April 2012 Volume 15 Number 2 - Educational Technology & Society

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Meanwhile, some other scholars hold different opinions. They have shown great concern about the learning outcomes of cyber asynchronous learning. They are wondering whether learners can really follow the teaching plans set by their instructors. They think that the quality of instruction and the ability of students to master courses should be observed and assessed as new technologies are involved (DiPiro, 2003). The most troublesome problem in a cyber asynchronous learning environment is that students may have few chances or little desire to interact with their peers or teachers. Some scholars claim that limited student contribution is a persistent and widespread problem in cyber asynchronous discussion (Hewitt, 2005; Hew et al., 2010). Without enough contribution or interaction, students’ learning can hardly produce satisfactory results and students will often feel isolated and out of the learning communities (Haythornthwaite & Kazmer, 2002). It is generally believed that synchronous interaction is essential to second language acquisition (SLA) (Lee, 2002). The cyber synchronous learning environment can duplicate the capabilities found in a physical face-to-face classroom (Keegan et al., 2005; Shi et al., 2006). As summarized by Desmond Keegan and some other scholars (2005), the benefits of cyber synchronous learning include “(i) the familiarity of the classroom model, (ii) learners receive immediate feedback from other learners and the leader, (iii) the ability to create content quickly in the classroom”. The study of Pfister (2005) indicates that synchronous net-based discourses among learners, or among learners and instructors can greatly improve understanding of complex subject matters. Pilkington and Walker’s work (2003) even suggests that non-native English speakers working collaboratively through a virtual learning environment can outperform face-to-face students in group work on the same course. But scholars on the opposite side have pointed out the disadvantages of cyber synchronous learning. They say the instructor and the students may often feel pushed by the time limit in a cyber synchronous environment. The instructor wants to cover all he or she has prepared and a student will try hard to grasp all the instructor has covered. So the focus of cyber synchronous learning is often on quantity rather than quality (Hrastinski, 2008). Lee’s study (2002) also indicates that cyber synchronous exchanges among non-native speakers of English tend to encourage fluency rather than accuracy. Lee insists that synchronous online exchanges should maintain a balance between function, content, and accuracy (ibid.). Besides, cyber synchronous learning requires all students to be available at a certain time for the synchronous videoconferencing, and this is often regarded as the major disadvantage of this learning approach (Mirza, 2007). The present study Everything has two sides. Now, we have three choices. The first is to adhere to the more traditional cyber synchronous learning approach and shrug off the more popular cyber asynchronous learning approach, the second is just the opposite and the third is to keep both and combine the two together. As to the first choice, normally we will cast it away, as it is obviously against the trend of modern educational technologies. As a result, we have two choices left. Evidence suggests that learners often prefer the blended approach that includes both forms (Gregory, 2003). The blended approach can fulfill different types of needs and foster the participation of people with different capabilities and competencies (Ligorio, 2001). The current e-education practice in China, however, tends to reduce the use of cyber synchronous means and let the cyber synchronous learning approach be dominant (Ge, 2011). So the question is whether there is a possibility that one (the single cyber asynchronous approach) is better than two (the blended cyber approach)? This paper aims to address this question through an empirical study. The researcher of this paper expected all the participants would improve their English abilities after this 4-month experiment. Participants would take a post-experiment test to examine their learning outcomes and they would also be required to respond to a questionnaire survey at the end of the study, with the aim to obtain their perceptions of the two learning approaches. The data analysis and the survey would be conducted to address the following questions: � Did all the participants improve their English abilities and which approach could bring a better result? � What attitudes did the participants have toward the two approaches? � What problems might occur in the participants’ study through the two approaches? Methods Participants The participants consisted of two classes of adult e-learners (23-35 years old) who came from a network education 287
college of a university situated in Beijing. The learners were newcomers in the college and they did not have any previous experiences in e-learning. The course instructor, however, is an experienced professional in e-education, who had been teaching English courses for about 10 years. Consent was obtained from the college and the participants prior to the conduct of this study, which lasted one semester of about 4 months. Class 1 was composed of 34 students (24 males and 10 females) and Class 2, 36 students (22 males and 14 females). All the students were fulltime job holders and about 10 percent in each class were high school graduates, with the rest below this level. Both classes were majoring in Computer Science. Class 1 was taken as the control group for the study and Class 2, the experimental group. Procedure Both classes were introduced to the asynchronous online course of College English Level 2. The online course provided students with prerecorded video lectures, downloadable materials, online quizzes and exercises, an online discussion forum, etc. The students could access the online course by using their office or home computers according to their own time arrangement. The course could also be accessed through a Wap browser in mobile phones, which made mobile learning a new choice for the students. The students could study on their own by watching the prerecorded video lectures and doing the online exercises. They might also want to communicate to others by reading or writing posts on the online