In the twenty-first century, with the evolution of technologies, teaching and learning practices, especially in second language acquisition, have taken a significant leap. Numerous applications and software have been created to facilitate and boost learners’ L2 vocabulary. The goal of this study is to examine the effectiveness of Quizlet in enhancing lexical retention of EFL students at a private institution in Vietnam in two learning modes: at home and in class. Eighty-nine university students participated in the study and were separated into three groups. While the in-class group (
n
=
31
) had weekly sessions of vocabulary revision in class with their teacher, the at-home group (
n
=
30
) did the weekly reviews on Quizlet at home by themselves. The control group (
n
=
28
), however, did not utilize Quizlet for vocabulary review either in class or at home. During four weeks, the three groups learned and practiced 32 target words, divided into four sets (
1
set
=
8
items
), with each set utilized in one week. Via a quasi-experimental design including a pretest and a posttest, the quantitative data were analyzed with the employment of the Generalized Linear Mixed Model to generate reliable outcomes. Semistructured interviews were conducted after the posttest to gain insights into learners’ opinions on Quizlet use. The results indicated that Quizlet was effective in boosting lexical gains in second language acquisition and that most participants were interested in interacting with this tool for reviewing vocabulary. However, there was no statistically significant difference in lexical gains between the at-home and in-class groups. Pedagogical implications, as well as recommendations for future research, were also discussed.
Online education has become more prevalent in the 21st century, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the major trends is the learning via Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which is increasingly present at many universities around the world these days. In these courses, learners interact with the pre-designed materials and study everything mostly by themselves. Therefore, gaining insights into their satisfaction of such courses is vitally important to improve their learning experiences and performances. However, previous studies primarily focused on factors that affected learners’ satisfaction, not on how and what the satisfaction was. Moreover, past research mainly employed the narrative reviews posted on MOOC platforms; very few utilized survey and interview data obtained directly from MOOC users. The present study aims to fill in such gaps by employing a mixed-methods approach including a survey design and semi-structured interviews with the participation of 120 students, who were taking academic writing courses on Coursera (one of the world-leading MOOC platforms), at a private university in Vietnam. Results from both quantitative and qualitative data showed that the overall satisfaction of courses on Coursera was relatively low. Furthermore, most learners were not satisfied with their learning experience on the platform, primarily due to inappropriate assessment, lack of support, and interaction with teachers as well as improper plagiarism check. In addition, there were moderate correlations between students’ satisfaction and their perceived usefulness of Coursera courses. Pedagogically, teachers’ feedback and grading, faster support from course designers as well as easier-to-use plagiarism checking tools are needed to secure learners’ satisfaction of MOOCs.
To evaluate the accuracy of the digital surface model (DSM) of an open-pit mine produced using photos captured by the unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with the post-processing dynamic satellite positioning technology (UAV/PPK), a DSM model of the Deo Nai open-pit coal mine was built in two cases: (1) only using images taken from UAV/PPK and (2) using images taken from UAV/PPK and ground control points (GCPs). These DSMs are evaluated in two ways: using checkpoints (CPs) and comparing the entire generated DSM with the DSM established by the electronic total station. The obtained results show that if using CPs, in case 1, the errors in horizontal and vertical dimension were 6.8 and 34.3 cm, respectively. When using two or more GCPs (case 2), the horizontal and vertical errors are at the centimetre-level (4.5 cm and 4.7 cm); if using the DSM comparison, the same accuracy as case 2 was also obtained.
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