Immersive learning has been a buzz word in the field of education for the past several years as an increasing number of affordable consumer devices and free/proprietary apps become available. Among various types of immersive learning solutions, virtual reality (VR) has gained much attention among educational technology researchers and developers worldwide. In this workshop, the presenter will show how to use Engage (https://engagevr.io/), a proprietary virtual reality app accessible on VR and non-VR devices, to create immersive learning materials for on-demand purposes and to conduct synchronous online classes. Given that VR headsets are not yet available to the majority of learners, this platform specifically designed for education can be a promising tool as it is compatible with PCs, iOS and Android mobile devices as well as major VR headsets. Although the freemium version has many features, a paid account is more beneficial for professional content creation and real-time use. The participants of this workshop are requested to download the app on their device in advance.

Ubiquitous access to the Internet has revolutionized every aspect of language education. Students are now able to use various digital systems to improve their vocabulary knowledge, reading ability, grammar, and even pronunciation, often with just an app on their smartphone. However, the downside of digital technology is that it also enables unscrupulous students to find novel ways to cheat. Common methods of cheating by students include the use of translation software, Line groups in which students share answers with each other, and even purchasing answers from online marketplaces. In this session, the presenters will discuss a specific incident in which over 1400 students from 90 institutions in Japan were caught cheating on Xreading, a popular online platform for extensive reading. They will explain how the cheating was discovered, and the surprisingly wide range of reactions from academic institutions after they were informed about their students’ misbehavior. Finally, based on their experience, the presenters will provide useful tips to minimize cheating, detect cheaters, and the most effective ways to deal with students who have been caught cheating.

This presentation will discuss the Goldlist vocabulary acquisition method as part of a course in a fully online situation where students have varying levels of technology available to them. How to use the Goldlist method of vocabulary listing and spaced reviews will be described as well as research regarding its effectiveness as a language learning methodology. Research suggests that this method of language learning promotes learner motivation through comprehensible input via natural language materials, use of chunks and collocations, and self-directed study, yet as vocabulary lists are reviewed multiple times, it can become time consuming and affect motivation. Regarding online learning, this method fit the learner’s situation as on-demand courses were to be designed for learners who only had access to online courses via smartphones as well as students who were using computers. Learners were asked to complete their study tasks preferably offline and to upload the results. Implementation will be discussed as this method can be implemented on any learning management system. In brief, self-reported results from student course surveys indicate that on average learners made 21 lists of 15 to 20 new words to increase their vocabularies by over 350 words in 8 weeks. Learning was reported by 88% or learners and pleasure was reported by 63% of respondents. One drawback is that due to the on-demand nature of the course, student output was limited, and students did not get the amount of spoken production time (time for acquisition) that a face-to-face or an on-time course would allow for.

Research has shown that corpus tools can facilitate non-native speakers of English, including English as a second (ESL) and foreign language learners (EFL), in their grammatical choices when using data-driven learning (DDL). Gigantic corpora and user-friendly interface are two features that were found to facilitate English learners to use corpus tools for DDL (Boisson et al., 2013). Netspeak and Linggle are two corpus tools with similar interfaces and functions that are designed with the two key features mentioned above. However, each corpus tool is designed to target different users and could further affect the data-driven learning experiences. Thus, this study analyzed how Netspeak and Linggle facilitated four college EFL learners to correct ten common types of grammatical error through data-driven learning. Searching logs and interview data were collected and analyzed to understand how learners consulted with the two corpus tools for data-driven learning. Findings showed that the affordances of the two corpus tools, particularly the operators and the interface design, led to various data-driven learning strategies for error correction, such as replacing word choices and using multiple operators. Pedagogical implications of ways to facilitate EFL learners to use corpus tools for data-driven learning will be further addressed.

Last year, much of the world very suddenly experienced a wave of emergency remote teaching (ERT) due to the pandemic. The transition was challenging, requiring flexibility and patience from teachers and students. However, some effective learning was supported, and some activities may even have been enhanced by the transformation to an online format.

The presenters draw from their experience coteaching an interactive course on language and culture. The first iteration of the course in Fall 2019 was a traditional face-to-face (F2F) class featuring interactive tasks such as paired interviews, find someone who activities, wall readings, and classroom presentations. In 2020 as a result of ERT, the course went online in asynchronous format. It became necessary to realize typical classroom activities online for 2020 and now into 2021.

