Digital learning has grown significantly in recent years, particularly since the start of the pandemic, and it is predicted to further increase in popularity in the future. It promises to facilitate access to learning for those who are unable to study in a face-to-face environment and offers learners the convenience and flexibility of developing their English skills in the comfort of their own homes or on the go in bitesize chunks.
However, many teachers are concerned that learners studying in this way will quickly lose motivation and will not make the progress they would in a traditional class. Teachers may also be worried that they will not play a significant enough role in digital courses.
Cambridge has developed the Evolve Digital course to address many of these common challenges and has recently conducted an impact evaluation study to measure its effectiveness with adult learners. This article highlights some key findings from this research and how they could be relevant for teachers and educational institutions who would like to introduce or improve digital English language courses for their learners.
Project background
The learners in this project were high school teachers in Japan with a level of English at B1 level or below. They chose to take the Evolve Digital course part-time over seven months in one of three ways:
- Group 1: digital self-study at their own pace with no teacher input
- Group 2: digital self-study at their own pace with teacher feedback for speaking and writing tasks
- Group 3: digital self-study at their own pace with teacher-led live online classes as well as teacher feedback for speaking and writing tasks
Global Bridge, a training organisation based in Japan, delivered teaching to groups 2 and 3.
Before we look at the results, how motivated and engaged do you think learners in each group were? And how much progress do you think they made by studying in a different way?
How motivated and engaged were learners?
Across all three groups, most learners reported feeling motivated while studying the course, mentioning that the content was interesting, useful and practical. Perhaps unsurprisingly, learners in group 3 (i.e. the ones who were studying online with a teacher) had the highest levels of motivation with 79% of this group agreeing or strongly agreeing that they felt motivated when studying English with Evolve Digital. This group also spent significantly more hours learning on the digital platform – around 50 hours compared to around 30 hours for learners in the other two groups. This group seemed to really value the live lessons and the opportunities they gave to practise what they had learned in a group setting.
‘Being able to review what you have learned at an online class once every two weeks. I was motivated and most of all, it was fun.’
Learner, group 3
Takeaway: Including live lessons with teacher feedback in a digital course can boost learners’ motivation and encourage them to spend more time studying. Even if this is not possible, choose materials that include a variety of activities and content which learners find interesting and useful to keep learners motivated.
How much progress did learners make?
Most learners across all three groups improved their level of English, with 51% improving by at least one CEFR level over the seven months of the course – an impressive result, especially as the learners were studying this course alongside teaching full-time and taking part in a professional development programme!
Again, perhaps unsurprisingly, learners in group 3 perceived themselves to have improved the most, both in terms of their English level and their level of confidence in using English. Interestingly, the results of the end-of-course test told a different story…group 3 didn’t actually make any more progress in their level of English than the other two groups. In fact, it was group 1 – the learners studying completely independently – who made the most progress between the pre-test and post-test. Having said this, the end-of-course test only assessed reading skills, listening skills and language knowledge so it may be that the picture would have looked different if speaking and writing skills had been assessed too.
Takeaway: Learning digitally can be very effective for improving learners’ level of English. Teacher input, for example through live lessons can also be very useful in increasing learners’ confidence in using the language.
Conclusion
Digital learning through Evolve Digital was shown to be an effective and motivating experience for the learners in this study, especially when self-study was combined with teacher-led live sessions.
Find out more about the impact study by watching our video, checking out our infographic or reading our report.
Evolve Digital is an online course that combines asynchronous, independent learning content with synchronous, teacher-led lessons to meet the changing and varying needs of teachers and learners. Find out more about Evolve Digital.
Evolve Digital impact study was led by Dr Brigita Seguis, Head of Impact Evaluation at Cambridge English. Summarised by Jasmin Silver.