Title: English autonomous learning on the Blackboard Academic Suite

Authors: Jian Zhang; Zhong Qin

Addresses: School of Foreign Languages, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Changchun Institute of Technology, 395 Kuanping Road, Changchun 130012, China. ' School of Foreign Languages, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Changchun Institute of Technology, 395 Kuanping Road, Changchun 130012, China

Abstract: Autonomous English learning is a great concern of English teachers. But English learning needs a context. Blackboard Academic Suite is such a learning platform that supplies students with a real learning context and many opportunities to collaborate with each other, hence facilitates their meaning formation. A model of autonomous English learning on Blackboard is established. An experiment is made to check the efficiency of the model between the control group and the experimental group, with each group having 30 students from paralleled English major classes. After being analysed by the independent samples t-test, the result is promising: the differences of all test items are below 0.05, which means that the differences between the control group and the experimental group are significant, and the students from the experimental group improve their English learning abilities greatly.

Keywords: constructivist learning; autonomous learning; English language; Blackboard Academic Suite; independent samples t-test; learning management systems; LMS; educational software; English teachers; learning platforms; language students; learning contexts; student collaboration; meaning formation; model efficiency; control groups; experimental groups; learning abilities; English majors; China; continuing education; life-long learning; innovative teaching; innovative learning; innovation; technology support.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEELL.2012.050061

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning, 2012 Vol.22 No.3/4, pp.164 - 174

Published online: 23 Aug 2014 *

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