Students' Voices and Choices in Project-Based Learning: Driving Engagement through Essay Writing and Infographic Design

摘要

Teaching a foreign language at a vocational institution of higher education is a unique process in terms of its educational opportunities and challenges. In general, learning in vocational education aims to develop practical skills in specific disciplinary knowledge, to master standardized competency and internalize the attitudes and professional values. Thus, these requirements are expected to be made integral to the courses that the students take during their study including in the English classroom setting. Implementation of project-based learning (PBL) in teaching writing can be seen as an answer to this challenge as it encourages students to develop higher critical thinking, enhances deep learning and motivates students to be independent learners with exceptional self-management. This study aims to analyze students' perception on series of stages they experienced in completing essay and infographic project through PBL. Essay and infographic were the final products of the project in which the essay was used as the main reference to design infographics containing visually attractive elements such as images, graphs and tables. Those final products were uploaded into students' social media to get feedback from wider range of audience and as a medium for students to contribute positive impacts to the outside world. The goal of this project was to drive students' engagement in writing and put students in the language-specific setting in which language was naturally used based on the project characteristics. Participants were 64 second semester students enrolled in a three-year undergraduate program in Informatics Management. The data were collected by using two kinds of online questionnaires, i.e., google forms which require answers in the form of linear scale and paragraph. The results of online questionnaires revealed that students experienced deep and autonomous learning through the stages conducted in the project. They gain better understanding on grammar and vocabulary during peer review and showed positive attitude in designing infographics as they could revise the structure of their essay while designing the infographics' wireframes. Consequently, project-based learning in writing essay and designing infographics helped to enhance students' engagement to series of works within the projects and foster their collaborative and communicative skills while working together in groups.