Page 83 - Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

67 Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

(Garrison, 2011). Thus, in order to enhance the teaching presence in the online learning environment,
feedback is a valuable tool which provides the opportunity to combine both cognitive and motivatio-
nal factors.

Feedback, in its widest definition, can be understood as information that an agent (e.g. teacher,
peer, book, parent, self, experience) gives to someone about her/his performance or understanding.
Considering its “pole” feedback can be classified into Positive and Negative/Corrective Feedback.
Negative or Corrective Feedback is “information following an error produced by the language learner”
(Gitsaki and Athobaiti, 2010, p. 2), “responses to learner utterances that contain error” (Penning de
Vries, n/d, p. 2) and information that “triggers learners to recognize the gap between their IL (inter lan-
guage) and the target norm” which “… in turn leads to subsequent grammatical restructuring” (Kim,
n.d., p. 3). Corrective Feedback plays a role in the learning process because language awareness
through noticing error is essential for language acquisition and for input to occur.

Methodology

The present study was carried out as an AR in an on-line English 1 group at the Universidad Veracru-
zana, Campus Boca-del Río Veracruz. The students, 4 girls and 3 boys, were aged between 19 and
21 years old. The action plan that we followed was to review the different activities and participations
required from the students in the course (according to its contents); then, to decide which ones were
more suitable to provide feedback in different forms (written, recorded, direct, indirect, etc.) and fina-
lly, to evaluate the impact of the feedback provided on the students’ further performance.

The feedback provided by the facilitator followed the same format as the activity in turn. Due to the
nature of the environment where this action research took place (on line learning), the data collection
methods employed were Documentary Evidence Revision and Survey. Documents consisted of all
the activities, homework and assignments uploaded by the students on the platform (Eminus) during
the course. For all these documents, the first submission and a second modified or corrected ver-
sion, when students decided to re-elaborate their assignments after receiving the teacher’s feedback,
were considered in most cases. Also, the mid-term and the final written institutional exams, which are
compulsory and part of the students’ evaluation, were considered. The second data collection tool
used was the questionnaire. During the intervention three questionnaires were provided at the UV
facilities (SAC): at the beginning of the course, after the mid-term written exam and at the end of the
course after the final written exam.

The first stage of the data analysis followed a quantitative approach to process the information ob-
tained through the three questionnaires given to the participants throughout the course. The respon-
ses to the close questions were counted and grouped according to themes, which were compared
among the three questionnaires, particularly between the second and third ones. The second stage
of analysis of the data collected followed a qualitative approach, which was guided by a concept-co-
ding procedure. This was used to code and process the information obtained through the open
questions, included in the same questionnaires, which asked about students’ opinions, perceptions,
concerns and preferences related to the online course and the feedback provided.