To ensure smooth communication and collaboration, here are some troubleshooting tips to address common issues:
Check Internet Connection: Verify that you have a stable and reliable internet connection. Use a wired connection when possible, as it tends to be more stable than Wi-Fi. If using Wi-Fi, make sure you have a strong signal.
Update the Browser or App: Ensure that you are using the latest version of the web browser. Developers frequently release updates to address bugs and improve performance.
Clear Browser Cache: Sometimes, cached data can cause conflicts or issues. Clear the browser cache and cookies before joining the meeting.
Test Audio and Video: Before the meeting, check your microphone and camera to ensure they are working correctly. If you are a speaker, you can click on "Start Practice Session" button test to ensure audio and video devices are functioning.
Close Other Applications: Running multiple applications in the background can consume system resources and lead to performance issues. Close unnecessary apps to free up resources for the Dryfta meeting platform.
Restart Your Device: If you encounter persistent issues, try restarting your computer or mobile device. This can help resolve various software-related problems.
Use Supported Browsers: Ensure you are using a browser supported by the meeting platform. Recommended browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Brave.
Allow Necessary Permissions: Make sure the Dryfta meeting platform has the required permissions to access your microphone, camera, and other necessary features.
Disable VPN or Firewall: Sometimes, VPNs or firewalls can interfere with the connection to the meeting platform. Temporarily disable them and see if the issue persists.
Switch Devices: If possible, try joining the meeting from a different device to see if the problem is specific to one device.
Reduce Bandwidth Usage: In cases of slow or unstable internet connections, ask participants to disable video or share video selectively to reduce bandwidth consumption.
Update Drivers and Software: Ensure your operating system, audio drivers, and video drivers are up to date. Outdated drivers can cause compatibility issues with the Dryfta meeting platform.
Contact Support: If none of the above steps resolve the issue, reach out to the platform's support team. They can provide personalized assistance and troubleshoot specific problems.
By following these troubleshooting tips, you can tackle many common problems encountered on Dryfta meeting platform and have a more productive and seamless meeting experience.
Game-based L2 English learning in Norwegian secondary school
Oral Presentation[SYMP14] AILA ReN - Emerging technologies and language learning and teaching03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/21 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/21 16:00:00 UTC
Digital technologies are considered a crucial aspect of educational policy around the world (Erstad et al., 2021). In Norway, the common core curriculum has for the first time emphasised language identity developed outside school as a resource in school, and one aspect of teenagers' language identity developed outside school, is through the use of advanced technologies, such as online gaming (Brevik, 2019). The word "games" is explicitly referred to in the new English subject curriculum in secondary school for the first time. However, little research is conducted in classrooms on how teachers actually use commercial games in English instruction, and even less on the combination of video games and other forms of resources (e.g. analogue).
As part of the research project Vocational and General Students' use of English in and out of school (VOGUE), this paper provides knowledge on the use of online gaming in L2 English instruction and aims to investigate how the combination of playing an online game and reading a printed novel influences student engagement and learning. This paper presents a video-based classroom study from a secondary school. The data were collected from 30 English lessons in two 8th grade classes (students aged 12–13 years), involving one teacher, six student teachers and 60 secondary school students during a two-week game-based project. Video recordings can be strengthened by adding supplementary data, thus the video recordings were complemented with screen recordings, student texts and student interviews. The paper therefore draws on four datasets: (1) video recorded classroom lessons, (2) screen recordings from students' laptops, (3) students' texts concerning the video-based instruction, and (4) student interviews concerning their experiences of such instruction.
The video and screen recordings were analysed using the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observations (PLATO), which provides a valuable lens to ways of conceptualizing teaching quality (Grossman et al., 2013). The PLATO scores are qualitatively examined together with the students' perceptions and students' texts. This study is the first to use the PLATO protocol for recordings of game-based instruction, and thus discusses advantages and difficulties in the operationalisation of PLATO for such observation. The findings show that the combination of playing an online game and reading a printed novel matters in terms of student engagement. In addition, girls and boys perceived the combination of gameplay and reading somewhat differently, based on their prior experience with gameplay outside school, suggesting that their experience with the digital resource outside school influences both engagement and learning.
References
Brevik, L. M. (2019). Gamers, Surfers, Social Media Users: Unpacking the role of interest in English. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 35, 595–606. Erstad, O., Kjällander, S., & Järvelä, S. (2021). Facing the challenges of 'digital competence' – a Nordic agenda for curriculum development for the 21st century. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 16(2), 77-87. Grossman, P., Loeb, S., Cohen, J., & Wyckoff, J. (2013). Measure for measure: The relationship between measures of instructional practice in middle school English language arts and teachers' value-added scores. American Journal of Education, 119(3), 445–470.
