Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Looking Back

LOOKING BACK | 報告
JALTCALL 2018: Reflections on the
Learner Development SIG Forum
Blair Barr, Neil Cowie, Daniel Hougham, & Brett Milliner
On June 10, 2018, the Learner Development(LD) SIG Forum was proud to continue a longstanding relationship with the JALTCALL annual
conference at Meijo University in Nagoya. This is aunique opportunity for Learner Development
members, as we are the only JALT Special Interest
Group (SIG) to stage a forum at this event every
year. This year’s forum was titled Navigating
Language Development: How are learners evolving
with language learning technology? It attracted asmall but dynamic and interactive group of
attendees, and it featured innovative approaches
for facilitating independent learner developmentusing technology in the classroom and beyond.
First, Brett Milliner (Preparing Language Learners
for Extensive Listening Online) reported on student
engagement with extensive listening exercises andlistening logs. Next, in his presentation titled
Online Quizzing/Testing with Immediate Feedback
through Quizlet, Google, and Flubaroo Add-on,
Daniel Hougham presented survey findings onlearners’ perceptions of a vocabulary-learning
program incorporating Quizlet and online
vocabulary quizzes (Google Forms and the Flubaroo
add-on). Finally, in a presentation titled The Many
Uses of Quizlet and Co-creating with Students,
Blair Barr demonstrated how one particular groupof learners in a university Business and TOEIC classengaged in the co-development of Quizlet
flashcard sets for both in-class gamification andindependent-study for TOEIC and vocabularydevelopment. Each presentation was followed by adiscussion period where participants reflected andshared their own research experiences, puzzles,
and questions about learner development using
technology.

Brett Milliner, Tamagawa University
Although attendance was small (which wasprobably a reflection of the early Sunday morning
time-slot), this year’s LD Forum proved to be mymost worthwhile experience of the entire
conference. Quite often at CALL related events
presenters will talk about the potential of newtechnologies, whereas, in this forum the presenters
drew upon their day-to-day use of online
applications in their language classrooms.
Moreover, all participants had intimate experience
using each application, hence discussions focussed
on the practical applications of these tools forlanguage learning, and not on the technology.
To reflect on the individual presentations, I was
impressed to see how balanced Daniel Hougham’s
approach to vocabulary learning has become.
Daniel includes both an incidental (using extensive
reading) and deliberate learning component thatutilizes Quizlet flashcards and regular vocabulary
quizzes created in Google Forms (and graded using
the add-on, Flubaroo). He also dedicates time tocarefully training his students on how to create
their own flashcard sets in Quizlet and how to set
up a self-evaluation step in this learning process(via the online tests). Daniel is also auditing theeffectiveness of these online learning activities,
and he shared some encouraging results. So far, hisstudents appear to really like the Quizlet
component and they appreciate receiving
immediate feedback (conducted via Flubaroo) for
their formative vocabulary tests. I look forward toreading some of the research output he is planning
concerning correlations between TOEIC test
focussed vocabulary study (using Quizlet) andactual TOEIC scores.
Following Daniel’s evaluation of student

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Looking Backperceptions for his vocabulary training activities,
Blair Barr shared a range of approaches for using
Quizlet in the EFL classroom. Some these ideas areshared in Blair’s reflection below, but what struck
me was that flashcards are not necessarily
restricted to vocabulary learning, rather there ispotential to use this tool for speaking and listening
practice. I was also interested in Blair’s creative
approaches to getting students to create card sets.
When Nation (2013) highlighted flashcards were thefastest approach to acquiring new vocabulary, healso recognized the value of students manuallycreating each card. One problem I have had when
implementing an online flashcard system was how I
could make the card creation process moremeaningful and how I could train students to utilize
some of the affordances of this online, digitalformat (e.g., incorporation of multimedia, images
and example sentences found on dictionary
websites such as alc.co.jp).
In my presentation I introduced the Google
apps, Google Forms, Google Sheets and YouTubeand how I utilize them to manage extensive
listening components in my university-level EFL
courses (see Milliner, 2016 for an introduction to
Google apps; and, Milliner & Barr, 2017 for an
introduction to Google Forms-based testing). As
members of the audience were familiar with theseapps, the presentation focussed on managing thelistening component. During the discussion period,
important points included how to protect against
students cheating with a self-reporting or honestybased approach, and how to create comprehension
quizzes in Google Forms that embed YouTube or
PDF media (see Figure 1.).

