Promoting Self-regulated Learning with Shared e-Documents: A Case Study of Academic English Instruction

Abstract

This study reports on a teacher-researcher’s semester-long experimentation with blended learning to facilitate student progress in a first-year English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course at a Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Mainland China. The objective was to encourage student coconstruction of knowledge using online collaborative documents. The premise was that shared digital documents can offer students ample opportunities to cooperate in the learning process while demonstrating and reflecting on what they have learned. The findings indicate that shared e-documents show promise as a means of diversifying the learning experience with novel, differentiated and interactive tasks. Furthermore, the documents can serve as artefacts of student work that encourage them to reflect on their learning and enable teachers to revisit their pedagogies and more effectively manage the learning and teaching process.