scholarly journals Approaches Reflected in Academic Writing MOOCs

Author(s):  
Subeom Kwak

<p class="3">Since it was first introduced in 2008, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been attracting a lot of interest. Since then, MOOCs have emerged as powerful platforms for teaching and learning academic writing. However, there has been no detailed investigation of academic writing MOOCs. As a result, much uncertainty still exists about the differences of writing MOOCs compared with traditional types of writing instruction in the classroom. Drawing on historical emphases in writing instruction, five approaches are illustrated: skills, creative writing, process, social practice, and a socio-cultural perspective. This study uses data from six academic writing MOOCs to examine what approaches are revealed within their writing instructions. Focusing on a group of six academic writing MOOCs at college level, attributes and features of writing MOOCs were explored by analyzing syllabi, video lectures, and assignments. Overall, the study found that these academic writing MOOCs stick to a traditional model of teaching writing, “writing as skills.” These findings suggest that instructors who teach academic writing through online platforms showed that their immediate concerns were not a social practice or socio-cultural context. Rather, teaching and learning of grammatical accuracy and surface features of texts at college level appear to be best purpose of academic writing MOOCs.</p>

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 112
Author(s):  
Aridah Aridah ◽  
Haryanto Atmowardoyo ◽  
Kisman Salija

The discrepancy between students’ preferences and teacher practices for feedback on writing has created difficulty on the side of teachers and confusion on the side of the students. What teachers believe and practice as effective feedback for students may not be the one that students perceive as useful and effective feedback for them. This paper investigates the types of written feedback preferred by the students and the types of feedback provided by the teachers on students’ writing. This study employed a survey design which involved 54 students and 22 teachers using convenience sampling technique. The instrument used in collecting data was a questionnaire in the form of Feedback Scale. The results showed that there were some points of compatibility between students’ preferences and teachers’ practices and some other points were incompatible. The data showed that both students and teachers preferred to have or to give direct feedback but the data also indicated that students liked to have more direct feedback than the teacher could provide. It was also found that the teachers provided more indirect feedback than the students expected to have. The students also preferred unfocused feedback to focused feedback. The findings of the study have crucial implications on writing instruction. There is a need to design writing instructions which accommodate both teachers’ practices and students’ preferences for written feddback. Based on the profile of students’ preference and teachers’ practices, a model of feedback provision in teaching writing is proposed. This model is called preference-based feedback on writing instruction.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
Beata Lewis Sevcikova

The present research offers an assessment of the online open source tools used in the L2 academic writing, teaching, and learning environment. As fairly little research has been conducted on how to best use online automated proofreaders for educational purposes, the objective of this study is to examine the potential of such online tools. Unlike most studies focusing on Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE), this research concentrates only on the online, open-source writing aide, grammar, spelling and writing style improvement tools available either for free or as paid versions. The accessibility and ability to check language mistakes in academic writings such as college-level essays in real time motivates both, teachers and students. The findings of this empirical-based study indicate that despite some bias, computerized feedback facilitates language learning, assists in improving the quality of writing, and increases student confidence and motivation. The current study can help with the understanding of students’ needs in writing, as well as in their perception of automated feedback.


2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-157
Author(s):  
Susanna L. Benko ◽  
Emily M. Hodge ◽  
Serena J. Salloum

Although research suggests that teachers turn to their state departments of education for curricular resources, little is known about the resources teachers find on state websites and the recommendations these resources make, especially for teaching writing. We analyze state-provided resources focused on writing ( n = 123) for their type, standard(s), and sponsor(s). We also analyze a subset of 40 resources to describe the epistemologies about writing instruction reflected in these resources. We find that just over half of states provide writing resources, that literacy and policy organizations are named about the same number of times as resource sponsors, and that resources tend to foreground structural and ideational epistemologies over social practice. This work helps identify the extent to which states focus on writing instruction, the types of resources states are providing, and the visions of writing instruction communicated through state-provided curricular resources.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey Dawala Wilang ◽  
Michelle Andrino Garcia

