Assignment Design and its Effects on Japanese College Freshmen’s Motivation in L2 Emergency Online Courses: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Unlike conventional distance learning, the COVID-19-induced emergency online learning environment has resulted in students experiencing prolonged social isolation and anxiety, thereby creating additional barriers to their motivation to learn. Studying under these conditions influences students' motivation to complete and turn in course-related assignments, especially newly enrolled students taking the English reading online courses as second language learners (L2). The aim of this qualitative study is to examine various factors influencing Japanese college freshmen's (n = 80) motivation when completing graded online assignments as part of asynchronous English reading courses held during the COVID-19 pandemic. The post-course survey of students from three separate classes was used to capture a detailed panorama of learner motivation. Results from an inductive content analysis of responses indicated that higher levels of motivation were strongly associated with assignments that facilitated learner autonomy, social interaction, personal interest, and practical utility of the task. Conversely, decreased motivation appears to be strongly associated with assignments reinforcing the perception of high difficulty, personal inefficacy, and cognitive overload. These findings are consistent with studies examining online learners' motivation in the pre-pandemic period. This study found that intrinsic motivation plays an explicit role in enhancing learners' engagement with instructional materials. Researchers recommend that, especially during emergencies such as a pandemic or major crisis, teachers should deliberately and extensively employ strategies to enhance the motivational appeal of instructional materials and assignments. When designing online assignments for freshman courses, special attention must be paid to psychological (autonomy, utility, relevance), cognitive (information overload), social (relatedness, interaction), and environmental (an emergency, uncertainty, isolation) conditions of learning.

Challenges to Internationalisation of University Programmes: A Systematic Thematic Synthesis of Qualitative Research on Learner-Centred English Medium Instruction (EMI) Pedagogy

“…The key obstacles to such successful participation can be categorised into many themes, including teacher-centred pedagogical approaches, lack of language awareness by lecturers, and students' own unpreparedness to effectively participate in EMI courses, among many others. The findings of this synthesis are consistent with previous studies that highlight the critical role of language and academic skills from the perspective of both students and lecturers [9][10][11], as well as the need for dialogic, interactive, and multimodal pedagogical approaches in order to ensure the effective implementation of EMI [7,42,56,121,122].…”

Virtual exchanges in an inquiry-based learning environment: Effects on intra-cultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence

“…Teachers should be trained to design the structure of an exchange with clear objectives, participation criteria, and language use and be based on the interests, L2 proficiency and level of digital literacy of both home and partner university students. These activities should also use various strategies to match learners within or from different institutions and implement motivational online assignments to create effective virtual teamwork and engaging collaborative environment (Ismailov, 2021b;Ismailov & Laurier, 2021;Ismailov & Ono, 2021). Also, teachers who conduct such telecollaborative exchanges should be aware of inquiry-based learning and action research methodologies to assist students to conduct and present their inquiries effectively.…”

“…Finally, this research and related interventions took place during the coronavirus pandemic in Japan when the students were facing major socio-psychological, academic, and motivational obstacles, such as the lack of social interaction and face-to-face communication, cognitive overload necessitated by the need to attend numerous weekly online classes (Ismailov & Ono, 2021). Future studies should also be designed and implemented in the post-pandemic environment when both learners and educational institutions around the globe are free from the challenges of the pandemic time.…”

Synchronous online learning during movement control order in higher education institutions: a systematic review

“…Only six papers [31][32][33][34][35][36] are related to HEI in the MCO environment. Therefore, this new phenomenon warrants further investigation by the research community.…”