Democratizing the Online Materials-Based Classroom: What Can Student Writers’ Voices Offer?

Students’ Voices and Their Role in Writing Classrooms

In the field of general education, empirical research on student voices in relation to classroom instruction exists, providing valuable points of reference (e.g. Brooman et al., 2015; Cook-Sather, 2009). One important theme is that students’ active involvement through voicing enhances mutual trust between students and their teachers and helps with course improvement, which also motivates the students’ learning and class participation. For example, Cook-Sather (2009) documented how pre-service teachers benefited from students’ voices in a power-free relationship where students and teachers were equal partners. In that study, the teachers understood students’ competence in providing suggestions and realized the importance of acting upon students’ voices gained from verbal or nonverbal channels (e.g. body language). The interaction also motivated students’ follow-up participation in class. The important relationship between students’ voices and teaching improvement suggests the need for similar practices in the writing classroom, including online resource-based writing classrooms.

In English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classrooms, writing instructors have utilized online materials to enhance their instruction (e.g. Shadiev et al., 2017; Taffs and Holt, 2013). The practices range from computer-based software to audio-visual resources to web-based texts, and all are used to enhance students’ appropriation of a knowledge repertoire of writing (Xu et al., 2019). One important theme is that the careful arrangement or addition of online materials, such as web-based learning texts, to writing course materials is aimed at broadening students’ knowledge base and ameliorating their writing performance (e.g. Taffs and Holt, 2013). For example, Zhang (2018) conducted a study on the pedagogical use of web-based texts to facilitate students’ writing development. By using web-based texts that meaningfully conveyed knowledge of writing, Zhang found that the students were able to learn with their instructor from the texts and write effectively. While these findings provide important insight into writing instruction, and implicate the importance of incorporating online affordances, one important gap still needs to be addressed – that is, like other modes of knowledge input, using online materials may result in a bumpy trajectory for student learning (Rodgers, 2006). In order to achieve optimal instruction, it is thus important to attend to students’ voices in the process of materials implementation (Hongboontri and Noipinit, 2014). However, what is often exemplified in EFL writing classrooms is student feedback collected from interviews or surveys, which does not meet the definition of students’ voices according to Eslami (2010). Students in this type of classroom are not positioned with their teachers as co-explorers who can actively participate in curriculum design as co-instructors; instead, they are information providers who simply report their needs or comments on course improvement or adaptation (Brooman et al., 2015). It has also been found that teachers do not respond well to EFL students’ voices with follow-up instructional actions (e.g. Hongboontri and Noipinit, 2014). Possible reasons for not strictly involving students as real co-explorers of curricula may be the potential loss of the power structure rooted in the institution (Brooman et al., 2015) and the laborious investment of time needed to interact with students (Ng, 2018).

To enrich our understanding of materials implementation, research is needed to investigate the authentic role of EFL students’ voices where students, along with their teachers, act as co-explorers of course instruction, especially in the online resource-based writing classroom. In correspondence, this study addresses the following research question: how do EFL student writers’ voices interact with their teacher’s use of online materials in the classroom?

Research Context

The study was conducted in an expository writing course at a Chinese university. A mandatory textbook was available for the course, which included sample texts and accompanying reading comprehension questions, as well as basic content regarding writing (i.e. language accuracy). The writing instructors were allowed to alter or adapt textbooks on their own – for example, by selecting resources through online materials. The current case study under exploration includes one instructor’s use of web-based texts and audio-visual resources sourced online to facilitate students’ writing.

Participants

The instructor, Andy, had been teaching writing for two years in the university. In response to students’ knowledge of writing being limited to accuracy-based writing and the lack of relevant content in the mandatory textbook, Andy decided to implement meaning-based teaching. In other words, Andy was a typical instructor who tried to use online resources in the writing classroom, making his experience suitable for a case study.

The EFL students were undergraduates, majoring in English. While the study was being conducted, the students transitioned to second-semester undergraduate students. All 19 students were recruited based on their representativeness as EFL students as well as their willingness to be part of the project. They felt comfortable unveiling their voices to help amend the online resource-based curriculum. The students’ experience with online resources was limited to occasionally reading web-based texts to improve their reading comprehension. These students were randomly labeled Student 1 to Student 19.

