UNS – Lecturers have an obligation to develop the scientific fields, one of them is by conducting research. In 2018, the lecturer of English Education Department of Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) Surakarta, Nur Arifah Drajati, got the opportunity to cooperate in a study with Human Capital & Education for Asian Development (HEAD) Foundation (THF) Singapore, Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and Ewha Woman’s University (EWU) Korea. Nur Arifah Drajati, Lecturer of English Education of UNS opened “Mobile Language Learning With Multimodal TPACK” workshop on Friday (5/5/2018) at Lor In Syariah Solo hotel as part of the collaborative research projects.
THF is a charitable organization established in 2013 in Singapore to contribute to the development of Asia as well as to focus on issues about human resources, education, leadership, and sustainability. On this occasion, Nur Arifah collaborated with Uma Natarajan (THF) as the principal investigator of the project, Chai Ching Sing from Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and So Hyo-Jeong from Ewha Women University (EWU), Korea. This project is a collaborative research of International and Grant Scientific Publications in the academic year 2018 and will be done for 1 year. This research project aims to examine the impact of multimodal language learning supported by mobile phones and gamification in improving students’ writing and speaking English skills in Indonesian classes.
There will be 4 phases in this project. Phase I is to collect baseline data and information for situation analysis that can inform the design of language learning with technology programs suitable to the Indonesian classroom context. Phase II is to design and provide teacher professional development to the participating teachers. In this phase, they will work with pre-service and in-service English teachers in Solo, Indonesia. In phase III, they will select a group of teachers who actively participate in the sessions in Phase II and are willing to participate in the research intervention. In the final phase, follow-up assistance will be provided to the participating teachers who need any further assistance regarding to the digital learning solution.
As one of the series of research activities, the workshop under the theme “Mobile Language Learning With Multimodal TPACK” was held at Hotel Lor In Syariah Solo on Friday (4/5/2018) and Saturday (5/5/2018). The workshop was attended by approximately 38 English teachers from 3 provinces in Indonesia, such as East Java, Central Java, and West Java. This workshop is the implementation of research activities of stages 1 and 2. Furthermore, the stage 3 and 4 will be carried out in August. The workshop participants discussed with Nur Arifah, Chai, and Hyo-Jeong to design a learning model based technology multimodal.
The first day of the event, Chai presented the implementation of Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) and multimodality in learning, while Hyo-Jeong delivered about teaching & learning English using mobile devices and gamification. On the second day, the participants are trained and required to design the learning model of a based multimodal technology in groups. In this session, the participants can directly consult and study together with experts then they had a chance to present the design results.
In the end of this research, the teachers are expected to change the way how teachers design language lessons by transforming existing lesson plans to incorporate gamified mobile language learning activities and change the learning practices among students so that they can leverage on mobile technology to perform authentic language communication. humas-red.uns.ac.id/Ath/Dty