Digital Multimodal Composing vs. MOOC-Based Instruction: Effects on IELTS Candidates' Speaking Fluency and Coherence

Abstract

Over the past decades, language teachers have utilized the advantages of technology in the language classroom, yet given the explosion of technological tools and applications in recent years, there is no consensus as to which technological advancement best serves the development of which language skills or components. The current investigation was designed to examine the potential impacts of digital multimodal composing (DMC) and massive online open courses (MOOC) on the speaking fluency and coherence of Iranian intermediate IELTS candidates. To this end, a pretest-treatment-posttest, quasi-experimental design was utilized and a sample of 93 male/female EFL learners at the intermediate level were selected based on volunteer sampling procedures. Subsequently, the participants were assigned to the three groups of DMC, MOOC, and control group (CG). The three groups were exposed to the same instructional materials, with the difference being that in DMC, the learners had to produce videos during the course and post them on the Flip platform for their peers and teacher to review and comment. They then could use the feedback to make corrections/revisions; in the MOOC condition, the learners signed up for the course on futurelearn. com and received video presentations, pdf articles, and quizzes, and they were made to leave comments or react to each other's' comments during the course. In the CG, the materials were presented in print and through powerpoint slides by the teacher. Comparisons of the speaking posttest scores of the learners in the three groups revealed that with regard to fluency and coherence, DMC learners significantly outperformed MOOC learners, who were in turn better than the CG learners. Based on these findings, this study presents a discussion of certain pedagogical implications.