The Adoption and Implementation of Online Materials in the Writing Classroom

The content Andy delivered through online materials included ideational meaning (related to the general idea of writing), interpersonal meaning (related to how writers express their evaluative stances), and textual meaning (tied to the semantic connection of sentences) (Halliday, 1994). These three meanings were chosen because they are the constituents of writing, and they provide a transparent framework for students’ regulation of their own writing (Troyan, 2014). Andy also taught more nuanced linguistic knowledge pertinent to students’ writing success to help learners represent the three strands of content (Macken-Horarik et al., 2015). This knowledge included the collocation of subjects and predicates to convey both ideational and interpersonal meaning (e.g. in comparison to informational writing, a more explicit personal stance, such as I argue, is favored in argumentative writing). The knowledge also included a choice of verbal phrases or lexical expressions in representing interpersonal meanings. For example, explicit adjectives relating to authorial stance are not favored in informational texts but are feasible in argumentative writing when rebutting a counterargument or supporting an argument. Cohesive devices as a way of representing textual meaning, including the use of conjunction words and lexical chains, such as synonyms or antonyms across sentences, were also delivered through materials.

The first round of knowledge delivery started through online resources after the students submitted their first essay. From that point onward, they were regularly reminded of how to use the knowledge from online materials. In this way, the students’ voices were continuously heard by Andy through their written reflections or interviews, and were then incorporated into the process of implementing online resources.

Data Collection and Analysis

The data collected for this study spanned an entire academic semester. One data source was the students’ reflections, which occurred approximately bi-weekly and were used to elicit their voices on the implemented curriculum. Altogether, about eight reflections were collected per student. Another data source was individualized or group interviews in the students’ first language with Andy, which were also recorded to document their voices on the implemented curriculum and potential ways to improve it. Some students were more comfortable sharing their voices during group interviews rather than during individual interview sessions. On average, six hours of interviews per person were collected. The interview data were gathered after Andy finished reading students’ reflections and their papers. Third, in-class and out-of-class discussions were recorded. The discussions occurred when students were doing in-class activities or asked their teacher to clarify their confusions. The recordings provided clues for further understanding students’ voices regarding their challenges or gains in the classroom. Fourth, students’ written pieces, including revised versions of the same manuscript, were also collected. These were used as ancillary data resources to help understand the relationship between students’ voices and teachers’ practices in the online resource-based classroom. In addition, the instructor’s reflections, which he wrote weekly over the semester, were used to triangulate the data. Field notes on students’ in-class learning, such as how they responded to their teacher’s questions, were also taken to help illuminate the case.

During data collection, Andy tried to avoid potential data contamination. For example, he told the students that they could participate in or withdraw from the project or revise their recorded voices at any time, especially after their final scores were posted. He also informed students that it was fine if they wanted to remain anonymous when submitting their reflections (one source of their voices), but the students said they were comfortable using their real names. To protect their privacy, their names are not used in this article. Notably, Andy also reminded himself to attend to students’ non-verbal behaviors, such as their silence in class, to better validate their voices (see Ng, 2018).

The data were processed primarily through inductive thematic analysis (Chowdhury, 2015). The researcher and his colleague both read and compared the transcriptions multiple times and decided on initial codes. Codes such as students’ mild reactions to the learning materials, the teacher’s revisits of the course materials, and his rejection of some students’ voices were defined. Later, pertinent research, such as Halliday’s (1994) three constituents of meaning and their linguistic tags, was revisited to bring in more codes. All codes were then connected to each other through comparison and rejection, until themes related to the research question were generated. The two data analysts discussed the themes to clarify any potential confusion and agreed on the themes reported below.

Students’ Muted Voices on Their Needs as a Result of Immature Understanding

Students’ voices about the course were initially tacit and superficial. When Andy selected the materials sourced online, he balanced the content carefully, choosing those materials he thought had the most accessible content. As he reflected, “I tried my best but I am not sure about its effect on the students” (reflection excerpt).