This presentation demonstrates how we transformed a selection of F2F activities to an online format. We present knowledge gleaned from two semesters in use and provide tips for making activities easier to follow, comprehend and complete. Using teacher observations, student coursework and student reflections, we evaluated how the digital activities compared with the F2F versions. Results showed that these activities could be delivered effectively online, following adaptations. We discuss how our experiences will inform our teaching going forward, both with the coming 2021 online courses and future F2F courses. We aim to contribute to discussion about what constitutes effective task types and how teachers can successfully create these tasks, both for online and traditional classroom use.

This presentation explains how the collaborative online learning platform ‘eduflow’ helps novice college writers learn the academic writing process and apply essay writing and editing skills. Students uploaded their writing to the platform then conducted peer reviews using checklists that focused first on paragraph structure and academic voice and style, and then on effective integration of outside sources of evidence: reasons, examples, facts, statistics, and expert opinions. The teaching design used an asynchronous Test > Teach > Write, approach with online course materials. Followed by a Peer-Edit > Teacher Feedback > Re-write process using ‘eduflow.’

By using pre- and post-quizzes, and comparing margins of error in the online checklists, this research examines: 1. How well do students understand and apply key academic components to their writing? 2. How effective is asynchronous online Peer-Editing using checklists?

The presentation will outline the teaching methods and process, the design of the peer-editing checklists, and the use of the software ‘eduflow’. A summary of the findings will be presented and their implications for future teaching using the three main dimensions of feedback in CALL (Ware & Kessler, 2013).

For the past three academic years, high level first-year KUFS students have had the opportunity to participate in Tandem Learning projects with our international partners. Despite the constraints of 202O online learning, our projects went ahead as planned and were a great success, building on lessons learned over the past years. The aim of this ‘show and tell’ presentation is to explicitly describe and share with others the successful methodology and technology used in order to achieve project aims. Students from three classes at two universities (in Japan and in Taiwan) participated in cohorts of 4-6 to produce high quality research, including inserting recorded narrative content into their presentations. Such projects showcase the power of the tools available to us in the shared Google Suite, as well as the necessity of clear instructions, explanatory screencasts, and peer mentoring.

A pervasive problem with student presentations is getting the audience to listen carefully to them, rather than thinking about their own presentation or checking their phones. PeerEval forces the students to listen, since they are required to evaluate each presentation that they hear. The app is easy to set up. Teachers determine their own rubrics and upload nicknames for the students using a simple .csv file via the web interface at https://peereval.mobi. Student either user the iOS app or the browser based version. PeerEval also allows the class to be divided into small groups for their presentations which allows more presentations to be conducted during the class period. Of course, teachers cannot evaluate the students when there are multiple groups, but PeerEval allows teachers to view the ratings afterward to see who students has not evaluated the others earnestly or has favored their friends. Most teachers use the basic, free version although an inexpensive "premium" version allows the teacher to store data on multiple classes. Time permitting, the participants can log in and try the system on each other.

The LingoBingo game (https://www.lingobingo.live) is a free web app that allows anyone to host and play a customizable bingo game from their PC or phone, with live answer-checking of players’ responses. In this presentation the game will be demonstrated in various modes, showing how it can provide different kinds of engaging interactive speaking and listening practice for a wide range of student levels.

In addition to a standard teacher-led game with the class listening, the LingoBingo game can also be used as a productive speaking activity with a student hosting the game in small groups or pairs. It can be thought of as a type of gamified information gap activity, with the element of luck reducing some of the possible unease felt by less skilled students in purely knowledge-based activities.

While the ‘bingo’ format is not especially original, the simplicity and familiarity of the game allow students to concentrate on the required language skills. One unique feature of LingoBingo is the more challenging ‘hidden letters’ mode, which requires productive knowledge of target vocabulary. The live response checking feature, which is not offered by other online bingo games, allows the host to adjust the difficulty of their explanations in response to students’ comprehension levels. In addition to providing a variety of default sets with common words and pictures, custom sets may also be imported so that teachers can focus on specific vocabulary or explanatory strategies (e.g. relative clauses).

Attendees to this session can hope to gain an enjoyable and practical new general-purpose activity for their CALL teaching toolbox, which has proven successful in online teaching contexts.

