Larry Xethakis

About

No profile

Sessions

College and University Educators Learner Profiling to Support Student-Centered Learning Environments more

Sat, Jul 9, 16:00-16:40 Asia/Tokyo

Advocates for student-centered learning environments (Hoidn, 2017; Hoidn & Klemenčič, 2020) have suggested that access to detailed information about students’ backgrounds and beliefs can help teachers prepare more individualized and appropriate lessons. For language educators at Japanese universities, provisions of student information are often limited to simple personal information and perhaps a test score. The action research project presented here set out to develop a system that could 1) collect both quantitative and qualitative information about learner backgrounds and beliefs, 2) process and report data to teachers in a timely manner, and 3) provide learners with the opportunity to contribute to the construction of their own learning environments through the completion of reflective tasks. To accomplish these goals, a learner profiling system was created using Microsoft Forms and Excel. Teachers were provided with reports of their classes within 24 hours, and students were able to use their submissions as benchmarks during reflective tasks at the end of the course. Alongside previously published and current research findings, the instruments are presented in this session as freely available resources for individual language educators and/or program directors looking to achieve similar agendas in their own teaching contexts.

Larry Xethakis Branden Kirchmeyer