IMPROVING COLLABORATION IN BLENDED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS THROUGH DIFFERENTIATED ACTIVITIES AND MOBILE-ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING TOOLS

作者：A. Osifo · 发表于：Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Mobile Learning 2019 · 年份：2019 · DOI：10.33965/ML2019_201903L001 · 被引用次数：18 · 研究领域：Computer Science

Recent trends in higher education have initiated an increase in the attention given to the quality of teaching offered to the students, and significant changes in student populations since 2000, such as increasing social diversity (Biggs & Tang, 2011), have required educators to relook at their teaching and instructional practices. As diversity in higher education increases and accelerating technology adoption impacts on teaching, improving the quality of the instructive-educational process becomes fundamental based on understanding, observing, and re-evaluating the differences amongst our students. At the higher education level, our students are even more diverse than K-12 students due to their academic experiences and professional interests. Our learners differ not only culturally or linguistically, but also in their cognitive abilities, learning preferences, background knowledge, and have various levels of strengths and weaknesses in the area of multiple intelligences; hence a rethinking of the structure and management of the classroom, modifying curricula and maximizing classroom interactions are necessary. Differentiated activities together with Web 2.0 tools and mobile-assisted language learning applications can enhance collaborative learning where learners actively participate in groups to explore a topic or discuss to finalize a project. Differentiation or academically responsive instruction concentrates on teaching strategies that provide students with multiple pathw...