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Digital storytelling is a short form of multimedia production that can foster digital literacy and facilitate subject matter learning. This study describes how middle school students learned about mental health by composing digital stories, showing how this also influenced their attitudes toward mental health in their own lives. Using a qualitative multiple-case method, we explored three immigrant students’ digital storytelling in a psychology class. We use a visual grammar derived from systemic functional linguistics to analyze their digital stories, examining representational, relational, configurational, and social functions. Our analysis shows how students chose design elements to reflect their learning about and reactions to mental illness. We analyze how students projected relationships with the audience and how these projected relationships both reflected and influenced their learning and personal development. We conclude that digital storytelling can be an excellent pedagogical tool that allows students to engage both in subject matter learning and self-reflection.

This qualitative case study explores an adolescent English learner’s (EL’s) expression of self and identity through multiliteracy practices on paper from an ecological perspective. The study follow...

This study examines how digital storytelling facilitated students’ reflection and learning in a project-based year-end middle school capstone program. It also explores how students expressed their voices, identities, and emotions using the multimodal resources available in digital stories. Using qualitative case study methods, the study draws on interviews, observations, and artifacts to analyze two focal cases. It uses a framework derived from Systemic Functional Linguistics to analyze the digital stories. The findings show how two students used text, images, sound, animations, emojis, and other resources to present and remix messages about the subject matter and about themselves. One student enacted a teacher role as she presented to a group of third graders. The other enthusiastically engaged with peers through a culinary project that used math in cooking, in which he shared a Salvadoran pancake from his home country. The study shows how embedding digital storytelling projects in a school curriculum can engage learners with a wide range of expressive resources while also enhancing students’ motivation, creativity, identity development, and connection with others.

Faculty members abruptly transitioned to online course delivery during the COVID-19 public health crisis. Unfortunately, the isolation of learning online had the potential to damage students’ well-being during an already stressful pandemic. Furthermore, many faculty members had little experience with online modes of instruction and few effective strategies for building community online. This exploratory sequential mixed methods study uses data from 37 individual interviews with faculty across diverse disciplines, course evaluations from 13 of the 37 interview participants, and survey data from 347 faculty to answer the following research question: How did faculty foster a sense of community online to support students’ holistic well-being during the COVID pandemic? What strategies can faculty use to create community and foster well-being in online courses? Results show that successful strategies centered around intentional and purposeful course design, establishing clear expectations for faculty and students, and fostering supportive and trustworthy online learning environments.

Reflection is essential for learning and development, especially among middle school students. In this paper, we describe how middle school students can engage in reflective learning by composing digital stories in a project-based learning environment employing virtual reality. Adopting multiple case study methods, we examined the digital stories of five students, together with classroom observations and interviews about their experiences, in order to explore how digital storytelling can allowed students to reflect upon their experiences in a year-end capstone program. Creating digital stories allowed students to 1) reflect on their learning experiences teaching younger students with virtual reality, 2) present their reflections in multiple modalities, and 3) make connections between their present experiences and the past and future. This study demonstrates how digital storytelling can enable multimodal reflection for middle school students, particularly within technology-focused project-based learning environments. Keywords: digital storytelling; project-based learning; reflection; middle school learners

This multiple case study investigated four university-level international students’ reading of digital texts on tablets. The study describes these students’ experiences with and strategies for mobile reading. The participants were four international students in the United States, and their first language (L1) was not English. The data were collected through observations, verbal reports, interviews, and field notes. The findings showed that participants had both positive and negative experiences using tablets for reading and that mobile reading facilitated their learning about their lives, language, culture, and technology. The study shows that the participants used six reading strategies: (a) setting up the purpose, (b) deciding what to read, (c) accessing a digital text, (d) dialoguing, (e) making a connection, and (f) using applications and digital literacy skills. The article discusses mobile reading, with a focus on strategies, affordances and processes, as well as cultural learning and empowerment.

The strength of English learners’ second language reading is closely associated with academic success. Using qualitative research methods and verbal protocols, this study examines four elem...

This multiple case study explores adolescent ELLs' collaborative writing practices in face-to-face and online contexts from an ecological perspective, focusing on adolescent ELLs' perceptions of collaborative writing and their development of writing through collaboration. The findings reveal both benefits and challenges adolescent ELLs face during collaborative writing activities as well as their perceptions of teacher and student feedback both face-to-face and online. The study examines in detail how adolescent ELLs changed their writing in response to feedback from and collaboration with their peers. These findings contribute to research on and practice in adolescent L2 writing by showing the adolescent ELLs' literacy development through collaboration in face-to-face and online contexts.

We investigate five fourth and fifth-grade English language learners’ (ELLs) strategy use when they read online texts at home and in school. We also identify factors that play a role when these learners read online texts, as well as similar and different patterns in reading strategies at home and in school. The findings show that three factors influence the ELLs’ selection of online texts and use of reading strategies. In addition, the ELLs used nine reading strategies to enhance their reading online texts. Based on these findings, we discuss (a) the ELLs’ online reading strategies in different contexts, (b) the multidimensional zone of proximal development, and (c) collaboration between parents and teachers.

