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system last term but this term I have been positively surprised and have got to like it by the end”. Her view was not influenced by the fact that she got a 4 at the end of the term. As for the future, she intended to use the wiki for preparing for the language exam. Besides, she started to use an online dictionary and Quizlet as a result of the course.
Nóra – a lazy student
Nóra had already passed a C1 level language exam before the course and did not plan to take a professional exam at the end of her studies. She decided to study English at the college because she supposed she would be able to complete the course and receive a good mark easily. In Term 1 she assessed all her skills as very high with her listening skills the lowest and indicated a moderate desire to develop them (M=1.42). However, she expressed her liking towards the wiki, completed the obligatory tasks and even practised some grammar online. Accordingly, her end-of-term mark was a 4. However, in the second and the third term she started to miss an increasing number of classes and did not fulfil any compulsory tasks.
She also expressed her dislike towards the wiki and the evaluation system repeatedly based on her conviction that she would get a better mark without it. At the same time she liked Quizlet and found the idea of sharing knowledge useful. Her only edit on the wiki about her aims for Term 3 expressed her wish not to fail the class because of the high number of missed classes.
As the main reasons for her low performance in class she named laziness and the lack of time.
Her end-of-term mark in Term 2 and 3 was 2 and she even had to take an oral exam in Term 2 because she missed 9 classes.
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were yielded by multiple sources of information including qualitative and quantitative methods to provide a deep description of the case as well as to serve as triangulation.
As for students’ use of the internet, communication and entertainment have been observed to be the most common purposes, which are in agreement with the findings of Phase 1, as well as those obtained by previous research (Bennett & Maton, 2010; Bullen et al., 2011;
Fehér & Hornyák, 2011; Hargittai, 2010; Jones & Shao, 2011; Kennedy et al., 2008, 2009;
Kvavik, 2005; Margaryan et al., 2011; Oliver & Goerke, 2007; Ollé, 2011; Papp-Danka, 2013; Sánchez et al., 2010; Selwyn, 2008). Contrary to expectations, the three-term course using the wiki had no significant effect on the frequency of use of any functions or applications. Similarly, no significant differences have been found between students’
dispositions towards the use of technology and the internet before and after the course, which is in contrast with Vig’s (2008) findings that the use of the internet in teaching in the form of webpages, learning environments and internet-based communication influenced students’
attitudes towards the internet positively. One reason for that may be that students did not generalize their experience with the wiki to other functions. Although their disposition towards the course and the use of the wiki was highly positive by the end of the third term, this did not influence their use and perception of computers and the internet. A further possible reason lies in the sample size, which may have been too small for the results to be able to reach statistical significance (Dörnyei, 2007).
Similarly to previous research findings (Aydin & Yildiz, 2014; Ducate et al., 2011;
Lee & Wang, 2013; Lin & Kelsey, 2009; Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010; Papadima-Sophocleous
& Yerou, 2013; Wichadee, 2010; Woo et al., 2011), most of the students had overall positive feelings towards the wiki. While in the pilot study the participants found the wiki more interesting than useful, this has changed in the main study, where the number of students who perceived the wiki as useful increased every term. As the relatively high number of edits and
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views on the wiki did not indicate an extensive use of the wiki beyond the classroom in the pilot study, the number of individual tasks was reduced on the wiki in the main study.
Furthermore, the introduction to the wiki and the training phase received more attention followed by regular check-ups in a classroom with a projector and internet access. Several students complained about technical problems, which corresponds with the results of previous research that students’ training and on-going technical support is highly important (Al Khateeb, 2013; Arnold et al., 2012; Bower et al., 2006; Cole, 2009; Ducate et al., 2011;
Hadjerrouit, 2012; Karasavvidis, 2010; Lee, 2010; Li, 2012; Zorko, 2009). Others had editing problems, which is also in line with previous research findings that most common problems about using the wiki include formatting problems (Chao & Lo, 2011; Ducate et al., 2011;
Hadjerrouit, 2012; Lin Yang, 2011; Lund, 2008; Woo et al., 2011; Zorko, 2009). The lack of time (Cole, 2009; Karasavvidis, 2010) was a problem for students as well. A further aspect that has not emerged in research so far is laziness, which seemed to present a cause for not doing any work on the wiki. This reluctance to work may also stem from Hungarian higher education students’ lack of motivation and ambition, described in earlier studies (Csillik &
Daruka, 2015; Győrfyné Kukoda, 2012; Lencse, 2010; Ollé, 2009; Voglné Nagy et al., 2014).
Nevertheless, by the end of the third term, the majority of students perceived the wiki as useful, recommended it for other groups and claimed that they would use it in the future. The findings of the wiki statistics and the two student interviews, as well as a student email sent more than a year after the course suggest that some students used the wiki after the end of the course. Although there is no evidence that Quizlet, online dictionaires, the grammar practice pages and TED talks are still used by any of the students, the fact that some of them have visited the wiki lends hope that they might use these pages as well in the future. As for the use of the evaluation system, students had difficulty adapting to it when it was first introduced, which supports Prievara’s (2013) findings that students found it harder to select tasks for
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themselves than to complete a possibly boring task that was given to them. By the end of the course the majority of participants regarded the system useful and fair and recommended it for other groups.
Students’ language proficiency development during the course has clearly been demonstrated by the results of Placement test, the Self-assessment of language proficiency questionnaire, the Self-assessment of language development questionnaire and the Language proficiency test. As the research method was a case study and not an experiment with a control group, no cause-and-effect relationship can be established between the use of the wiki and the group’s language development. However, the fact that they scored higher in the end-of-course language proficiency test than the best group within their year indicates that the use of the wiki as a supplement is at least as efficient in language development as a traditional course. Finally, the analysis of the effects of the wiki on three types of students revealed a different degree of benefit they gained: a hard-working student broadened her wide repertoire of language learning techniques, a critical student started to use a few additional resources, a lazy student clearly did not benefit from her English course.
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8 Conclusion
In this chapter the main findings of the four phases of the study will be summarized first followed by a consideration of the pedagogical and theoretical implications including a set of principles for the integration of technology into the classroom. After that the limitations of the research will be discussed and possible directions for further investigations will be outlined.