Figure 1. A listening quiz created by students using
Google forms
Overall, I was happy that we had a smallergroup attend this forum. As I mentioned in myintroduction, all participants were experienced
teachers and CALL users, which made for someenlightening discussion concerning the practicalapplication of online tools for language learning. I
found myself in the week following the conference
looking into how to use Flubaroo, instructing mystudents on how to create online flashcard sets
more effectively and looking into how I can catch
instances of cheating (e.g., using sophisticated text
filtering in Google Sheets) in my extensive listening
component.
To conclude, I wanted to thank Blair and Daniel
for the invitation and their well-prepared,
insightful talks. Also, thank you to the LD SIG for
the opportunity to present in their forum.

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Looking Back
Daniel Hougham, Hiroshima Jogakuin
University
I really enjoyed Brett Milliner's presentation on
using extensive listening logs. Brett explained how
his high-level university students have been given
the guidance and autonomy to choose listening
texts from websites such as TED, BBC, andYouTube. It was great to see that students wererequired to record information about their selfselected listening texts and experiences in an
Extensive Listening Log, via a Google Form, andwere given access to a shared spreadsheet (Google
Sheet) where all of this data including their own
reflective comments could be seen by the teacher
and students. Giving students access to theirclassmates' responses in this way seemed to beproviding them an excellent opportunity to see
what their peers were listening to and thinking
about, thus creating the right conditions for themto learn from each other's experiences.
It was interesting to learn that TED, YouTube,
VoiceTube, and ELLLO were the most popularsources of self-selected listening material among
his students. When asked by an audience member
how he might adapt the extensive listening activity
for lower-level learners, Brett responded that hewould guide the students to visit the following
three select websites where they can self-selectgraded listening material suitable for lower-levels:(1) ESL Fast (eslfast.com), (2) English Listening
Lesson Library Online (elllo.org), and (3) News in
Levels (newsinlevels.com). Providing lower-level
students with such a limited but carefully selectedchoice of websites is arguably providing guided
autonomy, which most lower-level students seemto need.
It was also great to learn that his students wereencouraged to create quizzes using Google Forms,
where they could embed high-quality YouTube
videos and images, to aid with comprehension andenjoyment of high-interest content. One example
he showed was a student-created Ed Sheeran
Carpool Karaoke Quiz (see Figure 1. above) inwhich a student had embedded an image ofMaltesers to aid with comprehension of thequestion “How many Maltesers could Ed Sheeran fit

in his mouth”? Encouraging students to use Google
Forms in this way was an excellent example ofapplying one of Hubbard’s (2004) five principles for
CALL learner training: Give learners teacher
training and enable them to take responsibility for
their own learning.
My own presentation was on the topic of Online
quizzing/testing with immediate feedback throughQuizlet, Google, and Flubaroo add-on. I talked
about how my 1st-year low-level Japanese
university students were given some basic technicaland strategic training in the use of Quizlet to study
word cards using a variety of engaging activities,
and were given weekly vocabulary quizzes with
Google Forms and Flubaroo. The courseimprovement survey results I shared suggested thatlearners find Quizlet very useful and easy to use,
and that they want to continue using it in the
future.
After my presentation, attendees raised some
important questions for discussion, including thequestion of whether I have found that my students
actually use Quizlet independently. Although I havecollected plenty of student study data which showsthat many students do use Quizlet sets to complete
assigned activities for homework on their own, I
have found that only a small number of students
continue to create their own Quizlet sets and use
them to study English and/or other subjects
independently outside the classroom. This
discussion prompted a shared realization among acouple of participants that there is a need to
conduct interviews with students who have become
successful independent Quizlet users to find out
more about their Quizlet usage patterns and habits
and how they became proficient at using it. The
discussion also solidified my realization that there
is a need to create better learner training
materials— screenshot tutorials in particular—which
will make it possible for students to more quickly
learn how to create and study using Quizlet toachieve their study goals independently, outside
the classroom. It also solidified my awareness ofthe need to focus on helping students improvetheir TOEIC scores, using Quizlet with TOEIC
materials, and the need to investigate theNewsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org>

