Abstract
Beyond traditional undergraduates, Thai adult learners from diverse backgrounds in higher education lack a firm foundation in spoken English. The prevalent mode of distance learning limits the opportunities for utilizing life experience and fostering presentation skills in English to the fullest possible extent, when compared to a campus classroom. The Moodle platform has created a richer, collaborative learning experience by incorporating a powerful technology-based environment to their coursework with self-initiated topics. With a constructivist approach, learners refine necessary presentation skills from individual task assessments provided by instructors. This presentation focuses on the experiences and challenges of using e-learning in case-based teaching of the English language. Research methods included questionnaires and oral assessments from twenty senior English major undergraduates taking the “Effective Presentations in English” course at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University. Knowledge construction is encouraged through the two required assignments, which account for 40 percent of the course grade. The initial written formative assessment determines students' necessary skills prior to demonstrating a five-minute oral presentation video embedded on YouTube as the final assignment. Real course work will be presented to illustrate the application of the model from the e-learning activities. The study shows positive impacts on the students’ language performance and speaking ability, as well as an enhanced enthusiasm for learning.
Author Information
Watsachol Narongsaksakul, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Thailand
Paper Information
Conference: ECE2015
Stream: Challenges of new technologies
This paper is part of the ECE2015 Conference Proceedings (View)
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