Scaffolding Moves by Learners in Online Interactions

Abstract

Learners can collaborate with each other to achieve a lesson objective. In the collaboration, they can provide each other with guidance in order to identify mistakes and improve their achievements. With the rise of online instructions, this small-scale exploratory study aimed to see how proficient learners guided their less proficient classmates in correcting the grammatical accuracy of sentences. Twenty three learners who were taking a blended-learning grammar class were assigned to post brief essays on Edmodo and the more able learners were instructed to help their weaker classmates find and correct the errors in their essays. A total of 18 essays and 15 lines of comments were generated in their online interactions. A coding was done to identify the moves of the learners as they gave and received peer corrections. The results indicated that the more able learners made seven types of moves for guiding their classmates, with only three sequences incorporating a relatively complete scaffolding moves. The weak learners, however, hardly responded to their more proficient classmates. Reluctance to prolong the discussion in online setting and the difficulties in dealing with detailed grammatical items in such setting may have been responsible for this low rate of responses.