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Using corpus software to evaluate ODL materials

This article explores the challenges of promoting student-centered learning in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) materials. It presents an analytic framework for objectively analyzing study guides in terms of student-centeredness, highlighting pedagogical views and linguistic characteristics associated with student-centeredness.

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Using corpus software to evaluate ODL materials

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  1. Using corpus software to evaluate ODL materials Gerda Mischke

  2. It’s the law! South African Government Education White Paper 3 (Republic of South Africa, 1995) transformation higher education in South Africa.

  3. What did the move entail?

  4. Some challenges • Largely print-based communication in ODL. • How to promote deep learning rather than rote learning in ODL texts. • How to do an authentic analysis of the student-centredness of ODL texts. • How to analyze ODL texts objectively to determine how student-centred they are.

  5. Aim • Develop an analytic framework that allows for an authentic and objective analysis of study guides in terms of student-centredness. • Highlight some of the pedagogical views underlying the notion of student-centredness. • Interpret the notion of student-centredness in linguistic terms.

  6. Pedagogical: transformative learning • Disorienting experiences: Transformation begins when we encounter emotionally charged experiences that fail to fit our expectations (Mezirow, 1991). • Reflection: Enables the practitioner to assess, understand and learn through by discussing experiences; personal process that result change for the individual in their perspective (Johns,1995). • Affect(emotion): Attitude (stance) is an emotional interpretation of the world and challenges the individual to respond (Martin, 2004).

  7. Pedagogical: constructivism • Learning is an active process in which students construct new ideas or concepts, which result from their current and past knowledge and worldview. • Students are allowed to discover principles by themselves within the context of a given situation. • Teacher interactively engage in dialogue with students. (Bruner, 1996)

  8. Pedagogical: whole person learning • Emotion forms the foundation upon which all learning rests, central to the learning process is to address student emotion (Heron, 1992, 1996; Yorks and Kasl, 2002). • Emotions are indispensable for rationality to occur (Dirkx 2001). • A lot of learning takes place outside cognitive processing (Taylor 2001).

  9. Conclusion: foundations of student-centredness • Interaction • Active participation (involvement) • Emotion (attitude) • Reflection

  10. Against this background, how do we do an authentic and objective analysis of ODL texts to determine how student-centred they are?

  11. Interpret student-centredness in linguistic terms!

  12. Linguistic characteristics: student-centred texts Linguists agree: specific language features associated with interaction, involvement, attitude and reflection (Hubbard, 2001; Martin, 2000, 2000, 2002, 2004; White, 2000, 2002, 2003; Bybee and Fleischmann, 1995; Biber, 1988).

  13. Linguistic characteristics: student-centred texts • private verbs ─ included are: intellectual states (e.g. learn, mean, reflect, think), nonobservable intellectual acts (e.g. agree, decide, determine, discover, find), sensory experiences (e.g. hear, see), emotional states (e.g. hope, fear, feel), • contractions (‘d, ‘ll, ‘m, ‘re, ‘s, ‘ve, n’t, it’s), • second person pronouns (you, your, yourself, yourselves, all contracted forms), • analytic negation (not),

  14. Linguistic characteristics of student-centred texts • demonstrative pronouns (that, these, this, those), • emphatics (for sure, a lot, such as, just, really, most, more), • first person pronouns (I, me, we, us, my, our, myself, ourselves and all contractions), • pronoun it, • causative subordination (because), • discourse particles (e.g. anyhow,anyway),

  15. Linguistic characteristics of student-centred texts • indefinite pronouns (e.g. anybody, anyone, anything, everybody, everyone, everything), • general hedges (about, something like, more or less, almost, maybe, sort of, kind of), • amplifiers (e.g. enormously, entirely, extremely), • wh-questions (what, when, where, which, who, whose, why, how),

  16. Linguistic characteristics of student-centred texts • possibility modals (can, could, may, and might), • place and timeadverbs (e.g. afterwards, again, earlier, aboard, above), • adverbs ending on –ly (suitably, excellently, efficiently, etc), • conditional subordination (if and unless).

  17. How do I explore these features in large text corpora? Do a corpus analysis!

  18. Analytic procedure • Counted incidences of above-mentioned word types in old and new Unisa study guides using WordSmith Tools (integrated suite of programs for analysing a large corpus of texts). • Interpreted research results statistically by means of a one-way Chi2 test.

  19. WordList extract Number Word Freq. 1522 xenophobia 2 1523 years 9 1524 yes 8 1525 yet 9 1526 you 551 1527 you’d 2 1528 you’ll 2 1529 you’re 14 1530 you’ve 7 1531 your 386 1532 yours 3

  20. Data corpus • Department of Industrial Psychology • Organisational and Career Psychology (IPS202-D), 1984) Career Psychology (IOP303-V), 2002. • Department of Anthropology • Socio-Cultural Anthropology (SKA202-4), 1992. • Socio-Cultural Solutions to Problems of Human Adaptation (APY202-J), 2003. • Department of Psychology • Social Psychology (PSY313‑D), 1995. • Re-Imagining Community (PYC205-A), 2001.

