exploring current online resources suitable for developing...

Proceedings of International Conference on Language, Literary and Cultural Studies (ICON LATERALS) 2016

Widyaloka Auditorium, Universitas Brawijaya, Jl. Veteran, Malang, 29 October 2016

792

DOI:10.217716/ub.icon_laterals.2016.001.1.54

Exploring Current Online Resources Suitable for

Developing Academic Writing Skills in English for EFL Learners

Hamamah

Universitas Brawijaya, Faculty of Cultural Studies

Malang, East Java, Indonesia

[email protected] or [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Cosmopolitan world has required English as Foreign Language (EFL) authors of

academic writing to go beyond their cultural borders in composing their writing. Thus,

in order to cope with the demand, EFL academic writing educators have been pursuing

to progress the teaching-learning process towards a more advanced instruction, among

others is by implementing technology-supported learning. This paper reports

preliminary findings of an ongoing action research study on implementing technology-

supported learning in an English academic writing course in Indonesian context in

higher-education level. The action research study is aimed at finding the best way to

implement technology-supported learning to make the students aware of the demand

of writing academically in English, especially for research and publication purposes,

that is acceptable for international academic community. The introduction of

technology-supported learning into the course is expected to provide favorable means

to the students in practicing their writing autonomously. One of the steps in achieving

the study aim that is to explore and evaluate available wide-range of online resources

for learning English language to find ones that can serve the purpose and fit the

students’ circumstances. The insight from the study that is presented here concerns

with the online resources that are currently available and suitable to achieve the

purpose of supporting the students in developing their academic writing skills for

research and publication purposes.

KEYWORDS: Academic Writing, technology-supported learning

Cosmopolitan world has required English as Foreign Language (EFL) authors

of academic writing to go beyond their cultural borders in composing their writing.

Academic writing in English is a genre that has to be learned and implemented in

composing papers in order to survive academically. Scholarly publication, especially

in high-rank internationally circulated journals in English, has been recurrently

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



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implemented in ongoing and widespread policies and requirements in the evaluation

system for academics (Li & Flowerdew, 2009) and higher education students.

Indonesia, like those of the other developing countries, has recently been instituting

new publishing policies in higher education level. The new policies regulates higher

education lecturers and students to have journal publication as one of the requirements

for promotion and graduation, respectively. However, these new policies do not go in

harmony with the readiness of the academics and higher education students, in terms

of academic writing skill and knowledge on research writing discourse; and with the

availability of the resources for supporting the writing of the journal articles, such as

subscription to international journal publishers.

As such, English academic writing instructors in higher education in

Indonesian context are challenged to be able to meet the demand of preparing the

academics and students to be able to meet the standard of journal writing in English.

On the other hand, there is not much time allotment to nurture the students’ and

academics’ English academic writing skills. Thus, in order to cope with the demand,

there is a growing need of academic writing instructors to progress the teaching-

learning process towards a more advanced instruction, among others is by

implementing technology- supported learning to enhance their teaching. “Technology

Supported Learning is a … concept that synthesises the opportunities brought by

Information Technology to learning activities” (Farinha & Braz, 2002, p.65). The

technology that can be used to support learning can range from the development of

educational software applications, implementation of an Internet based teaching and

learning platform (e.g. Blackboard), to simply using internet resources to support

learning (Kim & Hannafin, 2011). The technology supported learning discussed in this

paper concerns with using internet resources to support classroom learning.



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OBJECTIVE

The objective of this paper is presenting the preliminary findings of an ongoing

action research study on improving the academic writing for research and publication

purposes of Master of Communication Science. Specifically, this paper shares the

available current online resources that can be integrated into writing courses to provide

more chances for the students to practice and to facilitate easier acceptance of learning

materials in an English academic writing course. This paper also discusses the

evaluation that can be done to see the students’ responses towards the use of the

additional internet resources to support their learning. The online resources are

technology-supported learning materials that are readily accessible and suitable for

developing writing skills autonomously. As such these resources are beneficial for

EFL students in Indonesian context.

