Despite steady investment in English language education made by developing countries over the past few decades, results continue to be constrained by lack of high-quality instructors and language learning resources. Thus, using technology in language instruction has increasingly been recognized as a potential approach for addressing these constraints. This study uses administrative data from a large public university in Mexico to examine the impact of a technology-enhanced blended program on students' English course grades and course completion rates. Specifically, we focus on a campuswide policy change in all compulsory English language courses that replaces half of the traditional face-to-face class time with an interactive online learning environment developed by a leading technology-mediated English language learning and assessment provider. Our results suggest that, compared to traditional face-to-face instruction, blended learning had a significant, positive impact on students' course grades and course completion rates. In addition, the enrollment-teacher ratio increased after replacing half of the face-to-face instructional time with online learning, suggesting that blended learning environments hold promise for providing high-quality and costeffective language instruction.
Despite these obstacles, the Ministry of Labor in Colombia (SENA) has been able to successfully implement a nationwide e-learning program aimed at raising the level of English of over 1.5 million Colombians. Using the SENA program as a case study, the authors show how the challenges described in the literature can be overcome using four types of interactions combined with innovative technological tools and effective pedagogical approaches.
Online learning has been recognized as a promising approach to improve learning outcomes in developing countries where high-quality learning resources are limited. Concomitant with the boom in online learning, there are escalating concerns about academic accountability, specifically student outcomes as measured by persistence and success. This chapter examines whether evidence of reflection found in student written responses to a series of skill-building videos predicts success in online courses. Using a text analysis approach, this study analyzed 1,871 student responses to four reflection questions at a large online university in Panama. A binary logistic regression analysis was conducted to explore whether student persistence was affected by evidence of words associated with significant learning found in student written responses to a set of reflection questions. The results suggest that evidence of words associated with significant learning found in student written responses to reflection questions significantly predicts student persistence in online courses. A Kruskal-Wallis test found median final course grade differences between students who showed no evidence of significant learning in their written responses, and those using 1-13 words associated with significant learning. These results strongly suggest that persistence and performance in online courses are affected by evidence of reflection found in student written responses to reflection questions. These results suggest that a set of reflection tasks assigned early in the course may prove effective in identifying at-risk students.
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