In contrast, when Andy was invested in teaching each of the three meanings (textual, interpersonal, and ideational) through these online materials, the students seemed to have difficulty each time in the early stages. They seemed to blame the challenges of the course on themselves while at the same time showing their interest in the online resource-based curriculum. To illustrate, Student 3 wrote, “I think it is because I need to invest more time in it” (interview excerpt). Similarly, Student 8 wrote, “I think I just have not understood it, but these learning materials seem to be a new mode” (reflection excerpt).

The students’ intrepid voices were more related to their epistemic challenge with the knowledge delivered than power dynamics. Student 5 said, “I am not afraid that I will make a bad impression on our teacher but I feel challenged as to what to provide, and I also feel providing my feedback at this time is premature” (interview excerpt). Although potentially embedded in the teacher–student power hierarchy, the students’ voicing did not seem to be influenced by this. As Andy reflected, “They did not reject the addition of online resources in the class, but they were constrained by the extent to which they had digested meaning-based knowledge from the online materials” (reflection excerpt).

As revealed in the field notes, the students did not respond well to meaning-based learning in the class. Take textual meaning for example. The online resources used in class detailed the use of cohesive devices in connecting more than just adjacent sentences as a way of meaning construction. However, the students seemed to have difficulty grasping this. In her reflectional journal, Student 8 wrote:

It was similar to what we learned before when our previous teacher also instructed us to use conjunction words in combining two sentences. I have no idea how to understand it as a meaning construction tool across the text. Maybe I just mechanically learn them. (Reflection excerpt)

Their understanding of textual meaning was still immature and the students’ previous knowledge interfered with this; therefore, they failed to provide useful voices regarding potential instructional improvements to best benefit their learning, such as where their confusion resided and how teachers could help them.

Similarly, when being taught interpersonal meaning and ideational meaning along with their linguistic tags, the students had similar voices: confusion or mechanical understanding instead of authentically understanding the dynamic relationship between the meaning and the linguistic representation. As the field notes indicate, in the reading materials, the students were asked how citations were used to pull out evidence of the interpersonal meaning. Although they could comprehend how different reporting verbs were used in a text relative to the strength of the evidence presented, they tended to focus on verbs with a neutral tone, such as someone said or showed instead of suggested, when the content cited was weak evidence.

Andy’s Uptake of Students’ Implicitly Expressed Voices and Improving Teaching

In the face of the students’ confusion and intrepid voices, Andy was not frustrated. Instead, he decided to continue his pedagogy, mediating the knowledge of online materials, invigorating students’ thinking, and eliciting their voices on the curriculum. Andy reflected, “Students’ intrepid voices made me reflect squarely upon my teaching” (reflection excerpt). As a socio-cultural theory espouser (a theory that emphasizes constant mediation to lead to students’ success), Andy decided to continually mediate students’ progress by connecting what students knew to what they were expected to master (writing as a meaning construction process). In the classroom, for example:

Andy: (pointing to citations, which the students had been taught before as an interpersonal meaning resource) What about the use of citations?

Student 6: (lacking confidence) They are for showing the sources of information.

Student 10: They are for the reliability of information.

Andy: (expecting his students to say interpersonal meaning, interacting with the audience, and justifying claims) What is the real purpose of the citation?

Students: (with the teacher’s prompts on the relationship between interpersonal meaning and engagement) It is an engagement resource, reminding us that we are interacting with the audience and telling them linguistically the reliability of information.

Apparently, the students on their own may not have understood the real purpose of learning the new information from online materials (i.e. the interpersonal meaning and the relevant linguistic resources concerned with interacting with the audience). They also did not explicitly express their concerns. Andy, however, was very sensitive to the students’ responses (i.e. implicitly expressed voices), immediately addressing their concerns by giving them accessible prompts. With Andy’s guidance, the students could understand the role of citations in constructing interpersonal meaning, suggesting that they gained a certain level of awareness of meaning-based writing, albeit immature.

More notable was that the students’ voiced expressions seemed to be particularly motivated by the teacher’s actions. As Student 14 noted, “Our teacher was not just paying lip service. He did take actions. I can tell he read our reflections and is trying to address our needs” (interview excerpt). She added, “He even takes care of my concerns that were not explicitly expressed. I feel encouraged to more boldly express my voices” (interview excerpt). In other words, a teacher’s actions taken in response to students’ voices, even implicitly expressed voices, galvanized learners’ interest in explicitly and thoroughly sharing their voices.