Presenters Shilan Ahmadian PhD-candidate, University Of Oslo, Norway
Designing and Evaluating an E-Mandarin Tone Teaching Package for Hong Kong Learners of Mandarin
Oral Presentation[SYMP14] AILA ReN - Emerging technologies and language learning and teaching03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/21 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/21 16:00:00 UTC
The past two decades have witnessed a growing importance of Mandarin, particularly in Hong Kong. Tone, as an essential component of Mandarin, is considered difficult by Hong Kong learners. In fact, several approaches to teaching Mandarin tone, such as explicit instruction, integration of learner corpus, provision of visual feedback, have been promoted in recent years. Meanwhile, intelligent computer assisted language learning (ICALL) has attracted considerable attention. For example, Zhou and Chen (2022) developed a Mandarin tone assessment tool using an AI-based platform Teachable Machine in order for Hong Kong learners to facilitate their learning of Mandarin tone. However, there is a lack of studies on the effectiveness of the training both infused with the AI element and other effective approaches.
The purpose of the present study is threefold: 1) to design an e-Mandarin tone teaching package for Hong Kong learners; 2) to examine the effectiveness of the innovative Mandarin tone training; and 3) to investigate the attitudes of Hong Kong learners towards the training. The e-package was comprised of three parts: 1) a self-made introduction video for explicit instruction; 2) a corpus-based perception activity to raise learners' awareness of both incorrect and acceptably correct tone pronunciation produced by Hong Kong learners; and 3) a production activity using two web-based platforms of pitch visualization including AmPitch and WASP2 and a customized AI-based assessment tool. In this study, 20 university students with Hong Kong Cantonese as their first language were involved. They were taking or had taken a Mandarin course and self-reported their Mandarin proficiency level as intermediate. Of all the participants, 10 were assigned to an experimental group receiving training with the e-package and 10 to a control group receiving no additional training. Both groups of participants were required to read monosyllabic words before and after the training and to fill out the questionnaire regarding learning of Mandarin tone. Participants who received the training also conducted a 5-minute self-reflection on the use of different approaches to Mandarin tone. The production of Mandarin tone was analyzed both perceptually and acoustically. The results indicated that the training improved the participants' pronunciation of Mandarin tones and the improvement also transferred to new stimuli, and that there were inconsistent views among the participants towards the use of different approaches.
Overall, the study provides empirical evidence for the effect of the use of the e-package of teaching Mandarin tone on the acquisition by Hong Kong learners of Mandarin. It is expected that this study could shed new light on the integration of different proven-effective approaches into language teaching. It is also hoped that a larger-scale study which takes learners' proficiency level into consideration could be conducted in the future.
Zhou, X. N. & Chen, H. C. (2022, June 25-26). Innovative Use of Teachable Machine Infused with Corpus Data to Enhance the Acquisition of Mandarin Tone [Paper presentation]. 19th International Conference on Teaching and Learning Chinese in Higher Education, Milton Keynes, UK.
The ebb and flow of heart rate: Assessing physiological fluctuations in anxiety during oral production tasks in virtual reality.
Oral Presentation[SYMP14] AILA ReN - Emerging technologies and language learning and teaching03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/21 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/21 16:00:00 UTC
Presentation and argument are in English
Researchers have found that VR can reduce foreign language anxiety (Gruber & Kaplan-Rakowski, 2021; Thrasher, 2022; York et al., 2021). However, research has yet to empirically measure both learners' real-time self-reported and physiological anxiety during VR activities and to establish whether this lower anxiety leads to better language performance. This presentation addresses these research gaps by presenting a study that examined how the physiological and self-reported anxiety of two focus groups of three students each (N = 6) fluctuated and impacted students' performance during group interpersonal speaking tasks in three learning environments. At the onset, participants' background and baseline self-reported anxiety were first established. Then, participants completed six comparable 20-minute group interpersonal consensus building tasks in French over a 12-week period in three different environments: two in a classroom, two in Zoom and two in the VR application, vTime XR. All tasks were video-recorded and participants' heart rate (HR) was continuously tracked second-by-second during each task. Immediately after each task, participants self-reported their anxiety via a questionnaire. Each groups' video-recorded discussions were transcribed verbatim and coded into seven incremental levels of interpersonal discourse, ranging from simple to more complex, using Hull & Saxon's (2009) Interaction Analysis Model. Then, participants' HR data was merged with the transcriptions and video-recordings to determine how heart rate fluctuated in response to participants' conversations. Specifically, each participant's HR data was overlayed onto the video recordings to be able to visualize increases and decreases in HR. Moments of peaks and lulls in HR were triangulated with the transcriptions and qualitatively analyzed within the context of the conversation to pinpoint specific moments where anxiety ebbed and flowed in the different environments. This presentation will report the findings that emerged from this analysis in an effort to understand how various factors within each learning environment impacted anxiety and, subsequently, oral performance in French. Specific emphasis will be placed on how anxiety fluctuated in VR, since it was found that participants, particularly those with high anxiety in general, were less physiologically susceptible to potential stressors in VR and, subsequently, produced more understandable, fluent, and complex French speech.