Like most universities in 2020, my university switched entirely to online teaching during the pandemic, when it found itself suddenly relying on the existing institutional LMS, DotCampus, to deliver instruction, despite the fact that few teachers had prior experience using the system. Since then, most teachers have become adept at using DotCampus, which creates an opportunity for the university to enhance its computer-assisted education in the post-pandemic era. However, the central design feature of DotCampus, competency maps/reflective learning, is not being utilized at all. In this presentation, I will show how I have implemented this feature into my English communication courses to strengthen learner autonomy/self-awareness by having students engage in regular reflection on unit and course goals as well as on individual tasks, such as performance on interactive speaking and writing activities. These written reflections will be linked to the competency map for the course (prepared in advance by me), which contains rubrics for self-assessment in the following categories: 1) self-reflection, 2) learner autonomy, 3) interactive listening, 4) interactive speaking, and 5) presentation participation. Additionally, these reflections can be made available for peer review and feedback. These reflections (and their associated rubrics) are not intended for grading purposes; rather, they are the means by which the student tracks their own “journey” of learning during the course. The Journey Dashboard within DotCampus allows the teacher to track each student’s reflections along with radar charts of the results of their self-assessments. The presentation will conclude with the results of feedback from students.

Students, as well as the population as a whole, often suffer from debilitating levels of presentation anxiety. Public speaking phobia can have a negative impact on students’ ability to function in the classroom, as well as their ability to effectively acquire a second language. This talk will discuss an ongoing investigation into the best methods for reducing this anxiety in students, including virtual-reality and imagination-based home practice, as well as course work and exposure to in-person speech acts. This program used a combination of exposure training, mindfulness training, and interventions based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to target presentation anxiety in the Japanese university student population. Preliminary results show significant levels of anxiety reduction within the participants, consistent with earlier findings within this ongoing program. How this experiment shifted to an online format in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic will also be discussed, as will differences between participants who used more technological methods (VR) versus those who used more traditional methods for presentation practice. Participants’ comments from program interviews and surveys will also be presented to explore the nature of presentation anxiety and to help find best practices for classroom presentation activities and assessments by instructors.

There are few studies that explore interactive fiction’s (IF) cognitive and effective benefits for language learning. Inspired by Neville (2009), we compared the effectiveness of IF in comparison to non-interactive, linear fiction in terms of vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension and motivation in a university EFL context. Participants (n = 93) were divided into two groups. The control group read a linear story, the experimental group played through an interactive version of the same story. A pre and post-experiment vocabulary test was employed to measure the acquisition of 16 target vocabulary words. A quiz based on the actions of characters within the story was also employed to measure reading comprehension. Finally, a post-test questionnaire measured student perceptions of learning with linear and IF. This presentation introduces the results of the study which are as follows. Findings revealed no significant difference in scores between the control (linear) and experimental (IF) groups for vocabulary acquisition or reading comprehension. However, an additional analysis of the data was conducted based on learners disposition towards gaming (gamer vs non-gamer) which revealed that, in comparison to gamers, non-gamers found the interactive version of the story more enjoyable and easier to read. This suggests that students’ level of game literacy had an effect on their perceptions. We will introduce the IF tool (Twine) and offer a number of options for future research such as exploring the creation of more robust IF including more micro-level choices, choice impact on story progression, and the explicit use of target vocabulary.

The online class format of the 2020-21 academic year presented a particular challenge for film courses with the ability to share copyrighted video restricted via virtual meeting software. Finding a way for students to interact, collaborate and engage with each other and with course content can be challenging in an online class format. This can be particularly difficult for media rich content. Bulletin board websites that allow users to create and respond to content simultaneously provide a platform for online interactivity. This presentation will provide a variety of specific examples in which bulletin board software (Padlet.org) has been used for a variety of language class activities from content heavy courses with complex topics such as movie themes, plot structures, gender and race to more skills-based content such as vocabulary and writing. The ability for students to work simultaneously on a group Padlet page allows for interaction in ways that are not only suited to an online environment, but that would not be possible, or as dynamic, in a non-web-based format.

The Twine software allows educators to use current web technology to create simple educational activities and essays that are interactive. Previous programming experience is not necessary because the Twine software has a built-in editor. Glosses, images and audio (including a Web Speech API) can thus be easily added and everything saved to an html file. Because Twine projects can introduce randomness and keep track of decisions made by users, this allows each subsequent reading of a Twine project to be different. Twine projects can be hosted online or on a school server or can be sent by email to participants. Using the Twine software may be beneficial for students because as reading styles shift from books to online sources, hypertext literacy is becoming more important than print literacy. In my presentation, I will begin with the description of Twine on its home page and then explain briefly how to use the software. I will follow this by explaining how a Twine-based ‘scavenger-hunt’ was used in my university’s curriculum to enhance learning and its outcome. I will end with a quick overview of my current and future projects. Participants will take away from this presentation an awareness of the software, Twine’s possible uses, and Twine’s benefits and drawbacks. Online examples using the Twine software can be found at https://twinery.org/.