摘 要

在过去的几十年里，有关翻转课堂的研究越来越受到高等教育领域的重视。翻转课堂强调以学生为中心的学习方法，通过让课堂更具互动性使学生能够掌握自己的学习而非被动学习。SPOC嵌入式翻转课堂模式能够提供这样的环境氛围，它为学生提供了更多时间进行主动学习，并将先进技术融入到课堂中以支持混合学习。本文概述了SPOC嵌入式翻转课堂模式的出现及其在大学教育中的应用，并对武汉理工大学采用SPOC嵌入式翻转课堂模式进行为期一年的实验调查结果进行了分析。调查问卷由202名参加过英语写作课程的英语专业学生完成，旨在调查学生对该模式的态度以及他们对这种新教学模式的看法和感受。结果表明，与传统的教学方法相比，大多数学生更喜欢SPOC嵌入式翻转模式，尽管没有能力测试证明其实际效益，但大多数学生认为他们的英语写作能力相比起以前有了明显提高。该论文认为学生可以从SPOC嵌入式翻转课堂模式中受益，因为他们可以面对面参与课堂活动，更具互动性，并能提高学习技能并掌握自己的学习成果，并有助于帮助人们更好理解以学生为中心的学习环境。

关键词：翻转课堂；学生反馈；英语写作；大学英语教育

Abstract

Over the past decades, the research on flipped classroom is given increasing emphasis within the field of Chinese higher education. The importance of student-centered learning approaches is stressed. With such approaches, students are more interactive when engaging in class and can take charge of their own learning rather than passively learning in traditional settings. The SPOC embedded flipped classroom model can provide such an environment, since it gives students more time for active and autonomous learning and integrates a range of computer-assisted technologies into classroom to support a blended learning environment. This thesis provides an overview of relevant literature about the emergence of SPOC embedded flipped classroom model and its application to English as a foreign language (EFL) pedagogy and college education in China, followed by an analysis of the survey results of a one-year experiment adopting the SPOC embedded flipped classroom structure at the Wuhan University of Technology. The questionnaire was completed by 202 English-major undergraduates who have attended the English writing course. It aimed to investigate students’ attitudes as well as their perceived benefits and effects of this new teaching model. The results indicated that the majority of students preferred SPOC embedded flipped classroom model over traditional face-to-face teaching approaches. Although there was no English proficiency test to prove the practical benefits from the new teaching model, a high percentage of the students perceived that their English writing skills had improved significantly than before. The thesis therefore argued that students benefited from the SPOC embedded flipped classroom model, because they could participate in face-to-face classroom sessions more interactively, develop collaborative learning skills, and take charge of their own learning progress. The findings of the present study contribute to a better understanding of technology-enhanced, student-centered learning environments.

Key Words: textbook evaluation; college English majors; British and American literature textbooks

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 4

2.1 Established studies on flipped classroom 4

2.2 Previous studies on students’ perception of flipped classroom 5

3 Research Methods 8

3.1 Research questions 8

3.2 Participants 8

3.3 Instruments 8

3.4 The SPOC embedded flipped classroom model 9

4 Results 10

4.1 Students’ general perception 10

4.2 Students’ perceived benefits 14

5 Discussion 15

5.1 Summary of major results 15

5.2 Possible accounts for students’ perception 15

5.3 Pedagogical suggestions 16

6 Conclusion 17

References 18

Appendix 20

Acknowledgements 24

An Empirical Study of A SPOC Embedded Flipped Classroom Model for College English-Major Writing Course: The Perceptions of Students

1 Introduction

Rapid movements in information technologies have led to the rise of new courses contexts, and higher education is currently undergoing reforms in both content and teaching pedagogy in China. English writing course, as a compulsory course in higher education curriculum for English-major students, is also undergoing reforms. The traditional teaching approach used in English writing course is rather than single, and teachers only focus on teaching students some writing methods and techniques, ignoring students’ initiative. However, teachers should act as a facilitator, and encourage the students to be engaged in learning activities more actively. With the appearance of MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) and SPOC (Small Private Online Courses), the teacher-centered teaching setting is changing, and student- centered learning is stressed.

Massive Open Online Courses, also known as MOOC, is a student-centered educational model, and is characterized by active learning. Many researchers concluded that MOOC can bring varied benefits, spanning from helping teachers improve the teaching and learning conditions for their students, and also improving students' learning abilities, skill development as well as overall motivation (Kong, 2014), learning models like MOOC can help students to study at their own pace, spend more time in preparatory work, and become more active in their study. However, MOOC also has some shortcomings, such as the heterogeneity of learners in the same course program, the issue of students’ cheating on exams, and high drop-out rate. Besides, as learners are free to choose their favourite courses without external interference, thus it is inconvenient to communicate directly with the teachers. Therefore, Small Private Online Courses (SPOC) were developed to make up for the defects of MOOCs. "Small" means the number of students in class is less than a hundred; “Private” means the courses involve a selection process for students and a more customized process.

The flipped classroom model is a pedagogical model in which a traditional learning environment and its activities or tasks are inverted, or rearranged. Bishop and Verleger (2013) defined such model as interactive, student-based learning activities occurring inside the classroom, technology based individual guiding occurring outside the classroom. The flipped classroom model reverses the traditional teaching method, providing students pre-class activities consisting of videos with the contents of the lesson and formative assessment questions that they must answer before class (Bishop and Verleger, 2013). And the SPOC embedded flipped classroom model has been studied as a means to enhance the teaching and learning process, by replacing teachers’ face-to-face lectures with more collaborative activities and hands-on tasks. The nature of SPOCs shows consistency with that of blended learning and thus can potentially contribute to the use of student-centered instructional strategies, namely, flipped classroom learning. As mentioned in Bishop and Verleger (2013), the SPOC embedded flipped classroom model can include online video lectures, assessments with immediate feedback, interactive lab exercises, and discussion forums. This model involves many advantages. For instance, students are motivated to participate in study actively; valuable classroom time can be used to solve students’ learning problems; and high-quality learning materials are more plentiful and easier to use for the students.

The clear majority of evidence argues that learning to write is essential to become literate, and proficiency with writing is fundamental to academic achievement, employment; and also, teachers are in a position to influence language pedagogy Bishop and Verleger (2013). For most students, learning to write and becoming a competent writer require deliberate instruction which typically occurs in school settings (Kong, 2014). As such, it is important to be well-informed about students’ attitudes so as to provide a better writing instruction through the use of the SPOC embedded flipped classroom model.

The English writing course at the Wuhan University of Technology adopts this teaching model and is a compulsory course for the English-major undergraduate students in their second year. Compared with traditional teacher-centered language teaching models in higher education, the student-centered new teaching approach has broken through the traditional classroom limitations, as it provides a learning environment which gives students more time for active and autonomous learning and integrates a series of computer-assisted technologies into classroom to support a blended learning environment. When students begin with undergraduate courses, they need to adjust themselves to this approach. As such, it is a sensible idea to look into students’ perceptions of the new teaching approach. Therefore, this study aims to investigate English-major undergraduate students’ attitudes as well as their perceived benefits from the SPOC embedded flipped classroom approach.

The findings of the present study will potentially help English curriculum designers and language educators better understand technology-enhanced and student-centered learning environments so as to improve student learning experiences, and further assist students in enhancing their learning skills.