Materiały konferencyjne (WA)
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Browsing Materiały konferencyjne (WA) by Subject "e-learning"
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Item Building an effective learning environment in a course in English phonetics(2014-04-17) Łodzikowski, Kacper; Aperliński, GrzegorzThis paper presents modern online teaching methods we applied in a blended learning course in English phonetics for 1BA English philology students. Our aim is to offer suggestions on how to create a flipped-classroom-style effective learning environment that boosts learners’ autonomy and engagement with the course. The suggestions range from reusing freely available solutions such as Google Apps to showing examples of custom-developed Moodle plug-ins and web apps. The traditional approach to education has long had the teacher is in the centre, acting as the distributor of knowledge and controller of student activity. But today, students can be offered a personalised process of learning, with the teacher’s role effectively reduced to a guide who only pushes learners in the right direction. Our goal was to prepare a diversified learning environment that would inspire creativity and critical thinking in students, as well as require interaction between the learner and the material. As a theoretical framework for designing the course, we followed Nicholls (2002), Carmean and Haefner (2002) and Fullan (2012). In our paper, we discuss the following aspects of an effective learning environment and present the following methods we used to attain the desired results: 1. Social learning and how it can be fostered with the help of Google Apps to personalise students’ learning materials (Blau and Caspi 2009: 53, Pacansky-Brock 2012: 48, 117). 2. Active learning using webquests and the Moodle glossary activity type where students are required to seek information on the web, and create and share their own definitions to teach their colleagues. 3. Contextual learning that expects students to apply their knowledge in believable scenarios, e.g. a short answer activity type with an on-screen clickable keyboard containing IPA symbols for both RP and GenAm English. We highlight the usefulness of pre-programmed feedback specific for most common wrong answers. 4. Student-owned and engaging learning: following the success of such massive open online courses as Khan Academy, we supplemented pre-class readings with screencasts to cater for different learning styles. We then introduced post-class free practice activities, our flagship practice activity being an in-house developed phonetic transcriptor of RP English, which allows students to practise allophonic transcription without teacher supervision.Item Doing phonetic transcription on Moodle(2013-05-06) Aperliński, Grzegorz; Łodzikowski, Kacper; Weckwerth, JarosławMoodle is an open-source learning management system, one of the leading e-learning platforms in use today at all levels of education. It has been successfully used in the teaching of phonetics and pronunciation (e.g. Ashby et al. 2009; Wilson 2008). This paper will present various aspects of the use of phonetic transcription on Moodle on the example of a b-learning module supporting a course in English Phonetics and Phonology within a university programme in English Studies. First, we will present our approach to interactive transcription exercises based on two Moodle question types: multiple choice and short answer with input from a custom-developed keyboard with IPA symbols. Pre-programmed hints for both wrong and correct answers provide comprehensive just-in-time feedback, which creates a more personalised and effective learning environment. A survey on students’ attitudes to Moodle solutions shows, however, that students prefer paper exercises because they can be completed faster. Various ways of delivering phonetic transcription to participants for presentation purposes will be presented (image vs. PDF vs. Flash vs. Unicode text), and their relative strengths and weaknesses will be discussed. Methods of styling the Unicode text of phonetic transcription as part of Moodle web pages will be described. Finally, we will demonstrate how the preparation of quiz questions can be automated and performed in batch mode offline (bypassing the often cumbersome question-building interface of Moodle) using widely available word-processing software such as MS Word. (The poster contains links to templates and tutorials. Feel free to contact the authors in case of any questions.)Item Flipped teaching with screencasts at university level(2014-04-17) Łodzikowski, KacperThis paper presents best practices in teaching EFL and linguistics at the university level using the flipped teaching method. Its aim is to present screencasts (i.e. video lectures) as an alternative to pre-class reading assignments and in-person lectures because they engage students more than the former and save teachers’ time more than the latter. Flipped teaching emphasises pre-class preparation, which allows teachers to spend more quality time with their students in the classroom, focusing on practice or further exploration (Bruff, 2013). But in order for a flipped classroom to be effective, students must show up thoroughly prepared, which usually involves pre-class reading assignments. However, only 30% of students read the assigned texts (Hobson, 2004, p. 1-2). Instead of developing new reading strategies or forcing students to read with quizzes, an emerging trend in US higher education banished readings altogether in favour of screencasts. The main rationale behind this is that passive offline text is not enough for the current generation of digital natives raised bombarded with interactive (often online) audio-visual content (Pacansky-Brock, 2013, p. 1-13). The YouTube generation requires YouTube-style content. Existing research shows that the use of multimedia screencasts increases learner motivation and performance (Herreid & Schiller, 2013, p. 64). Apart from engaging students, screencasts can also be easily reused to reach a wider audience of learners, with no effort on part of the teacher, providing a cost-effective just-in-time alternative to regular lectures. This paper will show how flipped teaching – with a screencast as a supplementary or, at times, the only material – was successfully used at the AMU Faculty of English in two types of courses: TEFL and linguistics (English phonetics and phonology and Polish-English contrastive grammar).Item Measuring the effect of metacompetence in EFL pronunciation learning(2014-12-18) Łodzikowski, Kacper; Jekiel, Mateusz; Malarski, KamilReportedly, metacompetence (i.e. phonetic and phonological awareness) provides the learner with reflective feedback that boosts L2 pronunciation learning (Dziubalska-Kołaczyk 2002, Schwartz 2005, Wrembel 2005, Wrembel 2011). However, there is still little quantitative data to confirm this hypothesis. More importantly, there are no studies that would measure how the specific elements of theoretical metacompetence training impact the learner’s success in practical pronunciation training. The primary aim of this pilot study is to test the hypothesis that the knowledge of English phonetics and phonology helps Polish undergraduate EFL learners of English in mastering English pronunciation. The study will be conducted on 1BA English philology students who take a theoretical course in English phonetics and phonology and a practical course in English pronunciation. To verify the hypothesis, we will: (1) measure the intended learning outcomes for learners in the theoretical course in phonetics and phonology, (2) measure the performance of those learners in the practical pronunciation course, (3) investigate the correlation between the performance in the theoretical course and the practical course. Previous studies relied on class observation or qualitative data (e.g. questionnaires, as in Lechowska 2005). While such data can be a part of a broader analysis, relying solely on learners’ impressions may not be sufficient. This is why our study will rely predominantly on quantitative data that most objectively reflects learner behaviour. To collect this data, the theoretical phonetics and phonology course will heavily rely on online components: interactive quizzes, transcription exercises and video lectures (as in previous pilots by Łodzikowski 2014, and Łodzikowski and Aperliński 2013). Data will be collected on Moodle 2.6 with the Piwik plug-in to measure learner online behaviour (frequency, times and duration of visits on Moodle; number of attempts at tasks and time spent on them, etc.). Although the data for this pilot study will be collected throughout the entire academic year (between October 2014 and June 2015), this paper will only report on the first two months of the pilot.