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JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

subsequently the category labels (i.e. codes), have been created
from the collected data.

For the purposes of this paper, just the Categories 1 and 2
(Students’ personal evaluation of the course) are analysed here.

Table 1 Category 1

Category 1       Overall opinions of the students towards the
use of e-learning course
Number of students who answered Question 1:               28
(“Did you like the possibility to work with the English
Lexicology e-learning course last semester? Why?/Why not?”)

Code

Example

Stud.

mostly positive
opinion, but
aware of
possible
obstacles

“I did like it, but people

remember more when they write
the information down
themselves. We copied and
pasted the exercises through the
semester”

negative
opinion

“I didn’t like to use it, ‘cause I
was too lazy to use it”

positive
opinion

“It was a new method, which I
consider quite interesting and
unusual than the other classes”
“It was something different”

According to these results, the answer on the RQ 1 can be
formulated: the students were satisfied with the course (26
answers expressing positive opinion). There was just one
negative opinion; moreover, the student evaluated more his/her
own attitude than the course. Other isolated opinion expressed
the idea that “copying and pasting” assignments (exercises in the
student’s view) was possible. It is necessary to admit that
possibility of cheating (copying other students’ answers) was
high. However, cheating in the virtual environments is an issue
that is out of the scope of this study.

Table 2 Category 2

Students’ personal evaluation of the English Lexicology e-
learning course (Kinds of activities and material that should be
added to the contemporary version)

Number of students who answered Question 3: 28
(“What kinds of activities or study materials do you think
should be added to the contemporary version of the online
course?”)

Code

Example

Stud.

quizzes

“maybe quizzes, because it is easiest
and funniest to learn”
“quizzes would be great, I memorize
newly learned things better”

discussion
forums

“I would like to discuss about the
resources, so some kind of forums or
something like that.”

chats

“some chats to exchange
information with classmates, well I
could use Facebook, but here I
would chat about lexicology and not
about other personal stuff”

video
resources

“more activities with the use of
videos”

glossaries

“I think glossaries within each
lesson would be great.”

When asked to propose improvements, students’ proposals fully
reflected their characteristics as Generation Z learners - they
suggested quizzes - which are interactive, discussion forums and
chats - which support communication, video resources - which
would satisfy them as visual and kinaesthetic learners, and
glossaries – which they can collaboratively create.

Intervention
Based on this part of research supplemented be theoretical
studies, the interventions were made. The original course
included only activities for assessment, delivery and

organization. After the intervention, the course provided
modules within each of the six types of activities for foreign
language education available in the LMS Moodle, i.e. Creation,
Organisation, Delivery, Collaboration, Communication, and
Assessment. These activities fulfilled the requirements of the
students expressed in the questionnaires distributed to answer the
RQ 1.

The original course was designed for individual work; it did not
contain any collaborative tasks, neither any communication
activities. Even though it was delivered as a part of a blended
course, and the feature of collaboration and communication was
added during the delivery in the F2F part, the research showed
that the learners really missed collaborative tasks and
communication in the Moodle course. Thus, the intervention
included:

glossary created by the learners, in which entries were
created by groups of students and possibly
complemented by multimedia content;

blog created in the form of videos uploaded by groups
of students as their assignment; and Forum.

Answer to RQ 2
With the aim to answer the RQ 2, the researcher organized five
focus group meetings. Four meetings during the use of the initial
version of the course, the fifth after the intervention. The number
of meetings differ, since the analysis of the course before the
intervention needed a more detailed approach to incorporate
improvements; what is more, the availability of the sample
played role. However, since the data were analysed qualitatively,
not quantitatively this fact did not influence the results.

All the focus groups were video recorded, transcribed and coded.
In this paper, just the relevant codes for Category 3 –
Communication, with Code 1 (Collaborative learning
enhancement), Code 2 (Sufficient interaction), Code 5 (Online
communication), and Code 6 (Other form of communication) are
used. The results of the focus groups are included in Table 3
below.

Table 3 Focus group analysis: Category 3 - Communication

Codes

Examples

. C

llab

rativ

e le

cem

FG1

S2: “I like working in groups more than
individual work. For example, last assignment;
well, I know we are supposed to do them
individually, but I did one half; Monika did the
second half; then we checked our halves
together and corrected mistakes. This is kind of
working I like and through which I learn.”
S3: “I agree with him. I know we should do the
assignments individually, but I think that group
work is the best for learning. When somebody
explains to you the issues, you remember more,
so it is better when we cooperate.”

FG2

S1: “…and it was fun to work on those videos.”
S6: “Well, it is always a problem to meet and
work on some group project (pause) but when
we were doing those English in new space
assignment, the internet communication was
enough. We did it through an application on the
internet and we were chatting and discussing
it.”

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