Students’ Emerging Voices Regarding Materials Implementation: Miscellaneous but Justifiable

In the friendly and caring atmosphere Andy encouraged, students began to voice more about the online resource-based teaching. These augmented voices about comprehending materials as readers or de-constructionists prior to their actual application of the knowledge (i.e. written composition) were clustered around two aspects: one was the macro dimension of the instructional content delivered in class, and the other was the content of materials that students were supposed to read themselves outside of class. Regarding in-class materials, the students made suggestions on the language used to deliver the course content. Student 9 said, “I would like our teacher to use our first language in delivering the content. Anyway, this content is not familiar to us and involves expressions that are new to us” (interview excerpt). This voice was understandable given that the students had only dabbled in the course materials, which involved linguistic theory. In spite of their rudimentary understanding, the students also started to voice their compliments on the course content as different from what they had previously experienced (a grammar-based knowledge of writing). As Student 11 said, “Continuing to learn this actually began to make me dimly know it [meaning-based knowledge] and understand its relevance to our writing” (interview excerpt). The mixed voice (i.e. a critical yet complimentary attitude) suggested that the students were on their way to voicing their needs in a somewhat authentic manner.

Regarding the online materials assigned for self-study outside of class, the students also expressed their concerns about the best way to engage with them. As Student 5 said, “I feel these materials were well selected, but we paced them a bit fast . . . I mean a week is not enough for me to finish this” (interview excerpt). In contrast, Student 7 wrote, “Yes, it takes time, but if we squeeze time, we can still finish this” (reflection excerpt). The differences might be due to the students’ willingness to invest their own time in the course after class. Indeed, Student 5 shared, “I had so many other on-campus activities to join in” (interview excerpt). The students’ voices regarding the time used to digest materials varied slightly, and seemed to be related to the students’ different learning habits.

For both in-class and out-of-class materials, the students voiced their need for visual reading. Student 8 wrote, “If we can be given some more videos, we can feel more interested in learning by ourselves” (reflection excerpt). The students’ request for visual modes of learning was clear, and it seemed to fit their learning style and preference.

As explained above, the students began to authentically voice their concerns. Their voices seemed to become more concrete and critical of their teacher’s reference, showing their active participation in improving teaching. The voices included both positive endorsements of the course and critical suggestions for the course arrangement. The students’ voices, however, revealed nuanced differences, which were related to their short exposure to the curriculum content in and outside of class, and individual differences in learning styles.

In response to these important voices, the teacher also made changes to suit the students’ needs while feeling motivated as an innovative teacher. As shown in the field notes, Andy used the students’ first language to explicate complex knowledge. He also expanded his office hours outside of class and invited students to discuss relevant content. At the same time, he also regained his confidence. Andy recalled, “I like dissonance . . . this and the compliments make me proceed with trials and changes” (reflection excerpts). Faced with their instructor’s modifications, the students also seemed more engaged in class learning and the co-exploration of the learning content. As Student 14 reflected, “I feel I am catching up with the instructor’s pace and mingling with the class now . . . I feel I am ready to share more to help teachers improve our learning” (reflection excerpt). The students’ reflections also resonated with the field notes in terms of their nonverbal behavior. That is, the students actively participated in class and interacted with the teacher with regard to learning the content through online materials.

Extended Exposure to Students’ Voices: A Way of Challenging or Endorsing Teaching

When Andy noticed that the students began to satisfactorily accept and understand the three meanings (ideational, interpersonal, and textual) as readers, he started to distribute more reading materials and intensify in-class instruction, thereby expanding their knowledge. As Andy wrote, “They are college students, so I felt they could learn and digest better and more information” (reflection note). As shown in the field notes, when guiding students’ understanding of a text’s ideational meaning, Andy used online materials inside and outside of class with the aim of helping them understand every detail of the codes, such as participant (nouns or noun phrases), circumstance (prepositional phrases), and logical connectors.

