Conclusion
This chapter has presented the results obtained from students'
questionnaire, and teachers' interview. We collected their attitudes and
perceptions toward using collaborative visualization to promote students'
communication skills. We have presented the data collected from the students'
questionnaire in form of tables, diagrams and pie charts and those from the
teachers' interview in form of well structured paragraphs. The discussion of
the data will be in the next chapter, as well as the conclusions of this
research.
Chapter Four :
Discussion of the Findings
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Chapter IV Discussion of the Findings
Introduction
While conducting this study, we have used two reliable tools
to gather data in order to achieve our objectives and answer the research
questions raised in the General Introduction, as well as, confirming or
refuting the research hypotheses. In this chapter we have discussed the
findings of students' questionnaire as a first part and the second part
analyses the results of the interviews conducted with six teachers of different
modules in the Department of English at Mouloud Mammeri University.
1. Discussion of Students' Questionnaire
Findings
1.1. Students' Attitudes towards the Use of Collaborative
Visualisation in the Department of English
The distributed questionnaire contains questions based on the
principles of Coordination Process Theory that are introduced by Erkens (2005).
The purpose behind this research is to investigate teachers' and students'
attitudes toward collaborative visualisation in developing students'
communication skills in English at the level of the Department of English at
Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi Ouzou.
To reach this goal, a series of questions related to
collaborative learning have been asked to Master One students of different
options in the Department of English, University of Tizi Ouzou. As it is shown
in the previous chapter, (46.92%) of students strongly agree that active
collaboration among students is very important and the sharing of knowledge is
foundational, (41.54%) agree on that (See diagram2 p30). A deep explanation of
this can be understood through what Janssen (2008: 16) has highlighted about
the mutual activation of knowledge, «group members can benefit from
the skills and knowledge of their group members during collaboration, knowledge
and information exchange are important processes: unshared knowledge needs to
be externalized.» In fact, mutual activation and share of knowledge
and skills is the first process introduced by Erkens in his Theory of
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Chapter IV Discussion of the Findings
Coordination Process (2005). In this process, it is important
for students to get engaged in the learning process. Participation is required
because it is a way for them to exchange their information and knowledge;
therefore, everyone will benefit from one another.
As it is highlighted by the students in diagram3 page 31,
grounding or creating a common frame of reference is important to promote their
communication skills. Grounding is an activity that students need to accomplish
in order to establish mutual understanding and a common frame of reference and
56.92% believe that it is important to have the same knowledge of the basics of
a given topic. In this respect, Erkens, et al., (2005: 466) indicate that, in
order to achieve the common goal «the collaboration partners will have
to coordinate their activities and their thinking. They will have to activate
their knowledge and skills and will have to establish a common frame of
reference in order to be able to negotiate and communicate individual
viewpoints and inferences». In fact, when students understand each
other, they are able to communicate and collaborate in an effective way. This
goes hand in hand with the explanation of Janssen (2008: 16), «To
communicate and collaborate effectively, group members need to ensure they
understand each other». However, it is not obvious that everyone
think in the same way, there will probably be different opinions but when
students know how to get along and make agreements, the divergence of opinions
is a way for them to come to an understanding over their subject or debated
topic.
When students take part in the lesson, they become active
learners. Since communication is a social process, which means it develops
through interaction, students should participate in class, give their opinions,
show their agreement or disagreement, etc. All these are essential to develop
one's communication skills and build social relationship in the classroom
because the more there are different opinions, the more there are arguments and
the more the communication is maintained.
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Chapter IV Discussion of the Findings
In this regard, it is displayed in table 3 page 31 that
(94.62%) Master One students effectively try to make the discussion continue.
Many of them do prefer to ask questions, suggest ideas and give their opinions.
This refers to focusing, according to Janssen (2008: 17) «This
pertains to the way group members try to maintain a shared discourse topic.
This can be done by asking questions, asking for attention, and repairing focus
divergence». In some cases, sometimes many, students do not agree
with the same idea; therefore, to check the understanding of the information
communicated, many prefer to ask verification questions rather than indicating
their agreement or disagreement. This can be supported by making reference to
Janssen (2008) who mentions that it was important for group members to check
the information communicated whether it fits with the common frame of reference
that has been created thus far. This can be done by asking verification
questions or by indicating agreement or disagreement (Ibid). While a few of
them try to negotiate the meaning of the information to maintain the
discussion, all the participants which means 130 students agree on its
importance in terms of developing communication skills.
It is justified by many of the students (see table 6 p33) that
negotiation gives them the opportunity to express themselves. It is somehow an
occasion that encourages classroom participation and interaction. That is,
«When knowledge or information is externalized, group members have to
verify whether their understanding of the information matches the other's
understanding [sic] of the information. This can lead to an extensive process
of negotiation of meaning» (ibid). In fact, both listening and
speaking are important for a good negotiation because the learners need to
express their thoughts and listen to those of their mates to discuss each one's
opinions. As a result, students could develop their way of communicating ideas;
they learn how to convince and how to classify ideas in mind. That is to say,
it enhances discourse competences. In addition, since students are given the
opportunity to express themselves and give additional information, the group
members learn new words; develop a
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Chapter IV Discussion of the Findings
new vocabulary and new ways of expressing ideas from one
another. This means that negotiation enhances students' grammatical
competences. This is not limited to acquiring a new vocabulary but also to
enhancing one's pronunciation, choice of words and grammar.
