The table below provides the summary of the observation during the enactment phase. The interview took the form of informal conversational interviews where students were randomly selected and interviewed using open-ended question to evaluate effectiveness of the intervention towards the achievements of the set pedagogical goals.
Table 3 below is a summary of the findings from the informal conversational interviews conducted. The findings indicated that the introduction of the blended learning environment for the first four weeks of lectures had improved interactivity among students and between the students and the lecturer due to the ICT tools such the forum and emailing system that were used.
However, due to the low bandwidth of the Internet service on the campus, the students experienced some difficulty in watching videos online and downloading materials from the website.
Again the students were unable to access online materials from the website when they were outside the University campus thereby, restricting the online interaction to when they were on the campus. Additionally, only a few of the students made postings on the forum as well as accessed the video-taped lectures.
This corroborated the informal conversational interview with the students when they suggested that they could not access the video files because of network problems. To neutralise the inhibiting factors identified from the enactment phase, the intervention was adjourned after the fifth week lectures. The course however, continued with the usual face-to-face lecture method. First, the problem with the e-mail was fixed to enable effective communication between the lecturer and students and among students.
The initial e-mail system used was hosted on the Universities Intranet hence, the students could only access their mails when they were on campus. The students were asked to create additional e-mail accounts by using Gmail, ymail or yahoo mail. The only change in the new enactment model was the schedule of the video-recorded lectures which is now found in the third phase of the model as presented in Figure 5. The intervention was re-enacted with the same students in the second semester of the academic year for the second component of the Communication Skills course.
The trends in the data showed that the marginal increase in activity on ABLECAT could be attributed to the e-mail communication with the students that announced the course topic and the tasks assigned. The responses are summarised in Table 4. The questionnaire sought to find out from the participants their perceptions in terms of the quality of the content, learning, communication and the level of engagement they experienced with ABLECAT.
Sixty-four students answered the Likert-type questionnaire consisting of 11 statements with the options to state their agreement on a scale of 5 to 1 strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree and strongly disagree. It could therefore, be concluded that the provision and use of the communication tools in the design and implementation of ABLECAT contributed to the perceived collaboration that the students enjoyed in the CS course, and hence the enhancement of their cognitive development and improvement in the course.
Table 7: Responses from design proposition 3 Feedback has been found to be central to learning and improving performance, and therefore, students need appropriate feedback on performance to benefit from courses. It has also been observed that if coursework is taken away from a course due to resource constraints, students do not perform the associated studying.
This was attributed to the slow Internet connectivity on campus and lack of access for those students who lived outside the campus. The activity logs on course materials were higher when the students were asked to undertake course work or assignment on the topic for the week.
This indicated that the students utilised the course materials for their coursework and assignments. This finding notwithstanding, the use of web-based materials for blended learning programmes was problematic giving that some students encountered problems with Internet access and the slow speed of the connectivity on the university campus. This implies that any adoption of the blended learning environment in a university-wide situation would require investment in Internet infrastructure to make it successful.
The status quo could not support such innovations in teaching and learning. Much of the interaction that took place was by the use of the e-mail and the forums, which created an avenue for the students to regularly exhibit their knowledge and writing skills in the course. In conclusion, although the findings from this study show the transformative potential of the intervention, there could be an issue with the generalization of the findings to all courses in the University setting.
It is therefore, pertinent for future research endeavours to study the effects of making use of the intervention across various courses in different situations. Academic literacy and communicative skills in the Ghanaian university: A proposal. Nebula, 4 3 , pp.
Amir, Z. Procedia Social and Behavioural Sciences, 18 , pp. Aycock, A. Lessons learned from the hybrid course project. Teaching with technology today, 8 6. Biggs, J. Teaching for quality learning at university: What the student does. Boyle, T. Using blended learning to improve student success rates in learning to program.