Gruber, A., & Kaplan-Rakowski, R. (2021). The impact of high-immersion virtual reality on foreign language anxiety when speaking in public. SSRN. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3882215
Hull, D. M., & Saxon, T. F. (2009). Negotiation of meaning and co-construction of knowledge: An experimental analysis of asynchronous online instruction. Computers and Education, 52(3), 624-639. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2008.11.005
Thrasher, T. (2022). The impact of virtual reality on L2 French learners' language anxiety and oral comprehensibility: An exploratory study. CALICO Journal, 39(2), 219-238. https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.42198
York, J., Shibata, K., Tokutake, H., & Nakayama, H. (2021). Effect of SCMC on foreign language anxiety and learning experience: A comparison of voice, video, and VR-based oral interaction. ReCALL, 33(1), 49-70. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344020000154
Virtual Reality in hybrid language learning as a tool to foster positive interdependence: an investigation on students of Italian as a Foreign Language.
Oral Presentation[SYMP14] AILA ReN - Emerging technologies and language learning and teaching03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/21 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/21 16:00:00 UTC
Positive interdependence is a situation of mutual reliance between individuals oriented towards the achievement of mutual goals (Johnson & Johnson, 2005). When applied to language education, these goals are linked to language activities in which individuals thrive on peer interactions and tool usage to achieve task goals (Laal, 2013). In this respect, Virtual Reality (VR) might be used as a tool to foster students' positive interdependence in language learning contexts given its interactive affordances for platform users. However, research is still missing on the effects of VR on students' positive interdependence surfacing as mediation strategies, subjunctive and conditional grammatical moods. For this reason, this paper analyses the results of a case study conducted on students of Italian as a Foreign Language using the VR platform Immerse. The aim was to investigate whether task-based group activities conducted with the use of VR can contribute to foster students' positive interdependence surfacing as mediation strategies, as well as subjunctive and conditional moods.
Described as a situation of mutual reliance for the purpose of achieving common goals, positive interdependence constitutes the backbone of collaborative language learning as linguistic interactions unfold in task-based group work (Johnson & Johnson, 2005). However, with the transition of educational systems to hybrid modalities of language learning, technology-based language pedagogies must support students' positive interdependence in remote spaces where isolation and online fatigue might hinder opportunities of language use in mediation and meaning negotiations (Nadler, 2020). On this matter, this paper suggests processes for utilising the interactional affordances of Virtual Reality (VR) in language learning methodologies that blend in-person with online activities to foster students' positive interdependence in the form of mediation strategies and the use of subjunctive and conditional moods. Specifically, this paper presents the results of task-based language interventions conducted on the platform Immerse to enable students to practice mediation strategies in Italian by socially interacting in VR settings in alternations between immersive activities and in-person meetings. In fact, by using participants' exposure to non-immersive versus fully immersive VR learning spaces as variables, evidence of the efficacy of VR for boosting positive interdependence is demonstrated through the results of observations and of pre and post-tests conducted by control and experimental groups consisting of students of Italian as a foreign language. The interventions were structured according to a task-based learning method (Willis, 1996) and data collected with a mixed-methods design (Dörnyei, 2007) consisting of classroom observations, questionnaire analysis and focus group interviews. The project shows that interactional VR affordances can be used to help students situate their foreign language skills in socially relevant contexts through mutual interdependence to reach task-based goals. Furthermore, it addresses the necessity to propose methodological suggestions to conduct hybrid language instruction with VR adopting task-based language learning approaches. Lastly, the study helps to fill a gap in the literature on grammar and mediation practices in VR language learning environments, paving the way for further research in the field of emerging VR technologies for language education. Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research Methods in Applied Linguistics: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Methodologies, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R.T. (2005). New Developments in Social Interdependence Theory. Gender, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 131 (4), 285-358. doi: https://doi.org/10.3200/MONO.131.4.285-358 Laal, M. (2013). Positive Interdependence in Collaborative Learning. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 93, 1433-1437. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.058 Nadler, R. (2020). Understanding "Zoom fatigue": Theorizing spatial dynamics as third skins in computer-mediated communication. Computers and Composition, 58, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2020.102613 Willis, J. (1996). A framework for task-based learning. Essex, UK: Longman.
Shilan Ahmadian