However, the students obviously requested the best relevant knowledge for their learning, expressing their critical voices and showing their evaluation of the value of the course content. For example, in the students’ group interviews, Student 4 said, “We really did not use these subcategories of some codes, when talking about attitude and interpersonal meaning” (interview excerpt). Reading this, Andy reflected, “What I had expected conflicts with what students want and their learning contexts. I thought that more means better, even though they may not use it” (reflection excerpt). He further realized, “I cannot give them more just because they could potentially digest it . . . they are just undergraduate students.” In other words, following a reevaluation of the students’ backgrounds, Andy considered re-tailoring his materials for in-class and out-of-class learning. Indeed, Andy followed good-enough principles (Macken-Horarik et al., 2015) and only included knowledge that was most relevant for their writing. For interpersonal meaning, he introduced attitude (the code for adjectives in relation to a writers’ evaluative stance), engagement (the code for grammatical and lexical resources that project information certainty or the source of information, such as modal verbs, subject + reporting verbs), and graduation (the label for grammatical and lexical resources that intensify or weaken the semantic load of a sentence, such as typically, and slightly) without subcategories, as these were already good enough for his students to write the essay based on their current level and the sample essay he provided. The tailored content and reiteration of mediation seemed to invoke the students’ positive voices. As Student 14 said, “I feel much relieved. This knowledge seems to be clear and not clumsy anymore” (interview excerpt).

Against the abovementioned backdrop, the students were following Andy, familiarizing themselves with the knowledge from online materials, doing deconstruction work, and applying the knowledge to their own writing. The students proceeded to provide positive yet critical voices. Student 3 added, “I feel I did not think about meaning but only reminded myself of some linguistic forms or grammar accuracy I was taught” (interview excerpt). When operating the rules provided by online materials, the students sometimes seemed lost and relapsed into their previous writing habits. It was understandable that the students’ writing habits, which had accumulated over the years, could not be replaced right away, but would continually compete with their newly learned writing habits (Zhang, 2017).

The students’ voices in this regard pointed to the teacher’s efforts to continually remind them of the interrelationships within knowledge. In responding to the students’ relapses, Andy increased his reminders of the meaning-based rules inside and outside of class. Instead of just having the students use the rules, he emphasized the relationship between rules and meaning. For instance, when examining participants (nouns and noun phrases) in sample essays, a selection of online materials used in the classroom, he made additional efforts to help students review and examine the nuanced relationship during group discussions while gaining insight into the students’ voices projected in the interactional context.

Andy: You see these nominalized verbs as subjects.

Students: Yes.

Andy: But do not stop at this level; why do we examine them?

Student 5: They play a role in showing an abstract idea.

Andy: Yes, we are doing idea abstraction . . . But what is the ultimate purpose?

Think about what we have learned.

Student 6: We are then projecting ideational meaning.

Andy: Yes. Correct. (continuing to prompt students) Think about a larger purpose.

Student 2: They are academic writings. It is a necessary part to convey the meaning in such a compact way and achieve a social purpose rather than accuracy.

Andy continually reminded the students of the relationships between interrelated constructs delivered through online resources. Through this type of communication, the students gained greater clarification. As Student 6 commented, “The course began to show itself in a more principled manner. This is also how I conceptualize knowledge on my own. I feel more ready to use it” (interview excerpt).

Through this iterative process between the students’ voices and the teacher’s adaptation of materials, both the students and the teacher felt they had been helped in the classroom. Indeed, Andy experienced a complex process during the online materials use: implementation, students’ voices, adaptation, students’ voices, and re-adaptation. In a reflection excerpt, Andy revealed his mixed feelings: “It was a long process but my love for my students and my confidence in the usefulness of my pedagogical knowledge encouraged me onward.” The whole classroom proceeded in a way where the teacher’s constant efforts and the students’ voices were intermingled, impacting each other and arriving at a compromise. In other words, the instructor did not blindly incorporate the students’ voices and make curricular changes. He modified the content according to the students’ authentic academic needs. In addition, the students began to understand their concerns through interactions in a friendly atmosphere, instead of engaging in vigorous arguments with the teacher.