Digital stories are powerful instructional tools that allow students to communicate complex concepts and emotions through both linguistic and nonlinguistic modes. A digital story is a 3–6 min multimodal video through which students can engage in critical reflection about their experiences, participate actively in the learning process, and give voice to their identities. This study analyzes two digital stories created by teacher education students in a graduate course; using a new framework that draws on Systemic Functional Linguistics, we demonstrate how these beginning teachers used digital storytelling to shape their professional identities. The results show how valuable digital stories can be in fostering reflection and teachers' development as professionals. The paper also introduces and illustrates an innovative systemic functional linguistic approach to analyzing digital stories as complex multimodal objects.

With the growing importance of Web 2.0 tools for communication and collaboration, small group writing using one such tool—the wiki—has been increasingly implemented in second language classes. A few researchers have examined group interactions during wiki-based collaborative writing, but little research has explored changes in interaction patterns that occur when students perform multiple wiki writing tasks. This study investigates two ESL groups’ interactions during two collaborative writing tasks that used a Wikispaces site in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course at an American university. We examined the dynamics of peer interaction across writing tasks for each group by inspecting (1) language functions performed during task negotiation, (2) writing change functions performed during text co-construction, (3) scaffolding strategies, and (4) changes in patterns of interaction across tasks. Data included wiki modules, interviews, and reflection papers. Our analyses show that two ESL groups working on identical tasks in the same wiki space enacted strikingly different patterns of interaction and that those patterns changed within each group across two tasks. We discuss these dynamics with reference to the fluidity of scaffolding occurring within small groups. This study fills a gap in computer-mediated collaborative writing research and also sheds new light on networked writing pedagogy.

Rapid globalization and the emergence of new instructional technologies have encouraged educators to explore technologies like podcasting and blogging to enhance their teaching. This study examines how six English speakers of other languages (ESOL) teachers used podcasting and blogging to help young English learners, themselves 21st century digital citizens. The ESOL teachers used technology to develop innovative teaching methods and enhance their professional identities. Four themes emerged from the examination of ESOL teachers' uses of new technologies to increase peer engagement through deep classroom interaction: ESOL teachers' varying levels of use of instructional innovations, dialogic uses of podcasting and blogging to encourage educational engagement, the impact of innovative technology on teachers' professional identities, teaching digital-native English learners, benefits of technology for assignments, and challenges for ESOL teachers' active learning.

This qualitative case study examined four undergraduates in anintermediate-level Chinese language class. We investigatedparticipants’ perceptions of Facebook as a pedagogical tool in Chineselanguage learning and their engagement in free posting and onlineChinese communication on Facebook. Data include all participants’Facebook posts and comments, a semi-structured survey questionnaire,semi-structured interviews, and researchers’ online observations andfield notes. Our analysis revealed that participants engaged in a freeFacebook posting activity mainly through (a) affective expression, (b)interactive communication, and (c) group-oriented salutations. TheseFacebook-supported social interactions offered many opportunities forlanguage-learners to use Chinese in a relatively authentic environmentwhile carrying out familiar on-line activities. Participants alsoreported that they favored both the concept of free writing in Chineseand its integration into Facebook posting. The study suggests thatlanguage-learning tasks should be authentic and that the use oftechnological tools such as Facebook can provide such tasks.

Recent studies on peer review groups in second language classes have focused on various topics, including collaboration (Carr, 2008) and the effect of peer review versus teacher feedback on students' writing (Zhang, 1995). One area that has received little attention is the content of students' speech during peer review. This longitudinal case study examined English as a second language (ESL) students' oral discourse during peer feedback sessions to explore the types of comments ESL students choose to make during peer review sessions. The study was conducted between fall 2009 and summer 2010 at a large urban university in the southeastern United States. Data collection included audio-recorded peer review sessions, interviews with the teacher, and the researchers' observation notes. The researchers thoroughly analyzed the content of the students' discourse during actual peer review sessions. The findings of the study shed light on various aspects of writing ESL that students choose to comment on during peer feedback sessions. The findings may serve as the basis for further research on students' discourse during peer review, teachers' feedback or facilitation of peer review sessions, and issues of collaboration in peer review sessions in ESL classes.

This study investigated how Chinese undergraduate college students studying English as a foreign language learned new vocabulary with inference-based computer games embedded in eBooks. The investigators specifically examined (a) the effectiveness of computer games (using inferencing) in eBooks, compared with hardcopy booklets for vocabulary retention, and (b) the relationship between students' performance on computer games and performance on a vocabulary test. A database recorded students' game playing behaviors in the log file. Students were pre- and post-tested on new vocabulary words with the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale. Participants learned significantly more vocabulary (p < .0005) in the computer game condition (web-based text and computer games) than in the control condition (their usual study method, hardcopy text, lists of words and multiple-choice questions). Students' scores in the games correlated significantly with their vocabulary post-test scores (r = .515, p < .01).