The role of smartphones is vital in academia as interconnectivity in the classroom promotes learning autonomy, increases motivation, and enhances teaching and learning mobility. Using classroom research design, this study aimed to investigate the perspectives of Engineering students of smartphone use in an academic writing course. The data were collected from students enrolled in a writing course in a top-ranked Science and Technology university in Thailand. Fifty students voluntarily submitted reflections towards the end of the semester. The study was qualitative, in which inductive coding was used. The findings elicited specific situations of smartphone use in an academic writing course, for example, knowing and looking at the meaning of words, knowing the word form, finding information, taking notes, brainstorming with friends, using translation, and others. Two roles of smartphone use were coded. The first role is facilitative, which has the following functions: resource-based, cognitive-based, memory-based, output-based, collaborative-based, entertainment-based, and communicative-based. Another is the debilitative role indicating two functions, such as sources of cognitive distraction and undesirable behaviors. Interestingly, self-regulation of smartphone use in class was coded. Implications on how smartphones can be used in teaching writing were also discussed.


Author(s):  
Roehl Sybing

Educational research asserts the importance of establishing rapport between teachers and their students for the sake of fostering a classroom environment that is conducive to learning. Especially given the disparities in outcomes of university students, it is imperative for educators and policy makers to look at teaching practices in the college classroom as well as policies relevant to teaching and learning in university contexts. This paper reports on an ethnographic study of a college-level academic writing class, centering on how its writing teacher seeks to establish rapport and facilitate understanding with first- and second-year undergraduate students. The findings presented in this paper highlight examples practitioners can examine to validate student knowledge and participation as well as mitigate the effects of differences in identity between teacher and student. This paper closes by inviting discussion and reflection of college-level teachers' practices in the classroom and whether they elicit engagement from students.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-21
Author(s):  
Lynn Coleman ◽  
Amanda Morris

Academic publishing plays a visible role in the lives of academics in the contemporary university. This paper, located in the academic literacies field of critical enquiry, illustrates the complex ways in which two South African academics understood and discursively constructed their identities through their writing for a recently published book exploring lecturers’ teaching and learning contexts and practices. The autoethnographic sensitivity of the research enabled the elicitation of critical self-reflective accounts, presented through detailed individual reflective sketches. The analysis uses the concepts of autobiographical self, discoursal self and affiliation (Ivanič, 1998; 2005) to show how these writers were able to discursively represent themselves in the book. It further highlights how continued disparities and inequities that characterise academic publication are experienced by the writers. The findings demonstrate the value of the social practice view of writing and its capacity to make visible how writers enact various linguistic, rhetorical and stylistic resources as they discursively construct their alignment to their scholarship community. In particular, it illuminates generative spaces where academic development practitioners can lead dialogues to re-examine current publication practices, their consequential nature for writers and explore possibilities to support emergent SOTL authors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 150
Author(s):  
Farzana Sharmin Pamela Islam

As 21st century is the era of modern technologies with different aspects, it offers us to make the best use of them. After tape recorder and overhead projector (OHP), multimedia has become an important part of language classroom facilities for its unique and effective application in delivering and learning lesson. Although in many parts of Bangladesh, a South Asian developing country, where English enjoys the status of a foreign language, the use of multimedia in teaching and learning is viewed as a matter of luxury. However, nowadays the usefulness and the necessity of it are well recognized by the academics as well as the government. The study aims to focus on the difference between a traditional classroom void of multimedia and multimedia equipped classrooms at university level by explaining how multimedia support the students with enhanced opportunity to interact with diverse texts that give them more in-depth comprehension of the subject. It also focuses on audio-visual advantage of multimedia on the students’ English language learning. The study has followed a qualitative method to get an in-depth understanding of the impact of using multimedia in an English language classroom at tertiary level. For this purpose, the data have been collected from two different sources. Firstly, from students’ written response to  an open ended question as to their comparative experience of learning  lessons with and without multimedia facilities; and secondly, through  observation of English language classes at a private university of Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. The discussion of the study is limited to  the use of multimedia in English language classroom using cartoons, images and music with a view to enhance students’ skills in academic writing, critical analysis of image and critical appreciation of music. For this purpose, cartoons in English language, images from Google and music from You Tube have got focused discussion in this paper.


