A research study investigating the student experience on the MA in English Language Teaching: Online

MA in ELT: Online

This month’s blog post is from Andrew Davey, eLanguages Projects Officer and Specialist Technician in eLearning, and Charlotte Everitt, Teaching Fellow in eLearning, in the Department of Modern Languages, and reflects on a research study looking at student experience on the MA in English Language Teaching: Online.

Context for the study

The University of Southampton MA in English Language Teaching: Online is a 2.5 year part-time Masters programme, which has been run in collaboration with the British Council since 2007. Over 100 students have successfully completed the course and over 90 are currently studying, based in over 25 different countries.

As the programme continues to grow in scale and global reach, the need to develop effective procedures for refreshing, enhancing and supplementing its content and reviewing its design features becomes greater. Ensuring that new developments are grounded in an understanding of the student experience is critical to this process.

Identifying the need for further research

Our most recent round of refreshment saw content and readings updated across four modules of the Online MA. This process included increasing the availability and variety of reading sources, introducing pair and group discussion tasks, adding new audio/video content and replacing old Flash activities with more compatible HTML5 activities.

The process drew on findings from both module feedback and observations of how students and tutors were using the course. However, it also highlighted the need for further research on the student experience to act as a basis for future developments.

The research study

A combination of qualitative and quantitative data related to different aspects of the student experience were collected via a short online survey distributed to current Online MA students. 30 responses were received.

Aspects of the course receiving excellent feedback included:
• student enjoyment of the course (rated 4.5 out of 5)
• quality of course documentation (4.5/5)
• ease-of-use and accessibility (4.4/5)
• task design (4.3/5)

Students also commented positively on the relevance of the content to their learning needs, the selection of reading materials and the quality of tutoring and tutor support.

In terms of improvements, students said that they wanted to see more video and audio resources, improved accessibility and availability of reading materials, and better integration of online tools to enhance interactivity. Additionally, fewer than half of the students had completed the induction materials. A further finding was that although the majority of students felt part of an online community, fewer felt like part of the University of Southampton community.

The next steps

This process of refreshment and subsequent research has provided a useful basis for developments on the Online MA, including a new round of refreshment of the Year 1 modules. We have introduced a BigBlueButton virtual classroom to the platform alongside the existing Moodle communication channels. Further ongoing developments include the creation of a bank of lecture recordings for access by students, and the integration of these recordings into core content. We are also exploring ways to enhance and highlight the induction resources, and to identify ways to help students feel more integrated into the University of Southampton community.

The findings from this project were presented at the 2016 LLAS eLearning Symposium. More information about the MA in ELT: Online can be found on the course website.

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