A student has said, «It pushes the participants to
make efforts, to express their thoughts and [sic] using correct forms (syntax)
and also to use the vocabulary they have.»Others State,
«negotiation is synonym to practice one's language», «it allows
to make [sic] efforts to speak and express one's opinions with a target
language. Mistakes might be corrected by the teacher or classmates. Indeed, we
learn better from our mistakes and this is helpful to get rid of shyness».
Negotiation creates an enthusiastic atmosphere where students become
active learners. This helps every student to feel more confident about himself,
and his ideas. Some do not speak in classroom because of shyness or anxiety,
therefore, when the activity is done in group, there is a kind of moral support
to everyone. Consequently, with negotiation, there is a mutual help that enable
students overcome their shyness, anxiety and fear of speaking. On one hand, as
it is mentioned above in the review of literature, it enhances students'
communicative competences. On the other hand, it improves their personal and
interpersonal skills. Some students have also said, «It
[negotiation] helps the students to get involved in the communication
process which helps them to develop their speaking skill as well as their
cognitive abilities and critical thinking».
By personal skills, we refer to critical thinking,
problem-solving and creativity, etc. It is highlighted by Dillenbourg (1999)
that interaction with pairs would lead to produce learning mechanisms,
development of critical thinking and communication. When doing a collaborative
visualisation, it is obvious that students would negotiate the meaning of a
given subject to come to a consensus; and 37 students out of 130 have argued,
in question 1 page 36, that collaborative visualisation would help them to
develop their critical thinking. Whereas in interpersonal skills; we make
reference to active listening, team work,
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Chapter IV Discussion of the Findings
responsibility, etc. It is obvious that learners need to be
guided by their teachers. Consequently, we can deduce from what is said by
Johnson and Johnson (1999) and Zambrano (2019) that in effective collaborative
groups, students are mutually interdependent to assume group reaching goals. In
this respect, Barron (2003) mentions that «successful groups have been
found to coordinate their activities better than unsuccessful groups»
(cited in Janssen, 2008: 16). Then, they are taught academic skills which
means they are taught to become leaders, to make decisions and manage conflicts
inside a group, etc. On this detail, Mercer and Littleton (2007) define
collaborative learning as an activity in which «participants are
engaged in a coordinated, continuing attempt to solve a problem or in some
other way construct common knowledge» (cited in Reusser and Pauli,
2015: 916).
It is clear from the results that Master One students hold
positive attitudes toward collaborative learning. This has been deduced from
the responses of students (see table 7 p35) who say they prefer to learn when
collaborating. They believe that collaborative learning enhances involvement in
the classroom and improves confidence through interaction (see table 8 and
diagram 6 p35). In this regard, Luther (2002) says that in collaborative
learning, students are engaged in learning experience, they share their ideas
and their information through interaction. Consequently, students gain
confidence and improve it.
Visualisation is a collaborative activity, and to use
collaborative visualisation in the classroom, the principles developed by
Erkens should be followed. As a conclusion, the idea that students might hold
positive attitudes toward collaborative visualisation is reinforced by the
results found concerning collaborative learning. However, this does not
demonstrate that this hypothesis is true because we have just established a
relation between collaborative learning and visualisation with collaborative
visualisation that is not used in the Department of English at the University
of Tizi Ouzou.
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Chapter IV Discussion of the Findings
Besides, students have probably dealt with this technique
before but they have not been introduced to it. In other words, many activities
require working in groups, and being students of the department, we confirm
that, essentially in the first three years, we have had to watch videos in oral
expression and comment on them afterwards. 1.2. Students' Attitudes
towards Developing Communication Skills through Collaborative
Visualisation
The findings of this research show that most of Master One
students (47.69%) agree that the combination of collaborative learning and
visualisation gives better results in learning in general and in developing
communication skills in particular. (40%) of the participants strongly agree on
that (diagram 8 p37). In this respect, it is mentioned in the literature review
that participating in the collaborative visualisation improves the group
members' communication and interaction, as well as sharing, exchanging and
manipulating the information (Cernea, 2015).
First of all, According to them, collaborative visualisation
is enjoyable because it transforms a stressful lesson into a real pleasure.
Then, it makes communication flexible and increases credibility of the
communicated message or information. This means that the message or the
communicated information is able to change or to be changed according to the
circumstances (see table 10 and diagram 9 p38).
The results further demonstrate in (Table 11 p38) that
(96.15%) agree that making use of this strategy may lead to debates. A debate
allows the students to practice the language and feel more confident when
speaking; consequently, (56.92%) believe that collaborative visualisation would
improve their communication skills very much (see Diagram 10). The results
would be the opposite if this research were experimental; though in this case
the participants agree on many points which can be understood as the advantages
of collaborative visualisation in developing communication skills.