forum. The teacher would regularly organize some asynchronous online discussion activities on the forum. Only one English teacher was there to cater for the English teaching and assistance to the two classes, whether synchronously or asynchronously. The online materials were enough for students to complete the course and pass the final examination. There was no special requirement as to how to use these materials, so students could make their own judgments about when or how to use them. The cyber asynchronous learning system could track the online activities of the students such as the frequency of their participation. Students were required to study online for at least four hours a week, and this requirement was to ensure that they really carried out their study. After all, online activities are easier to inspect than offline ones. Students in Class 2 would also attend some synchronous videoconference classes. The synchronous videoconference system is called Webex (http://www.webex.com.cn), which is a very powerful videoconference system that can transmit audio and visual signals across the Internet. The cyber synchronous classes were organized into eight 3-hour lectures. There would be two <strong>15</strong>-minute intervals during each lecture, that is to say, each lecture would be divided into three sessions with each session lasting about 50 minutes. There would be two lectures in each month. In cyber synchronous classes, the teacher would spend about half of the time summarizing the most important knowledge points of the course such as grammatical structures and the rest of the time would be used for interaction with the students. The interaction would normally include some questions for the students to answer. Students were encouraged to volunteer to answer the questions. If there were no volunteers, the teacher would randomly choose a student to talk to, but would try to ensure every student to have a chance to participate in the activities. Students might respond by typing on keyboards or talking directly with the teacher through the microphones connected to their computers. The interaction between the instructor and the students normally included three or more turns. A typical interaction followed the pattern shown by Table 1. Table 1. Turn-taking in the cyber synchronous classes � Turn 1: Instructor (speaking through the microphone): Greeting (for example, “Hi, Wang Lei (student’s name). Glad to meet you online. I have some questions for you.”) Student (speaking or typing): Greeting (for example, “Hi, teacher! Happy to talk with you online.”) � Turn 2: Instructor: Asking a question Student: Answering the question � Turn 3: Instructor: Evaluating the student’s answer 288
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April 2012 Volume 15 Number 2
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Supporting Organizations Centre for
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Contextualizing a MALL: Practice De
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Kop, R. (2012). The Unexpected Conn
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Human mediation and information flo
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elevant information based on some k
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of learners. A search facilitated t
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information as human mediation mean
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Blau, I., & Barak, A. (2012). How D
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examined whether the readiness to p
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Table 5 presents the ANOVA for the
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However, in discussing a non-sensit
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deviations showed smaller variance,
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actual participation discussing sen
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Mesch, G., & Elgali, Z. (2009). Soc
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Although prior research on overall
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with a score of 39 and below as “
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Table 2 demonstrates mean scores an
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Discussion Although the recent Inte
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Furthermore, the most preferred pla
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MEB. (2009). Internete erisim proje
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Learning Management Systems (LMS) b
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practice and repetition with feedba
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Online peer assessment Peer assessm
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At an international conference on m
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� Ability to produce rich assessm
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Meishar-Tal, H., & Tal-Elhasid, E.
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Tsai, S. C. (2012). Integration of
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order to decrease text complexity a
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matter how the learners’ aptitude
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If compared by programs, WP student
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mean F2F 4.64 4.52 4.35 4.44 *: p
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een analyzed and were compared with
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Chen, G.-D., Lee, J.-H., Wang, C.-Y
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and diverse cognitional and emotion
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Encourage and persuade students wit
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Materials and procedure Each studen
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The lower part of Figure 4 shows st
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Mayer, R. E., Sobko, K., & Mautone,
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that an item is answered correctly
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Table 1. Relative concepts frequenc
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The Account Management Module provi
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Experiment 1 and results Figure 7.