Journal of Educational Media, 2 3 , pp. Bradley, B. A formative experiment to enhance teacher-child language interactions in a preschool classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 11 3 , pp. Calabrese, R. Theoretical and practical issues in designing a blended e- learning course of English as a foreign language. In: G. Persico, eds. Chapelle, C. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Chen, J. How a web-based course facilitates acquisition of English for Academic Purposes.
Research Methods in Education. Abingdon: Routledge. Coker, W. Referral trends among students of the Communicative Skills course in a Ghanaian university. English for Specific Purposes World, 36 12 , pp. Cooper, D. Business Research Methods. New York: McGraw Hill. Davidsen, J. ICT as a tool for collaboration in the classroom - challenges and lessons learned. It also improves higher-level thinking skills and students' attitudes toward the subject.
Thus, learners may be exposed to increased amounts of effective communication in both comprehension and production, using of language for academic and social functions.
Dewey claimed that education is a tool for students to learn how to participate in classrooms cooperatively. In learning global issues, students will be skillful to interpret information, develop critical thinking, and choice appropriate ways and approaches for solving world problems.
They can communicate efficiently to express their ideas, views and opinions. Awareness and senses of a shared global citizenship will be improved gradually. A study related to the importance of global education in classrooms was carried out by Inka and Niina They believed that global education is a very important activity that guides students to have knowledge about world issues and to become responsible world citizens.
The essential aim of the study was to find out Finnish elementary school teachers' perceptions, experiences and attitudes toward global education. The other aims of the study were to explore the kind of resources that teachers have for implementing global education and how to improve global education services and materials offered to elementary schools.
The results revealed that teachers generally realize the necessity of integrating global education as a branch of education and global education should be incorporated into the teacher-training program as an individual subject in order to increase the level of global education.
It was added that global education services and materials should be more available. So, teachers can find them easily and without wasting time. The results indicated that a large number of Elementary Education pre-service teachers granted more significance to global environmental issues and global education should be integrated into classrooms.
The study recommended that operative environmental courses be improved from primary to higher education in order to develop students' environmental knowledge. Lopes identified some outcomes which are applied across curricula in learning world problems.
Four main outcomes are established including knowledge, skills, values and taking action. Erfani construes that "due to the importance of textbooks in any ELT context it is necessary to consider all aspects of global issues not only in materials development, but also in course design and methods of teaching" p.
Almulla investigated the perceptions of Saudi high school teachers and their students about cooperative learning. The findings of the study indicate that all teachers and the majority of students in this investigation presented positive attitudes towards cooperative learning and prefer it to lecture-style lesson teacher-centred learning.
The findings suggest that training in cooperative learning is significant to help teachers change their practice and their perceptions of classroom roles, responsibility and authority as well. Vygotsky's perspective about teaching and its relationship with the external world was that cultures with different conceptual categories should be expected to perceive and therefore to think about the world differently from other cultures.
In addition, Vygotsky outlined that students' learning is a result of social and dyadic interactions; that is to interact with more knowledgeable people teachers, parents, peers and fulfill some culturally tasks. Thus, the learning process is facilitated. Additionally, students' cognitive improves since their thinking is related to society in the form of sharing social activities with people who are surrounding to them Al-Jawarneh, n.
Ellis and Barkhuizen confirmed that, through scaffolding, learners are able to be in a progress level than they can attain by themselves. On the other hand, Samuels argues that the importance of schema theory to comprehension lies in how the learners use schemata. He emphasizes internal aspects of attention to process information is crucial to comprehension and defines three characteristics of internal attention.
First is alertness. It is the learners' active attempt to access relevant schemata involving not only letter-sound relationships, syntactic knowledge but also word meanings. Second is selectivity. It refers to the learners' ability to attend selectively to only that information which requires processing.
Final characteristic is the limited capacity. It refers to the fact that learners' brain has limited cognitive energy for processing information purposes. To clarify the idea of schema theory, Margana states that learners develop schemata through experience and schemata does not only affect the way information is interpreted but also continue to change as new information is received to facilitate further comprehension.
