Maintaining and Enhancing Students' Collaborative Learning in a Japanese EFL Higher Education Context

Abstract

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a huge shift towards digital forms of education. Although Japan has never gone into full lockdown, students have been strictly kept at home and socially isolated from classroom learning for extended periods. Teachers were urged to create online teaching and learning resources and began to consider the most suitable technologies to teach their courses. This paper reports on a teacher's ongoing efforts to develop and deliver distancelearning English as a foreign language (EFL) courses in a higher education context. Drawing on a view that learning is social development, the researcher focuses on the concept of social presence in peer-to-peer communication that could enhance collaborative learning in a virtual classroom. Synchronous distance learning courses were developed utilising a text-messaging application and collaborative text-editing software with the aim to establish a communicative learning space. Analysis into the students' interactions in Slack workspacesa text messaging applicationindicated a variety of interpersonal, open, and cohesive communication that signalled psychological closeness in the virtual learning environment. Group discussion sessions revealed that students could feel connected to each other in the synchronous EFL courses, which demonstrated the robustness of social interaction despite physical distancing. Major difficulties lay in three areas: technology, the nature of the task, and some students' task preferences. These three areas need to be addressed when designing and delivering a distance learning course.

Virtual Workspaces for Enhancing Collaborative Work in EFL Learning: A Case Study in Higher Education

“…With respect to the participants' perceptions of Jamboard as a tool to promote open-mindedness, the majority of students (92.62 %) agreed that the use of this tool fostered their willingness to listen to their peers and decide how to present the team contributions in Jamboard. These findings are consistent with the research conducted by [18] in which students' interactions in Slack workspaces were analyzed revealing that they were willing to collaborate with their partners despite physical distancing. Participants also had a positive perception regarding the use of workspaces to foster their communication skills.…”

“…Previous studies [18] Investigated a teacher's ongoing efforts to develop and deliver distance learning EFL courses in a higher education context. Synchronous distance courses were developed using a text-messaging application and collaborative text-editing software to establish a communicative learning space.…”

“…Several studies have focused on the use of virtual workspaces to promote collaborative work in EFL education. [18] Analyzed students' interactions in Slack workspaces and demonstrated the strength of social interaction despite physical distancing. [19] Researched teaching strategies during the Covid-19 pandemic.…”

English Language Learning Strategies during COVID-19 in the Middle East: A Systematic Review

“…Nevertheless, the scope of the study was limited to first-year English department Egyptian university students and did not study the anxiety level as the students' progress in their academic years. On the other hand, Kanno (2020) checked the effectiveness of an online collaborative teaching strategy in a Japanese university EFL student's context. The researcher used online collaborative platforms (i.e., Slack, Microsoft Team) to evaluate the impact of this strategy.…”