  21. Excel spreadsheets: Conclusion Unisa study guides developed after a student-centred approach to teaching was adopted are very significantly more student-centred than guides developed before the adoption of such an approach.

  22. Findings: new guides • Most distinguishing features: very significantly higher counts for personal pronouns + the following: • private verbs: think, feel, find, consider, reflect (e.g. I think I am an important link …; ... you might have felt a bit exposed; Did you find it easy?), • general emphatics (e.g. … you may become more aware of …; What single event changed your life most significantly?),

  23. Findings: new guides • wh-questions (e.g. What does it tell you about …?; How do you personally experience being a black person, woman, a gay person, …), • contractions (e.g. You're welcome to do so; You're free to do that too; Of course you'd like to…), • possibility modals (You may find it almost impossible; It is true that it could be difficult),

  24. Findings: new guides • adverb today (How do the environmental crises of the past compare with those we experience today?; What are the differences between the criminal tendencies you experience today as opposed to …?; If you could change one dramatic aspect of your life today …

  25. New guides: conclusion 1 • Student is prompted to: • Develop understanding based on active participation in real world environments. • Reflect on acquired knowledge. • Heightened emotion is used by lecturers to: • Express their own opinion and to elicit a response from students. • Compel students to take a stance and transform their existing frames of reference.

  26. New guides: conclusion 2 • Multiple or alternative perspectives on reality are considered to allow for student’s own context. • Present-day issues are addressed as an acknowledgement of the student’s presence in the discourse.

  27. Final conclusion • One of the ways to do an authentic, objective analysis of ODL texts in terms of student-centredness: • Consider language features associated with student-centredness (interaction, involvement, attitude and negotiation of attitude). • Analyse texts by means of an automated, corpus-based programme.

  28. Thank you.Enjoy the rest of the conference! Tsamayang hantle!

  29. References • Biber, D. 1988. Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Bybee, J. & Fleischmann, S. 1995 (eds). Modality and grammar in discourse. Typological Studies in Language 32. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. • Bruner, J. 1996. The culture of education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. • Dirkx, J.M. 2001. The power of feelings: emotion, imagination, and the construction of meaning in adult learning. In Merriam, S.B. (ed.) 2001. The new update on adult learning theory. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass: 63-72.Heron, J. 1992. Feeling and personhood: psychology in another key. Newbury Park, California: Sage. • Heron, J. 1996. Co-operative inquiry: research into the human condition. London: Sage. • Hubbard, E.H. 2001. Interaction as ‘involvement’ in writing for students: a corpus linguistic analysis of key readability feature. South African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 19:231-240. • Johns, C. 1995. The Value of Reflective Practice for Nursing.J. Clinical Nursing. 4: 23-60. • Martin, J.R. 2000. Beyond exchange: appraisal systems in English. In Hunston, S Thompson, G. (eds) 2000. Evaluation in text: authorial stance and the construction of discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 142-175. • Martin, J.R. 2002. Writing history: Constructing time and value in discourse. In Schleppegrell, M.J. & Colombi, M.C. (eds) 2002. Developing advanced literacy in first and second languages: meaning and power. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum: 87-118.

  30. References • Martin, J.R. 2002. Writing history: Constructing time and value in discourse. In Schleppegrell, M.J. & Colombi, M.C. (eds) 2002. Developing advanced literacy in first and second languages: meaning and power. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum: 87-118. • Martin, J.R. 2004. Mourning: how we get aligned. Discourse & Society. London: Sage Publications: 321-344. • Mezirow, J. 1991. Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. • Taylor, E.W. 2001. Transformative learning theory: a neurobiological perspective of the role of emotions and unconscious ways of knowing. International Journal of Lifelong Education 20 (3):218-236. • White, P.R. 2000. Dialogue and inter-subjectivity: reinterpreting the semantics of modality and hedging. In Coulthard, M. Cotterill, J. & Rock, F. (eds) 2000. Working with dialog. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag: 67-80. • White, P.R. 2002. Appraisal B the language of evaluation and stance. In Verschueren, J. Östman, J. Blommaert, J. & Bulcaen, C. (eds.) 2002. The handbook of pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 1‑27. • White, P.R. 2003. Beyond modality and hedging: a dialogic view of the language of intersubjective stance. Text, Special Edition: 1-25. • Yorks, L. & Kasl, E. 2002. Toward a theory and practice for whole-person learning: reconceptualizing experience and the role of affect. Adult Education Quarterly 53 (3):176-192.

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