This statement is supported by Graves and Slater who asserted that learners can easily learn new words as global issues words if they have the schemata for the exposure of suitable method for learning as cooperative learning methods.
Jahromi and Marzban asserted that finding an appropriate way to learn vocabulary is a crucial issue in acquiring them. So, cooperative learning methods can help students learn and recall new vocabulary. Hence, the aforementioned theories underpin the present research, supporting and enriching it with information in which the objectives of this research can be achieved, and research questions can be answered. Therefore, learners have the ability to think of the process of learning the needed meaning when they face difficult words or texts.
The jigsaw technique is one of the earliest cooperative learning methods and the best motivational devices used to create a real 'information gap' in the classroom and encourage for communication. Moreover, Falchikov asserted that there are two main aims of using jigsaw method. Firstly, it is to enhance pre-service teacher preparation through cooperation and; secondly, to develop learners' academic and social learning Azzioui, Hausfather maintained that teachers must engage students' interest and simplify the tasks, so they are controlled and manageable.
Teachers should also motivate learners to fulfill the instructional goal improving their vocabulary of global issues as well as language acquisition.
Pratama and Yuliati asserted that students need to master the skills of communication, critical and logical thinking, creativity, and problem solving. That cannot be achieved efficiently unless the students learn vocabulary, including the vocabulary of global issues. Thus, they can express their thoughts, ideas, experiences and feeling. In addition, Sciamarelli claimed that teaching global issues in the classroom is imperative because that gives students a chance to communicate and express their views, transforms the classroom into a real-life environment creating internationally aware students.
Despite the importance of introducing global issues vocabulary lessons to students, Yemeni learners at tertiary level still face difficulty in learning and understanding them. Having knowledge of using particular and suitable methods in teaching the vocabulary of global issues may lead learners to engage and participate efficiently. However, what are the students' perceptions and attitudes towards learning cooperatively? This study aims; therefore, at investigating students' perceptions and attitudes towards the learning of global issues vocabulary using cooperative learning methods.
Methodology The study employed a survey method research design where the quantitative data collection method was conducted. Then a well-prepared questionnaire was conducted within a period of two days, immediately after the intervention phase. Sample was selected using a purposive sampling method since there are two levels of students in the institute, adult and beginners.
Adult students were recruited as sample for their opinions about the issue were more attainable. An intervention phase took place for two hours a day a period only , for seven weeks, totaling 40 hours altogether.
The participants 25 studied 8 global issues lessons, which were selected by the researcher. They were taught global issues lessons using the selected cooperative learning method the jigsaw technique and using monolingual dictionary, English — English. The questionnaire is divided into four sections. Each section contains of five questions except the last section which consists of ten questions. The total number of the questions in this questionnaire is 25 close-ended questions.
The data were analysed statistically in percentages. Result and Discussion The subsequent section will explain the data analysis obtained from the quantitative data; the questionnaire.
Such vocabulary can include the vocabulary of global issues as well. Consequently, the students have also the same skills and abilities while acquiring the vocabulary of global issues. This finding is supported by Jahromi and Marzban who pointed that the most crucial issue in vocabulary acquisition is finding a suitable way to learn and recall them. According to the statistical results, we got an idea about the techniques that the participants preferred to use in leaning vocabulary, in general.
We also knew whether the participants were satisfied in the techniques by which they have learned the vocabulary of global issues or not. It was also found that the respondents had different ideas about the methods and techniques that they used while studying vocabulary in last periods, in general. In other words, these techniques should be used since they are appropriate to understand new vocabulary easily.
The finding obtained from this item is supported by Oxford and Crookall who also asserted that; students are explicitly informed how to use a particular technique to learn a given word, how to evaluate the success of the technique, and how to transfer it to a new word or set of words Saengpakdeejit, In item 9, it was found that the respondents were also in consensus about the technique that they found more effective for explaining new vocabulary of global issues.