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Looking Backrelationship between the use of Quizlet with a
TOEIC word list and TOEIC score gains.
I also enjoyed a really stimulating presentation
by Blair Barr who similarly shared some cuttingedge strategies and techniques for helping
Japanese university students take more control of
their learning. Blair talked about how he uses
Quizlet to increase participation among his
students, in particular, he adjusts the options
within Quizlet study sets so that they are editableby certain classes. He then gets his students tocollaboratively edit a shared Quizlet study set for
homework, which he then checks for accuracy
before class. It was really interesting to learn that,to enable this activity, Blair puts each students’first name (on the definition sides of each card,
respectively) in a set so that each student knows
which card to edit and can do so in an orderly
fashion. Once the set is created, his class could use
it in a variety of ways including playing a variationof Quizlet Live called "11". “11” is a variation
where all teams must stop when they get to 11
points, so that all other teams have more
opportunities to participate and finish the game
(Brandl, 2017).
I greatly enjoyed participating in the LD SIG
Forum at JALTCALL in Nagoya, and came away withmany good ideas on how to use powerful tools—
Google Forms, Sheets, and Quizlet in particular—to
promote class participation and enable learners totake more control of their learning. Although thenumber of attendees was not large, discussions
with them turned out to be one of my mostintimate and useful experiences at the conference.
Special thanks to Blair Barr for organizing the
LD SIG forum again this year.

Blair Barr, Tamagawa University
As usual, I really enjoyed taking part in another
Learner Development SIG Forum. This year, I got towatch presentations by Brett Milliner and Daniel
Hougham before giving a presentation about myown learners Quizlet usage. In this reflection, I
would first like to review the presentations by

Brett and Daniel, as well as present some lingering
questions that I have about their experiences. After
that, I will try to summarize my own presentation,and then end by showing some other points thatcame up after my presentation.
Brett Milliner’s presentation introduced us toonline Extensive Listening diaries that he has set up
for some of his more advanced English as a Foreign
Language (EFL) classes. Students were required tochoose online materials to listen to on a regularbasis, and then, after listening, they were required
to complete a Google Form with details and asummary of the listening. This information would
then be stored in a shared location for students to
use as a potential database of listening materials.
This way students could find materials that otherstudents enjoyed. I thought this was an interesting
resource for students, but I was left with one
lingering question about cheating the system. I
would suspect that some students would simply
copy summaries from the resource and then submit
these as their own work without strict teacher
reviews. However, Brett also showed us how his
students are creating Google Form quizzes basedon listening/video materials that are embedded in
the online form. I was excited by this idea, and I
see great potential that these quizzes could
provide the teacher with an increasing set oflistening content that could be used to confirm
comprehension. I have started to consider using
such student-generated online content for some of
my own classes. I look forward to learning more
about Brett’s experiences with these online quizzes
in the future.
Next, Daniel presented a course-improvement
survey from his students about their use of Quizlet
in his classes. Being a frequent user of the online
flashcard sets myself, I am always interested inwhat findings Daniel has to present. As expected,
he finds that students are satisfied with thevocabulary learning program he uses in his classes.
In his class in particular, he uses the flashcards togenerate quizzes for learners to review thelearning from Quizlet. After watching Daniel’s
presentation, I realized that it would be interesting
to do some student interviews with learners about

