January 2012 Volume 15 Number 1 - Educational Technology ...

transcription. Forth, this study recommends that educators prepare notes with the main points of the lecture. These
notes can be helpful during online lectures in adjusting the educator’s speech to a less spontaneous mode; therefore,
text can be generated from STR technology with a higher accuracy rate. Furthermore, this study recommends that
educators design STR technology-based teaching and learning activities in a way that encourages students to find the
strengths and limitations of STR technology. The previously mentioned recommendations were used in this study by
the teacher, and as a result, STR-generated texts achieved a high accuracy rate and the texts became useful and
meaningful for students’ learning both during and after lectures.
Conclusion
The study was conducted with appropriately designed learning activities by using STR technology in an online
synchronous lecturing environment as well as in a situation wherein an individual student completed homework. The
aim of this study was to investigate the students’ perceptions and behavioral intentions toward using STR and the
effectiveness of applying STR in synchronous cyber classrooms. The study revealed that the students in the
experimental group perceived the STR technology to be easy to use and useful for one-way lectures and individual
learning. Most students mentioned that they were highly motivated to use STR to learn in the future. The results of
effect size revealed moderate improvement in performance of the experimental group over the control group on
homework accomplishments. The results of the t-test and effect size showed that the students in the experimental
group performed significantly better on the post-test than the students in the control group. These results imply that
the students in the experimental group used STR-generated texts during one-way lectures and for individual learning;
thus, the students benefited from STR-generated texts to enhance their overall learning experiences. The interviews
with the students revealed that STR-generated texts were used by the students as study tools to clarify lecture content
and to take notes during one-way lectures. After the online lectures, the students benefited from STR-generated text
by studying it to recall and to better understand previous one-way lectures, to take notes, and to reflect on what they
learned during the lecture by doing homework. Previous studies show similar findings regarding using the STR-text
during and after one-way lectures (Ryba et al., 2006; SRS, 2011; Wald & Bain, 2008; Way et al., 2008). Based on
the obtained findings, this study suggests that educators use STR mechanisms to support teaching and learning
activities in synchronous learning environments and to encourage students to use STR-generated texts both during
and after lectures to facilitate learning.
Several limitations need to be acknowledged and addressed regarding this study. The first limitation is the relatively
small sample size, which limits the broad generalization of the results. The second limitation is the consequent
adoption of STR by the teacher and students. It requires the teachers to take time to train the system and to edit STRgenerated
text before or after classes; thus, a teacher's voluntarily adoption may be very problematic. The third
limitation pertains to the accuracy rate of STR technology and the delay of text generation during online, one-way
lecturing, which restricts full usage of STR mechanisms. The last limitation relates to large standard deviation
values, which suggests that students’ scores were spread out over a large range of values. Future studies should be
conducted to investigate related issues. One promising theory that needs to be investigated in the future is the
pedagogical effectiveness of using STR technology to support other learning activities, like group discussions, in
synchronous learning environments. For example, we believe that using STR technology for group discussions in
synchronous learning environments is useful to improve students’ learning, particularly when students use STRgenerated
text for deeper reflection and summarization. Furthermore, students’ perceptions and acceptance of using
STR technology for group discussions needs to be investigated. Meanwhile, advanced applications using STR
mechanisms to conduct different language communications or lectures in traditional classroom environments are also
worth further investigation.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by the National Science Council of Taiwan, R.O.C. under grant NSC 99-2631-S-
006-001, NSC-98-2631-S-008-001, NSC 98-2511-S-008-008-MY3, and NSC 98-2511-S-008-005-MY3 and the
Research Center for Science & Technology for Learning of the University System of Taiwan.
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