MOTIVATION

Currently, I am instructing an academic writing course for the first semester

students of Master of Communication Science Program. The course is aimed at

upskilling the students on critical thinking and writing for research and publication

purposes. I have a lot of difficulties in nurturing the students to master the genre of

research and publication writing genre because they did not come from undergraduate

program that nurtured English academic writing. I, then, conducted action research to

overcome the problem in my class because action research can help me to make

positive changes happen in my particular pedagogical practice (Lacorte & Krastel,

2002). During the process, I decided to support my classroom teaching-learning

process with the available online resources to provide favorable means to the students

in practicing their writing autonomously. In that way, I do not have to cover the

discussions on the basic writing skills in English academic writing in the classroom.



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For that purpose, I explored available online writing resources to be integrated to my

course. I then found several suitable online resources suitable for the students to get

understanding and to practice some academic writing skills.

As the problems that I have with my current students generally recurrently

happen in other academic writing classes in Indonesian context, this sharing on

available online writing resources is transferable to overcome similar problems in

other writing classes.

OBSTACLES AND STRATEGIES ON TECHNOLOGY-SUPPORTED

LEARNING

This section, by synthesizing the literature, provides insights on the

implementation of technology supported learning in pedagogical activities.

Specifically, this section focusses on the obstacles and suggestions to overcome the

obstacles integrating technology in classroom learning.

Concerning the obstacles of integrating technology-supported learning,

previous studies have identified and categorized the obstacles faced by teachers in

integrating technology in their course curriculum (Courts & Tucker, 2012; Ertmer,

Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Sadik, Sendurur, & Sendurur, 2012; Anastopoulou, Sharples,

Ainsworth, Crook, O'Malley, & Wright, 2011; Resta, & Laferrière, 2007). Hew and

Brush (2007) synthesized the barriers of technology integration in classroom learning

from studies documented in the literature from the year of 1995 to 2006. They came

up with six categories of obstacles, namely: resources, institution, subject culture,

attitudes and beliefs, knowledge and skills, and assessment. Out of the six obstacles,

Hew and Brush identified that there were three main obstacles that were most

frequently appeared namely: resources, teachers, and teachers’ attitude and believes.

Park and Ertmer (2008) identified other kinds of obstacles that teachers faced when



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implementing technology-enhanced learning in classrooms, which include lack of a

clear, shared vision (as the primary obstacle), lack of knowledge and skills, unclear

expectations and insufficient feedback.

Strategies to overcome the obstacles have also been discussed in the literature.

Hew and Brush (2007), having been synthesizing the barriers in the studies from the

year of 1995 to 2006, also synthesized various strategies to overcome the obstacles

that were discussed in the studies, and categorized them into five main categories: “(a)

having a shared vision and technology integration plan, (b) overcoming the scarcity of

resources, (c) changing attitudes and beliefs, (d) conducting professional development,

and (e) reconsidering assessments” (p 232). The five categories of the strategies and

the detail explanation about them is presented in Table 1.

Table 1

Summaries of Strategies to Overcome Barriers in Technology Integration

Obstacles Strategies

Resources Obtaining the necessary resources

Lack of technology Introduce technology into one or two subject areas at a time to ensure

that teachers and students in those areas have adequate technology and access to technology

Create a hybrid technology setup in classrooms that involved cheaper

computer systems

Use laptops with wireless connections to save building and maintenance

costs of the computer laboratories

Lack of access to

technology

Putting technology into the classrooms rather than in centralized

locations

Rotate students through the small number of classroom

Lack of time Teachers collaborate to create technology-integrated lesson plans and

materials

Reduce class loads for teachers in order to free up some school time. For

example, reduce the overall curriculum content

Also include the strategy for time-tabling structure

Lack of technical support Use student technology helpers

Institution Shared vision and technology plan

Leadership Having a shared vision

Time-tabling structure Schools change their time-tabling schedule to increase class time to double

period sessions

Lack of technology

integration plan

Having a technology. Such a plan should center on teaching and learning,

not merely on technology issues

Subject culture No strategies currently mentioned in the studies reviewed

Attitudes/beliefs Facilitating attitudes/beliefs change Institution support (having vision and plan; providing the necessary

resources; providing ongoing professional development; encouraging teachers)

Subject culture



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Assessment (see strategies for assessment below)

Professional development (see strategies for professional development below)

Skills Professional development – has three essential overlapping facets: (a)

appropriate to the needs of the teachers and classroom practice, (b) provides opportunities for teachers to engage in active learning, and (c)

focuses on: technological knowledge/ skills, technology-supported

pedagogy knowledge/skills, and technology-related classroom

management knowledge/skills.

