The impact of blended e-learning on undergraduate academic essay writing in English (L2)

This paper describes a quasi-experimental study into the impact of a blended e-learning environment on academic writing assignments in English (L2) at a Thai international college. An experimental group of 15 students used an on-line bulletin board, as well as face-to-face (F2F) communication in class, to share information for essay topics they were preparing. The control group of 15 students, constituted from two smaller classes, used only F2F for the same task. The experimental and control groups were then compared on three variables for each of the three essays they wrote: number of references used; word count; essay score. The research hypothesis was that the use of the bulletin board would compensate for the larger class size of the experimental group and result in no difference in performance between the two groups. Results indicated that the experimental group had higher means on six of the nine outcomes, though these were not statistically significant, suggesting that the bulletin board may have more than compensated for the larger class size. The discussion includes consideration of how better control over the experimental conditions might lead to greater leverage of an on-line bulletin board as part of a blended learning environment.

► This study used blended e-learning on an L2 academic writing course.
► The experimental group of 15 students used an on-line bulletin board to share data for three in-class essay assignments.
► The control group, totalling 15 students in two classes, only had class time for the same task.
► Though not statistically significant, the experimental group had higher means on six of nine essay outcomes.
► The bulletin board may have compensated the experimental group for the disadvantage of larger class size.