Human Arenas ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramiro Tau ◽  
Laure Kloetzer ◽  
Simon Henein

AbstractIn this paper, we attempt to show some consequences of bringing the body back into higher education, through the use of performing arts in the curricular context of scientific programs. We start by arguing that dominant traditions in higher education reproduced the mind-body dualism that shaped the social matrix of meanings on knowledge transmission. We highlight the limits of the modern disembodied and decontextualized reason and suggest that, considering the students’ and teachers’ bodies as non-relevant aspects, or even obstacles, leads to the invisibilization of fundamental aspects involved in teaching and learning processes. We thus conducted a study, from a socio-cultural perspective, in which we analyse the emerging matrix of meanings given to the body and bodily engagement by students, through a systematic qualitative analysis of 47 personal diaries. We structured the results and the discussion around five interpretative axes: (1) the production of diaries enables historicization, while the richness of bodily experience expands the boundaries of diaries into non-textual modalities; (2) curricular context modulates the emergent meanings of the body; (3) physical and symbolic spaces guide the matrix of bodily meanings; (4) the bodily dimension of the courses facilitates the emergence of an emotional dimension to get in touch with others and to register one's own emotional experiences; and (5) the body functions as a condition for biographical continuity. These axes are discussed under the light of the general process of consciousness-raising and resignification of the situated body in the educational practice.


2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Dalton-Puffer ◽  
Renate Faistauer ◽  
Eva Vetter

This overview of six years of research on language learning and teaching in Austria covers a period of dynamic development in the field. While all the studies reviewed here illustrate research driven by a combination of local and global concerns and theoretical frameworks, some specific clusters of research interest emerge. The first of these focuses on issues connected with multilingualism in present-day society in terms of language policy, theory development and, importantly, the critical scrutiny of dominant discursive practices in connection with minority and migrant languages. In combination with this focus, there is a concern with German as a second or foreign language in a number of contexts. A second cluster concerns the area of language testing and assessment, which has gained political import due to changes in national education policy and the introduction of standardized tests. Finally, a third cluster of research concerns the diverse types of specialized language instruction, including the introduction of foreign language instruction from age six onwards, the rise of academic writing instruction, English-medium education and, as a final more general issue, the role of English as a dominant language in the canon of all foreign and second languages in Austria.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-204
Author(s):  
Nurjannah Nurjannah ◽  
Taufiq Hidayah ◽  
Muhammad Nazar

This research is entitled “Using graphic organizer strategy in teaching writing on narrative paragraph (experimental research). Writing is a very important subject that should be learned by English learners. The students should be able to express their ideas and opinion either in the form of a sentence or paragraph. However, the researcher found that many students at the Second Grade Students of SMP Negeri 1 Tanah Luas could not express their ideas and develop into the paragraph. Hence, the appropriate strategy of teaching and learning is very important to help students master writing skills. This research aims to know the effect of achievement between the students who are taught writing by using graphic organizers from those taught writing in the narrative by using traditional methods. This research was experimental research and used a quasi-experimental design. The samples chosen in this research were the whole students of class VIII2 and VIII4 of SMPN 1 Tanah Luas. Class VIII2 consisted of 25 students was chosen as experimental group and class VIII4 consisted of 24 students was chosen as control group. This research was conducted in three phrases; there were pre-test, treatments and post-test. The data collection technique used in this research was test. The tests were pre-test and post-test. The researcher gave pre-test before giving treatment and post-test after giving treatment. The treatment was conducted in three meetings. The data was analyzed by using t-test formula. The research result and the hypothesis authentication found by using t-test formula in significant level 5% or α = 0.05 were obtained that ttest > ttable. The ttest found in this research was 3.91. Meanwhile, ttable was gotten from the list of distribution value with degree of freedom = 47, because the data not in the table, the researcher used interpolation approach and obtained = 1.67. So >  = 3.91 > 1.67. It meant that Ha was accepted and Ho was rejected. So, graphic organizer strategy significantly affects the students’ ability in mastering writing.   Kata Kunci: graphic organizer strategy, teaching and learning, writing narrative paragraph


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