Lack of technology skills Provide basic technology knowledge/skills training

Lack of technology-

supported-pedagogy skills

Ground learning experiences in content-connected technology examples.

Can be achieved through the use of a buddy system approach

Lack of technology-related-

classroom management

skills

Establishment of rules and procedures

Classroom layout redesign

Assessment Assessment

New ways to assess students’ multimedia work. For example, a contract

that indicates how many slides would be produced, and evidence of how

the information was obtained

Closely aligning the technology to their state’s curriculum standards

Note. Table adapted from Hew and Brush (2007, p.233-234)

THE ONLINE WRITING RESOURCES ADOPTED IN THE ACADEMIC

WRITING CLASS AND THE EVALUATION

The aims of this section is to discuss on the currently available online resources

related to academic writing that I integrated into my course. These resources provide

a wide variety of tasks and examples regarding academic writing, especially those

related to writing for publication. The sections provide a concise review on the online

resources. Then, the section continues on discussing the evaluation of the individual

learning that the students did in using the resources. The evaluation was meant to find

out the strength and weakness of the integration of the technology.

The Online Resources

This sub-section discusses three online resources for academic writing for

research and publication purposes that are implemented in the study.

Infoplease (http://www.infoplease.com/homework/writingskills1.html)

Infoplease.com is a free reference that available in the Internet. It covers wide

range of discussions and facts on all subjects including sports, entertainment,

technology, education. The site has a page titled Homework Centre. This page contains

http://www.infoplease.com/homework/writingskills1.html





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six subjects and three skills. The six subjects are Geography, History, Language Arts,

Mathematics, Science, and Social Science. The three skills includes Writing

(Research), Speaking and Listening, and Studying. The Writing skills page, consists

of wide range of topics for academic writing, starting from writing essays, writing

different types of essays, writing biography, writing research paper, writing

bibliography writing letter, writing term paper, and writing a speech. The writing skills

that are relevant for my course is the discussion on How to Write Research Paper and

How to Write a Bibliography. The screen capture of the webpage that listed the two

skills is presented on Figure 1. The discussion on the topic of the writing skills is

provided in the form of explanation and examples.

Figure 1. List of Writing Skills on Infoplease.com Webpage

RMIT University Learning Lab

(https://emedia.rmit.edu.au/learninglab/content/writing-skills)

The RMIT Learning Lab provides access to a wide range of online resources

to help users improve their general academic study, writing and maths skills. The

https://emedia.rmit.edu.au/learninglab/content/writing-skills



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Writing Skills page provides writing resources for: paraphrasing, linking verb,

paragraphs, sentence construction, spelling, writing in academic style, and referencing.

Each of these contains tutorials, in the form of video or writing, that share writing

strategies that gear the users to write clearly, that is to get the meaning across

using coherent, cohesive and concise writing, and in the correct way in order to

avoid plagiarism. The screen capture of the webpage is presented on Figure 2.

Figure 2. The Webpage of RMIT University Learning Lab which Shows the

Resources for Practicing Writing

The University of Sydney Learning Centre

(http://sydney.edu.au/stuserv/learning_centre/resources/successful_writing.shtm

l)

The University of Sydney Learning Centre has online resources that help higher

education students approach assignments. In this site, there are several resources that

discusses writing namely: Successful Writing at Uni, WriteSite, WRiSE, The iWrite,

and Clearer Writing. There is also one resource named Independent Learning

Resources that also discusses writing. The screen capture of the webpage is presented

on Figure 3.

http://sydney.edu.au/stuserv/learning_centre/resources/successful_writing.shtml

http://sydney.edu.au/stuserv/learning_centre/resources/successful_writing.shtml



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Figure 3. The Webpage of the University of Sydney Learning Centre which Shows

the Resources for Practicing Writing

These writing resources provides guidelines and examples of how to improve

and develop readers’ writing skills to cope with various writing assignments in higher

education which range from writing project report up to writing thesis. One of the

resources that is suitable for the students in my course is WriteSite. It has three

modules: Module 1: grammar, Module 2: Sources, and Module 3: Structure. Module

1 covers the discussions on sentence fragments, run on sentences, subject-verb

agreements, tenses, passives, apostrophes, and articles. Module 2 provides the

discussions on sources, evaluation on sources, quoting and paraphrasing, reporting

evidence, and referencing. Module 3 discusses essay planning, paragraph structuring,

introduction and conclusion developments, persuasive writing and cohesive writing.