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Utilization of Test Item 36 33 30 2
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Utilization of Test Item 36 33 30 2
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0.065 0.877 (17.56) 0.938 (22.55) 0
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Hwang, G.J., Hsiao, C.L., & Tseng,
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the diverse needs of modern industr
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Figure 1. The framework of interdis
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Research Design Figure 3. Recommend
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friendly. 8. I feel the layout and
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satisfaction, and system acceptance
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Ozok, A. A., Fan, Q., & Norcio, A.
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than students in a conventional cla
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shown in Figure 2 to include the st
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(1996) Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance (
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Based on this connection, we consid
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Final dominance measurements were p
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student mood and thereby allow comp
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Sessink, O., Beeftink, H., Tramper,
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The rationale behind the video form
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usefulness of the movies and their
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case of the first two questions and
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this paper in order to evaluate the
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The survey questions Appendix A In
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E-training in organizations E-train
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efficacy regarding online training,
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Method Sample and procedure Figure
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0.874 which exceeded the recommende
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Even though the result does not con
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Brown, M., & Cudeck, R. (1993). Alt
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Wen, Y., Looi, C.-K., & Chen, W. (2
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when they are designing and impleme
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paper focuses on the first three st
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their self-esteem to be partners in
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Democratizing knowledge and symmetr
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1) Reading the article: At the star
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Effects of RCKI principle-based ped
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References Alexander, C. (1979). Th
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Valsamidis, S., Kontogiannis, S., K
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The Analog system (Yan et al., 1996
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First, the number of the sessions a
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BioLayout uses a modified version o
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As shown in figure 3, all metrics c
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Figure 7. The detailed results for
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Enright, A. J., van Dongen, S., Ouz
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Chu, S. K. W., Kwan, A. C. M., & Wa
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teachers, as well as collaboration
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from the students’ ratings appear
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Table 5 summarizes the students’
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eading blogs (i.e., reminders, easy
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Luehmann, A. L. (2008). Using blogg
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Uzunboylu et al. (2009) examined th
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System implementation Overview of M
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Methods Before the experiment, a mo
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too simple, incomplete, or they eve
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Comparisons of UMLS Questionnaire i
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already described may play an impor
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Parker, D., Manstead, A. S. R., Str
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Avci, U., & Askar, P. (2012). The C
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Literature review The related varia
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collected through Personal Informat
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Self-efficacy 92 5 21 13.37 3.726 W
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In this problem, intention was take
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References Ajjan, H., & Hartshorne,
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Tan, T.-H., Lin, M.-S., Chu, Y.-L.,
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Students perused the course materia
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problem. All articles were then sen
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tests, electronic tests are more li
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Students 10 and 11: My classmate Ed
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collection was also approved by all
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Ubiquitous Revision Seamless Collab
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Tai, Y. (2012). Contextualizing a M
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tasks were developed from task type
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experiences in this phase. Moreover
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test is administered again right af
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The collected data were analyzed wi
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Gorp, K. V., & Bogaert, N. (2006).
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4PL IRT model According to the numb
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examinee’s ability more accuratel
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Page 247 and 248: Table 6. Repeated Measures ANOVA of
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Page 251 and 252: Selection of the virtual tool The t
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Page 287 and 288: Discussion Differing from prior stu
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Page 301 and 302: Appendix A Responses concerning syn
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Bailey, G. D. (1997). What technolo
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Stegall, P. (1998). The principal:
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instruction has studied the student
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espond and the estimation of possib
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Research question For the purpose o
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READI reliability To verify the con
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Physical -1.43333(*) .44699 .029 -2
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The results of this study suggest t
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Hsu, Y.-C., Ho, H. N. J., Tsai, C.-
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domains. Five research questions we
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Research sample groups (4) Faculty
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13. Policies, Social Culture Impact
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Non-Specified Others Engineering &
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(AR = -2.1) (n = 7) 2. Non-specifie
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(n): Total number of articles Resea
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Compared to the publications in 200
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Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPAC
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April 2012 Volume 15 Number 2 - Educational Technology & Society

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