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Chapter IV Discussion of the Findings
The most prominent point is that it promotes the exchange of
information, this is realised by students' participation; as a result,
collaborative visualisation encourages students to participate more. It is an
opportunity to learn more from the others; thus, this develops one's critical
thinking. One may miss some details concerning a topic; the others can think or
remember the information that did not come to their mind before. In other
words, there are some students in a group who are well informed about some
topics and there are some others who are not; the discussion that may occur
between them will be instructive. Some students may become aware of something
such as having known information and having completely forgotten it. On the
other side, others will simply be able to learn new ideas. In addition, it
facilitates the understanding of presented information. When an idea is well
understood, it becomes easy to remember, that is why it supports the
remembering of the presented contents (see Table 9 and Diagram 7 p36).
Relying on these results, it is induced that collaborative
visualisation is encouraged because it promotes the exchange of information,
encourages students to participate, and leads them to discussions and debates.
Consequently, collaborative visualisation promotes their communication skills.
This idea is strengthened with the results shown in (Table 12 and Diagram 11
p40). According to what has been said in the Review of Literature by Brodlie,
in collaborative visualisation, a group of people can work together on a
project synchronously or asynchronously. For example, watching a video
conferencing, the results show that synchronously, it enables students to see
data, communicate and debate in context. After that, students can provide
immediate feedback because it motivates to rapidly think and answer. It enables
students to respond in a better real time. In our opinion, it is an activity
that can be advantageous for students; however, there are some who do not
assimilate things rapidly. Each student has his learning style (Gardner, 1983).
For this reason, asynchronous collaborative visualisation can be beneficial for
some others (those who perform things
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Chapter IV Discussion of the Findings
slowly). It provides students the ability to communicate with
a remote team with members of multiple zones (people who are separated
geographically), which gives chance to the participants to think before
responding. The communication is maintained by letter, faxes or emails between
the members of the group (Brodlie, 1981). Besides, it is possible for the
students to have a record of the communication shared that can be referred to
it later on.
Having home activities, even through the internet, will
probably be advantageous not only for those who assimilate things slowly, but
also for those who rapidly understand. Varying activities is important; it
makes students feel at ease and work on new things. This allows them to learn
wherever they are.
Depending on the results found in section two, the relation
made between collaborative learning and visualisation with collaborative
visualisation in section one has been established. In other words,
collaborative visualisation is collaborative learning supported by
visualisation. Students' answers confirm its truth (see table 9 and 10,
diagram8 and 10).
To recapitulate, Diagram 8 page 40 shows that learners agree
that the combination of collaborative Learning and Visualisation gives better
results in learning in general and in developing communication skills in
particular. Master One students have justified their agreement by saying it was
enjoyable. In fact, the use of visual aids facilitates learning because they
create an enjoyable atmosphere (Ghulam, 2015). Then, it makes communication
flexible. Finally, It increases credibility of the communicated message or
information (see table 10 p38). In fact, (56.92%) of Master One students
approve that collaborative visualisation can improve their communication skills
(see diagram 10 p40). This goes hand in hand with what Cernea (2015:02) has
said, «a collaborative visualization enhances the way the doctors
would communicate and interact, as well as support the exchange and
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Chapter IV Discussion of the Findings
manipulation of the patient's medical information».
This can be related to EFL students in their learning. With collaborative
visualisation, students learn how to convey their thoughts and feelings by
speech or writing so that it can be understood. They are also used to
facilitate communication. First, it promotes the exchange of information. This
goes with what has been said by Myller (2009). According to him, collaborative
visualisation encourages students to have significant conversations that will
help each one to benefit from the other. Second, it encourages them to
participate more; therefore, it allows them to learn more. After that, it
develops their critical thinking which facilitates for them the understanding
of presented information. This is highlighted by Isenberg (2011) that this
strategy offers opportunities to students to develop their social skills and
critical thinking through discussions, negotiations and arguments. Finally, it
supports the remembering of the presented contents (see table 9 p36). Although
these results show how collaborative visualisation helps the students to
develop their communication skills, they are not true at 100% because they are
just predictions that are not yet put into practice. The results could be more
reliable if the study were experimental.
All in all, even though the results found indicate that Master
One students have positive attitude toward collaborative visualisation, this
does not prove that they are trustworthy because the results deal with human
thoughts. Points of view may change and if collaborative visualisation were
implemented before, students' responses would have been less subjective. On the
other hand, since this strategy is not yet implemented, we have neither the
chance to observe the students' reactions, attitudes and actions, nor an
opportunity to make at least an experimental research for that. In fact,
classroom observation would allow us to be part of the phenomenon and watch the
students accomplishing some actions; therefore, the results would have been
more objective.
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Chapter IV Discussion of the Findings
2. Discussion of teachers' Interview
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