Chris Harwood

Social media and other interactive online spaces have been identified as potentially useful tools for supporting learning activities, especially within language learning. It has been argued that these spaces are more appropriate for supporting informal rather than formal learning, particularly when social media platforms such as Facebook are used. As such, the use of these platforms within formal learning environments is understudied. This mixed-methods study is part of a larger action-research project that investigates the use of Facebook Groups to augment formal classroom activities by supporting student interaction around books they are reading. The discussed study specifically investigates how instructors appropriated different aspects of this technology’s user interface to support their pedagogical practices from a human-computer interaction perspective. The study considers instructor and student experiences and their perceptions of these blended learning experiences within two English for academic purposes courses that were offered through the University of Toronto. Data illustrate how students participated through this technology to support their learning of academic English even though Facebook Groups had not been designed to support learning. This study indicates how aspects of the technology mediate student-learning activities and it illustrates how this social media tool can be used to support student literacy activities within formal learning environments. Suggestions for better facilitating literacy activities through this tool are provided.

Reflective practice has long been considered an important part of professional development for educators; however, accounts of utilizing reflective practice with groups of experienced teachers remain scarce. We consider reflective practice to be an important means of fostering professional discourse among experienced teachers regarding their pedagogical beliefs and practices. To that end, this paper describes a reflective practice innovation introduced in an undergraduate English composition program in a Japanese university. In what follows we, as experienced teachers, detail how a reflective-practice routine (RPR) was established and used to evaluate the efficacy of existing curricular materials to inform adjunct-faculty onboarding and professional development. In closing, we make several recommendations related to scheduling, maintaining focused and constructive interactions when implementing an RPR, and we provide examples of how the results of the RPR were applied to improve our onboarding process, teaching practices, and course materials.

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted traditional approaches to education and forced educators to adopt and adapt technologies to allow institutions to remain open, offer courses and other services to enable students to continue their education. This rapid shift to online teaching and learning has shone a light on the need for institutions to support students in working out how to maintain autonomy through meaningful interaction in the online world. In this paper we discuss the transition of a face-to-face university writing center to a synchronous online writing center that is hosted in the videoconferencing application Zoom. In doing this we explain the rationale that informed our thinking throughout the transition process and how sound pedagogical principles and a focus on the student experience guided our decision-making. Preliminary findings regarding how self-regulated learning was maintained and nurtured in the virtual writing center are presented and discussed.

Keywords: Japanese university, self-regulated learning, writing center, Zoom

This paper reports on the use of Facebook for educational purposes in two different university communication courses. It discusses the decision-making processes concerning what type of Facebook page to use, the design, form and content of the Facebook pages, guidelines for lecturer and student use, as well as the means by which lecturers can encourage students to increase participation in courses using Facebook as an educational tool. Detailed survey feedback from a pilot study of students who used the two courses’ Facebook pages is also discussed. Finally, it demonstrates how using the Facebook pages facilitated greater student engagement and understanding of concepts, and encouraged what Adhihari (2011) calls “conversations,” which were often carried back and forth between cyberspace and the classroom.

Various forms of computer-mediated communication have resulted in the formation of multifarious online communities. Blogging is one such form that is now used widely within the university for educational purposes. This paper gives an overview of pedagogical blogging and discusses the way it was implemented in two university courses. It also proposes that because students and their teacher facilitators develop and share common interests and goals, they evolve into what Lave and Wenger (1991) have termed a “community of practice” (CoP). Following that, the paper explains how blogging in these two course CoPs extended teaching and learning out of the classroom into a class-centered “blogosphere.” A theoretical justification for utilizing blogging is also provided as is a description of the manner by which a systematic approach to blogging can broaden learner-learner and learner-teacher interaction. Finally, the paper shows how students following a strict blogging regime positively view blogging as an opportunity to refine various writing skills within the context of their "real world" writing tasks.