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Looking Backhow they actually use Quizlet outside of class. I
personally find that it is a tool that students enjoy
using in the class, but they do not necessarily makeuse of it on their own time (Barr, 2016). I would
love to learn more about this at an individual level.
Finally, I presented on my own implementationsof Quizlet. In particular, I was talking about how
my students use it in a more advanced class on
Business Issues and TOEIC. In this class, students
are expected to do TOEIC self-study, which means
much of this work becomes homework. As a part oftheir self-study, every student in the class must
contribute to shared sets of Quizlet vocabulary
flashcards online. Basically, I use the appendix ofthe assigned TOEIC textbook (Successful Keys to
the TOEIC® Listening and Reading Test 3 4th
Edition by Mark D. Stafford) to create Quizlet setswith vocabulary from each unit. Each week, thestudents must contribute to a Japanese-English
card set and a gap-sentence card set. These
contributions are due two days before class, sothat I can lock students’ editing privileges, thenreview and edit their contributions. Once finalized,
we can use the set in class to play games in class,such as Quizlet Live. In addition, the sets become aresource for students to refer to again and again,even after the class is complete. The students
really enjoy doing these exercises as I often get
requests to use the material in class more. One
student, in particular, attributed a 200-point jumpin his TOEIC score to this vocabulary resource. I
have not done an evaluation of student’s data to
uncover any support for such claims, but it would
certainly be an interesting research project tocarry out.
After my presentation, I got a lot of interest
from the participants. In particular, there wasinterest to learn more about the different kinds offlashcards sets I have created over the years.
Although I only presented about word-translationand gap-sentence flashcard sets in thepresentation, I ended up showing other kinds ofsets that I have created for different classes, suchas question-response cards (e.g. https://
quizlet.com/197527832/qa-fh2-unit-02-flashcards/) that I use in speaking classes. Participantsalso showed a great deal of interest in audio sets
(e.g. https://quizlet.com/296110006/qa-fh2unit-02-audio-flash-cards/), where I record aquestion on one side of the card and provide asample answer to the question on the reverse. I
hope to be publishing more about these in the
future.
I would like to thank everyone who took part in
the forum at JALTCALL 2018. I realize that it was asmall crowd, and I think I have learned that wereally need to incorporate the tools presented in
the title for future forums at JALTCALL. This is ahigh-tech crowd with specific interests, so weshould really cater the forum to that in the future.
That said, it was still an enjoyable and interactive
group, so I hope everyone got something from theexperience. I certainly will be looking into studentgenerated listening quizzes for the future.

Neil Cowie, Okayama University
I have been attending JALT CALL conferences
since about 2005 and always come away with many
practical ideas to use some form of digitaltechnology in my classes. This year was no
exception and the LD SIG Forum in particular was
extremely helpful. In reflecting on the three talks,rather than focus on one at a time I’d just like tomake a few general comments which apply to all.
It seemed to me that there was a common
cycle which underpinned each of the threeteaching approaches. Firstly, each teacher would
select a digital tool or resource (i.e., listening
websites, Quizlet, Google Forms) and show theirstudents how to use it; then, the students would‘play’ with the tool or resource in order to see how
it functioned and what uses they could make of it
for their language learning; once students knew
what to do with the tool or resource they would
then ‘add value’ to it (give commentary on alistening website; create their own quizzes; create
their own vocabulary lists) and share with theirclassmates.
I think this cycle of show, play, add value, andshare can be a really powerful way for teacher andNewsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org>

70Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 25 (2): Looking Backstudents to collaborate to create a rich learning
environment for all. The students benefit as they
have access to their classmates’ work; and theteacher benefits as they can be the recipient of agreat deal of useful materials which they canrecycle into future lessons. I think a challenge forthe teacher is to curate these materials and add
even further value by critiquing what students
produce. This could also be done by the students
themselves in one form or other; although they are
already working hard!
Digital technology has an amazing number ofaffordances to allow students to work in a selfregulated manner, to construct their own
meanings, and to reflect on what they havelearned. Technology is also ubiquitous, usually free,
and of a very high quality. Like any teaching tool,technology can be used inappropriately, but the LD
SIG Forum showed innovative and effective ways touse it. Thanks!

English as a Lingua Franca Journal, 2(1), 36-48.
Retrieved from http://www.tamagawa.ac.jp/celf/research/pdf/celf_journal_final2-1.pdf
Brandl, M. (2017, March 28). Teacher tip: Playing Quizlet
live "11" [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://
quizlet.com/blog/teacher-tip-playing-quizlet-live-11
Cowie, N. (2018). Student transcription for reflective
language learning. ELT Journal, https://doi.org/
10.1093/elt/ccy010
Hubbard, P. (2004). Learner training for effective use of
CALL. In S. Fotos & C. Browne (Eds.), Perspectives on
CALL for second language classrooms (pp. 45-68).
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Milliner, B. (2016).The Google Educator accreditation
process for language teachers. The Language
Teacher, 40(3), 22-24. Retrieved from http://jaltpublications.org/node/27/articles/5164-google-educatoraccreditation-process-language-teachers

References

Milliner, B., & Barr, B. (2017). Computer assisted
language tests for the English classroom:
Blackboard® tests and Google Forms. The Center for
ELF Journal, 3(1), 67-79. Retrieved from http://libds.tamagawa.ac.jp/dspace/handle/11078/474

Barr, B. W. B. (2016) Checking the effectiveness of Quizlet
as a tool for vocabulary learning. The Center for

Nation, P. (2013). What should every EFL teacher know?
Seoul, South Korea: Compass Publishing.

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