This study evaluated preservice teachers' professional-knowledge transformation while they participated in simulated professional-development activities via a Second Life virtual classroom—an Internet-based multiuser virtual environment (MUVE). While a cohort of preservice teachers experienced the MUVE environment, the instrumental exploratory case study highlighted how 2 preservice teachers among the 12 internalized professional knowledge, as well as how that knowledge transferred into active teaching practice. The study was framed around sociocultural theory as it pertains to enabling intramental functioning through co-constructed activities. The preservice teachers' debriefings and reflective statements suggest that they entered the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)—the range of potential an individual has for learning, with that learning being shaped by the social environment—indicating the positive potential of using an MUVE to promote self-regulatory pedagogic behaviors.

This study investigated four elementary-level English language learners’ (ELLs’) use of strategies for reading computer-based texts at home and in school. The ELLs in this study were in the fourth and fifth grades in a public elementary school. We identify the ELLs’ strategies for reading computer-based texts in home and school environments. We present a taxonomy of five reading-strategy categories, which includes 15 total strategies that they pursued at home and in school. We describe the central role of dialogue in helping ELLs learn to read computer-based texts: The learners engaged in real and virtual dialogues with adults, peers, authors, and themselves, in ways that enhanced their development of effective reading strategies. We discuss pedagogical implications of our findings, describing how parents and teachers might work separately and together to facilitate ELLs’ reading in today’s learning contexts that include electronic literacies.

In this paper, we review empirical research on language teaching at distance, published between 2005 and 2010. After compiling a list of journals, we went through a multi-stage process of analyzing relevant studies. This overview of research, consequently, is based on 24 articles. The content analysis of research studies led our inquiry on topics researched in distance language teaching in 2005-2010: types of contexts, learners, languages, and technologies targeted in the empirical research during this period of time; trends in methodological choices; and lessons we can learn from the conducted research studies. Finally, we discuss the implications of the gaps in research literature on language teaching at distance and provide suggestions for future directions in empirical inquiry. The paper may inform language educators, researchers, and administrators about the recent research findings on language teaching from distance and can serve as the foundation for further inquiry on the topic.

This study investigates adult English language learners' reading-strategy use when they read online texts in hypermedia learning environments. The learners joined the online Independent English Study Group (IESG) and worked both individually and collaboratively. This qualitative case study aims (a) to assess college-level ESL learners' use of reading strategies for online second language (L2) texts and (b) to examine their use of hypertext and hypermedia resources while they read online L2 text. The seven strategies were (a) using hypermedia, (b) using computer applications and accessories, (c) dialoguing, (d) setting up reading purposes and planning, (e) previewing and determining what to read, (f) connecting prior knowledge and experiences with texts and tasks, and (g) inferring. The first two strategies were unique to online readings; the five remaining strategies apply to both online readings and paper-based text readings. The findings also revealed that ''hybrid'' online reading emphasized participants' various reaction patterns and preferences in their hypermedia learning environments.

This qualitative instrumental case study explores various factors that might influence upper-intermediate-level English as a second language (ESL) students' summarizing from a socio-cultural perspective. The study was conducted in a formal classroom setting, during a reading and writing class in the English Language Institute at a university in the southeastern United States. Seven international ESL students provided information through questionnaires and interviews. Additional data were gathered through classroom observation. The findings of the study provide evidence that such personal factors as culturally influenced thinking patterns, content knowledge, motivation and attitude, and native language and second language literacy skills, as well as textual factors, writing style, vocabulary, and grammar, have an effect on ESL students' summarizing.

Due to innovation and globalization in education, educators of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) are encouraged to use such instructional technologies as podcasting and blogging, but studies on integrating these technologies into assignments are rare. This project revealed how ESOL teacher candidates implement instructional technology skills to help English learners and the teacher candidates' attitudes and processes toward implementing podcasting and blogging as a core assignment. Using qualitative research, five themes emerged: (a) ESOL teacher candidates' attitudes and self-assessments, (b) their implementation of podcasting and blogging, (c) their challenges and rewards, (d) the impact on their professional development, and (e) their own impact on new generations of students, particularly English learners. This discussion highlights ESOL teacher candidates' experiences while learning podcasting and blogging. ESOL teacher candidates, recognizing their future students as a new generation, are highly proactive learners and want very much to be competent and confident in their own teaching.

In this chapter, a qualitative approach used to investigate the experiences and learning of 110 preservice teachers in English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) courses when they read electronic storybooks for their school projects. During their online class, participants were asked to read one culturally and linguistically familiar electronic storybook (e-storybook), develop a reading lesson plan, and participate in two online discussions after reading four culturally and linguistically familiar or unfamiliar e-storybooks. After these discussions, the participants revised their lesson plans. The findings provide insight into what ESOL preservice teachers learn and the strategies they use in reading e-storybooks. The participants revised the original lesson plan based on these reading experiences and learned about their future students who will study English as a second language. The article concludes by discussing the influence of this online task-based instruction on ESOL preservice teachers' learning and technology use in teacher education courses.