Effectiveness of a digital pen-based learning system with a reward mechanism to improve learners’ metacognitive strategies in listening

Abstract

A number of prominent educators have confirmed that developing learners’ metacognitive strategies about listening is an important way of helping them learn how to listen to improve their listening. With the rapid development of information and communication technologies, many listening training systems provide various types of help options in support of listening comprehension. However, learners may be unaware of how effectively use these help options or they may rely too heavily on them, thus reducing the effectiveness of their listening practice. Therefore, this study develops a digital pen-based learning system with a reward mechanism that guides learners through the metacognitive processes effectively use available help options to develop listening skills. Two experiments were performed to evaluate the effects of the proposed system on learners’ listening achievement, motivation, and metacognitive awareness. The experimental results indicated that the proposed system improved learners’ listening comprehension, learning motivation, and metacognitive awareness. A lag-sequential analysis was conducted to infer learners’ behavioral patterns to explore how learners used the help options to perform listening tasks. Several interesting behavioral patterns were found and discussed.

Keywords:

• Pen-based learning
• listening comprehension
• metacognitive awareness
• learning behavioral patterns

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments, which have been extremely helpful in preparing this manuscript for publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chia-Chen Tan

Chia-Chen Tan is a PhD student at the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. Her research interests include pen-based learning and language learning.

Chih-Ming Chen

Chih-Ming Chen is currently a Professor at the Graduate Institute of Library, Information and Archival Studies, National Chengchi University, Taiwan. His research interests include e-learning, data mining, digital library, and artificial intelligence in education.

Hahn-Ming Lee

Hahn-Ming Lee is currently a Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. His research interests include web-based intelligent systems, neural networks, information security, artificial intelligence, and science and technology Policy.