Anke Berns

Motivation, students’ needs and learning outcomes: a hybrid game-based app for enhanced language learning

In the context of European Higher Education students face an increasing focus on independent, individual learning—at the expense of face-to-face interaction. Hence learners are, all too often, not provided with enough opportunities to negotiate in the target language. The current case study aims to address this reality by going beyond conventional approaches to provide students with a hybrid game-based app, combining individual and collaborative learning opportunities. The 4-week study was carried out with 104 German language students (A1.2 CEFR) who had previously been enrolled in a first-semester A1.1 level course at a Spanish university. The VocabTrainerA1 app—designed specifically for this study—harnesses the synergy of combining individual learning tasks and a collaborative murder mystery game in a hybrid level-based architecture. By doing so, the app provides learners with opportunities to apply their language skills to real-life-like communication. The purpose of the study was twofold: on one hand we aimed to measure learner motivation, perceived usefulness and added value of hybrid game-based apps; on the other, we sought to determine their impact on language learning. To this end, we conducted focus group interviews and an anonymous Technology Acceptance Model survey (TAM). In addition, students took a pre-test and a post-test. Scores from both tests were compared with the results obtained in first-semester conventional writing tasks, with a view to measure learning outcomes. The study provides qualitative and quantitative data supporting our initial hypotheses. Our findings suggest that hybrid game-based apps like VocabTrainerA1—which seamlessly combine individual and collaborative learning tasks—motivate learners, stimulate perceived usefulness and added value, and better meet the language learning needs of today’s digital natives. In terms of acceptance, outcomes and sustainability, the data indicate that hybrid game-based apps significantly improve proficiency, hence are indeed, effective tools for enhanced language learning.

Guess It! Using Gamificated Apps to Support Students Foreign Language Learning by Organic Community-Driven Peer-Assessment

Guess it! is a gamificated app for smartphones that aims to enhance students foreign language learning outside the classroom. Learning contents in the APP are not delivered to our learners but, rather than this, they are produced by versatile tasks (e.g. rating or reporting, adding new definitions, etc.) that although individually performed, affect the community of learners. Firstly, we detail how the app can be used to support students language learning outside the classroom, secondly, how it helps learners to get actively involved in their own learning process, thirdly, how the server intelligence is organically built on top of community contributions and peer-assessments, so the more students use the app, the richer the knowledge base becomes. And finally we show how the data on students usage of the app and participation in the learning process can be used to automate the assessment by the language instructor.

Retrieving Objective Indicators from Student Logs in Virtual Worlds

VirtualWorlds(VWs)havebeenwidelyusedtosupportlearningprocesses.Onemainadvantageis providingvaluabledataonstudentbehaviourandinteraction.Nonetheless,mostplatformsprovide onlylimitedaccesstostudentlogs.Moreover,accessinglogsusuallyrequirestechnicalskillsmost teachersdonothave.Inthiscontext,theauthorspresentaDomainSpecificLanguage(DSL)designed toallowteacherstogeneratequeriesforretrievingvaluableloginformationwithaviewtoobtain evidenceonlearnerbehaviourandinteraction;hence,toaidintheanalysisofin-worldbehaviour andlearningprocesses.Sincethisdata isautomaticallyretrieved, theteachercaneasilyrunnew queriestorefineindicatorsorcontrasthypotheses.Theauthorsdescribeacasestudycarriedout withundergraduateGermanlanguagestudentsusingaVW-basedvideogame.Theresultsprovide asetofindicatorsforanalysingindividualandgroupbehaviourmeasuringstudentcompetenceto communicateinthetargetlanguage. KeyWORdS Assessment, Computer-Supported Foreign Language Learning, Domain Specific Language, Learning Analytics, Virtual Worlds

Open discovery space: a socially-powered and multilingual open learning infrastructure to boost the adoption of elearning resources

OpenDiscoverySpace (ODS) is a 3-year European FP7 project comprising 51 partners from 23 European countries. ODS project aspires to boost demand for OERs and to introduce innovative teaching and learning practices in schools through the effective use of these resources. The project also intends to promote the creation of communities between European schools. In order to concentrate both, OERs and school communities, it has been built a large, multilingual community and a web portal around the diverse OERs that are currently dispersed in well-known educational repositories in Europe. The portal is a community-oriented social platform where students, teachers and parents will be able to discover, acquire, share, discuss, reuse and revise OERs.

Tendencias y tipos de aprendizaje en MALL: una revisión sistemática de la literatura (2012-2016) - [Trends and types of learning in MALL: a systematic literature review (2012-2016)]

The growing expansion of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has not only given rise to new ways of communicating and interacting, but also of teaching and learning. In foreign language teaching this has led to the rise of new disciplines such as Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and, more recently, Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL). Although the first MALL implementations appeared more than two decades ago, it is still a barely explored area, bearing in mind the possibilities offered by mobile devices such as smartphones. As the purpose of this study is, on the one hand, to identify current trends and, on the other hand, to contribute to future research, this article presents a systematic literature review (SLR), based on research studies published in journals, conferences and specialised books between 2012 and 2016. Special attention is given to the type of learning supported by the apps that can be found within the specialised literature. This study aims to add to previous SLR in order to gain insight into the state of the art of MALL, as well as to identify the challenges it still faces.