communication in the class consisted of student-led in-class discussions, web-based wiki, chat, and discussion fora. All communication during the course was recorded for the purpose of investigating teachers’ emerging perceptions of CALL and the role it plays in language teaching and learning. All the preservice teachers were new to CALL and consequently had a lack of awareness of the breadth of the topic. They were initially apprehensive about the notion of CALL. A lack of awareness of the potential for CALL and negative experiences with poorly designed technology accounted for much of this apprehension. There was also an overwhelming sense that CALL threatened the teacher in myriad ways. Competent with technology for personal purposes, these teachers did not easily transfer skills to CALL contexts. When faced with the opportunity to discuss CALL in depth they began to ap- preciate the potential for technology use in language teaching. However, they expressed sustained concern over a potential loss of control over the teaching environment and students. Suggestions for cultivating a student-centered CALL classroom address these concerns.

In recent years in CALL, there has been much anecdotal evidence to suggest that language teachers who wish to learn more about the uses of technology in lan- guage learning are not able to locate the appropriate formal courses or programs to help them. As a result, language teachers are often compelled to take one of two alternatives, or both, to acquire some of the requisite skills. The first alternative is to attend short, generic courses on new learning technologies, or introductory courses on a particular piece of software, for example a new or upgraded e-mail application, or a learner management system (LMS) that the institution has cho- sen to adopt, such as a Blackboard. The second alternative is to “do it yourself ”, for example through asking colleagues, through attending workshops at CALL con- ferences, or by joining a discussion group where more experienced members of the group answer specific questions. Though these alternatives have their place and value, they have their limitations too. To explore this problem, Greg Kessler collected data from practicing teachers, teacher trainers, and teacher education Program coordinators through an online survey, focus groups and interviews. In analyzing the findings, he sheds light on trends and patterns of activity in teacher education and CALL. He also provides more detail on how motivated language teachers respond to prevailing conditions, how they compensate for the lack of formal courses, and the many ways in which they seek to educate themselves. On the basis of the data collected, he concludes the chapter with a series of recom- mendations for both pre-service and in-service teacher training and support.

This study reports on student initiated attention to form within the collaborative construction of a wiki among pre-service Non-Native Speaker (NNS) English teachers. Forty NNS pre-service teachers from a large Mexican university were observed over a period of a sixteen week semester in an online content-based course aimed at improving their language skills while studying about the cultures of the English-speaking world. A core element of the course was a wiki that was collaboratively created, developed, and revised throughout the course. Students were encouraged to focus on language accuracy while actively participating and interacting with their peers in varied ways. This article explores the degree to which these NNS EFL teacher candidates attempt to correct their own and others’ grammar errors in a long-term collaborative task. The article also addresses the level of accuracy these participants achieve and the attention they pay to grammar revision versus content revision. Follow-up interviews with participants provided insight into the perception of the importance of grammar in the context of collaborative technologies among these NNS pre-service teachers.

The word virtual is an exceptional technology oriented neologism deserving explanation. It is commonly accepted as referring to computer simulation or indicating lack of authenticity. However, the increasing polysemic nature of the word virtual has resulted in a much broader range of use within natural language. Many of these meanings appear to increasingly conflict with previously recognized meanings. The author explores contemporary natural language use of the word virtual in the context of the Enron email dataset. This dataset has been selected for three reasons: it represents the largest authentic collection of email available to date, Enron was a tech savvy company with high proclivity for use of neologisms, and Enron has been referred to by some as a virtual company.
Examples of virtual in this study indicate broad reference to nearly anything computer related, including computer business, computer based simulation and varied forms of computer mediated communication. It is also observed illustrating inauthenticity, hyperbole and potential deception. This study demonstrates a lack of confidence that suggests an underlying concern about the potential ambiguity of the word virtual, resulting from the increasing polysemic nature of this word.

This study compares characteristics of fluency in student audio journals recorded in a laboratory setting with those recorded using mobile audio devices. Forty graduate students enrolled in four oral communication courses at an American university recorded weekly audio journals for a 10-week term. Students chose the environment in which they recorded these journals, provided that they recorded at least once in the audio laboratory and at least once using the mobile audio devices. The frequency of preferred recording environment was observed. Two independent raters assigned rank scores to the students’ volume, pausing, utterance length, and rate in relation to the observable influence of anxiety upon fluency in order to determine if there is a significant difference between fluency in these two environments. Implications for language learning are discussed.