The modules available in this site, provide descriptions of common problems in

academic writing along with the strategies to address the problems. The samples of

good writing are provided as well as practices in error correction.



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The Evaluation

In order to know how the students proceeded with their autonomous learning

outside classroom sessions to improve their writing skills using the three resources that

I recommended, I adapted reflection prompts from Sharpe and Martin (2007). The

reflection prompt is called E-learning Practice Evaluator. It is designed to reflect a

learning activity in a technology-rich context. I made some adjustments to the prompts

in order to meet my class context. In E-learning Practice Evaluator (Sharpe and

Martin, 2007) there is a list of 7 descriptive questions and 6 reflective questions. For

the purpose of my course, I adapt and revise them and the result is presented in Figure

4.

EVALUATION PROMPT

Descriptive questions

1. Did you access the online resources to practice your writing skills?

2. Which resources did you use?

Did the resources prove useful and relevant to you?

Were all the three resources accessible and available to you?

3. What technologies did you use to access the resources?

4. What was the e-learning advantage?

What advantages were there to using online resources? (Consider: accessibility,

inclusion, participation, personalization).

5. What is your opinion on this autonomous way of learning?

Reflective questions

What was the experience like for you?

Did you meet the learning outcomes?

Did you enjoy the experience?

Were you motivated?

Have there been any unexpected benefits?

Figure 4. Evaluation Prompt (adapted from Sharpe and Martin, 2007).



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SUMMARY

The introduction of technology-supported learning into the course was

expected to provide favorable means to the students in practicing their writing

autonomously. After exploring available wide-range of online resources for learning

writing, I provided the students with three online resources for writing to try outside

classroom activities. The implementation of technology supported learning need to be

evaluated whether they are effective to be utilized in achieving the purpose of

supporting the students in developing their academic writing skills for research and

publication purposes. For evaluation purpose, an evaluation prompt was developed.

However, there is still much work to be done. There should be a way to align the

technology-supported learning with the curriculum and the assessment system. Apart

from that, the insights from this paper is transferable to other English for academic

writing courses.

REFERENCES

Anastopoulou, S., Sharples, M., Ainsworth, S., Crook, C., O'Malley, C., & Wright,

M. (2011). Creating personal meaning through technology-supported

science inquiry learning across formal and informal settings. International

Journal of Science Education, 34(2), 251-273.

Braz, M. H. & Farinha, F., (2002). Using AulaNet – a Web-based Learning

Environment. CIB REPORT, 71-74.

Courts, B., & Tucker, J. (2012). Using technology to create a dynamic classroom

experience. Journal of College Teaching & Learning (Online), 9(2), 121.

Ertmer, P. A., Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A. T., Sadik, O., Sendurur, E., & Sendurur, P.

(2012). Teacher beliefs and technology integration practices: A critical

relationship. Computers & Education, 59(2), 423-435.

Farinha, F., & Braz, M. H. (2002). Technology Supported Learning in Civil

Engineering. CIB REPORT, 65-70.

Hew, K. F., & Brush, T. (2007). Integrating technology into K-12 teaching and

learning: current knowledge gaps and recommendations for future research.

Educational Technology Research and Development, 55, 223–252.

Kim, M. C., & Hannafin, M. J. (2011). Scaffolding problem solving in technology-

enhanced learning environments (TELEs): Bridging research and theory

with practice. Computers & Education, 56(2), 403-417.



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Li, Y., & Flowerdew, J. (2009). International engagement versus local commitment:

Hong Kong academics in the humanities and social sciences writing for

publication. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8(4), 279-293.

Park, S. H., & Ertmer, P. A. (2008). Examining barriers in technology‐enhanced

problem‐based learning: Using a performance support systems approach. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(4), 631-643.

Resta, P., & Laferrière, T. (2007). Technology in support of collaborative

learning. Educational Psychology Review, 19(1), 65-83.

Sharpe, R. & Martin, O. (2007). Supporting practitioners’ design for learning:

principles of effective resources and interventions. In Helen Beetham &

Rhona Sharpe (Eds.), Designing and Delivering E-learning (117 - 128).

New York, NY: Routledge.

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