WhatsApp, Instant Messaging Etc. Would you find it useful- Yes 72 96 75 98 -No 0 0 4 3 2 3 2. Would you be motivated to use it- 86 62 94 73 90 Yes -No 14 10 6 5 10 15 3. E -learning is beneficial as it is an 81 58 88 69 E-learning is useful as courses are readily available online 81 58 83 65 82 - Agree -Neutral 18 13 13 10 E-learning is cost effective 74 53 83 65 Implementing e-learning would improve performance - Yes 99 71 99 77 99 - No 1 1 1 1 1 2 7.
E-learning enabled training would help in better understanding of the course than formal teaching methods 74 53 53 41 E-learning would help to learn on your own at your own pace Availability of ready access to e- 73 53 Its disadvantages as it would replace 38 27 38 30 38 57 faculties - Agree If agree, why At ease with traditional teaching, can interact in person the faculties. It would make students to skip 58 42 64 50 61 92 traditional classes- Yes -No 42 30 36 28 39 58 4.
Distracted on using e-learning -Yes 39 28 35 27 37 55 If yes, then why Singled out, no monitoring, no friends around or if present, constant interaction would be there -No 61 44 65 51 63 95 5.
Adapting difficulties 14 10 5 4 9. Learning feels that they would be distracted while using such course materials should be an interactive session with high end technologies as a check on them will not be the faculties. Online discussions and online work submissions should also be incorporated. These facilities should be for which will definitely act as a bane for the learners due free or for a very nominal cost.
Yet, some mentioned to its ready access of anytime and anywhere. Thus bringing in interrupted internet connection. The doubt in But there are studies to show that e- time and appropriately training the learners, than their learning is cost effective, as it not only reduces travel predecessors. Thus recent shift toward blend learning needs be considered. Also internet in computer labs, but there are no well defined they are not sure if the infrastructure would allow them technological tools or a proper learning management the ready access.
This needs urgent attention, as technologies faculties could be replaced which they a definite change is required in learning styles to keep fear, as a problem can arise if a student prefers formal pace with the developed scenario in learning methods of training or a blended method of learning. This will serve as a supplement to the Katherine Schilling et al's7 study was on the design traditional teachings methods followed in the Institution and effectiveness of an interactive, Web-based and will thus enhance the students educational curriculum on Evidence Based Medicine[EBM] in experiences.
Almost The the Institutional or University levels. The students using e-learning can better their performance, it would be tools had better academic performance, were motivated, appropriate to introduce e-learning module or tools via fostered cooperation among students and felt it a learning management platform so as to stream line provided a pleasant classroom environment. Thus in our their learning environments. Most students were confident with computer learning system for medical students.
So as to bring about performance and were willing to use it as a reference a good quality literature search, for those generating tool for study management. Faculty of Health Sciences of the Medical University of The study done by Aboshady O et al10 assessed the Bialystok and the results of the implementation of an prevalence of awareness and use of massive open electronic examination at the Faculty of Medicine, online courses MOOCs among medical Department of Pathophysiology.
Benefits noted were undergraduates in Egypt, along with its limitations and that learning materials available were prepared on a satisfaction of using it through a questionnaire. Out of these, methodology, availability of non-stop e-learning portal Solimann MM et al's15 study which was The objective of the study was to determine about e-learning, challenges with regards to time and the perception of the second batch reformed speed can be dealt with a well designed LMS in place curriculum of medical graduates about the educational and a good infrastructure.
Students perceived most of training would enhance their and thus by introducing a educational tools and technologies and LMS useful for LMS designed to students' curricular needs in our their learning. Some considered social networking tools Institution, will definitely aid their learning process less useful, despite their frequent use while some were while A strong attitude towards mobile use comments. Social Influence Further of using Mobile Learning. The same was noticed by information can be obtained as to why majority are Guttmann J et al17 who systematically analyzed the use eager to adapt earlier while some of them trail down, of digital and non-digital learning resources by some improve and yet some are stagnant in training.
As the current study students learning strategies. Data of student experiences can lead to further effective learning.
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