MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITY OF HO CHI MINH CITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------ GRADUATIONTHESIS ESL ENGINEERING STUDENTS’ SELF-EFFICACY IN LEARNING AN INTERDISCIPLINARY ENGLISH MOOC: A COMPARATIVE STUDY STUDENT NAME: TRUONG THI THANH HUONG ID NUMBER: 17016611 CLASS CODE: DHAV13A COHORT: 2017 -2021 SUPERVISOR NAME: PHAN THI TUYET NGA, Ph. HCMC, 05/2021 Student name: Truong Thi Thanh Huong Student ID number: 17016611 MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITY OF HO CHI MINH CITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------ Student name : Truong Thi Thanh Huong ID Number : 17016611 Class Code : DHAV13A Cohort : 2017-2021 Supervisor Name : Phan Thi Tuyet Nga, Ph. Student’s declaration: I declare that this graduation report is entirely my own work and does not involve in plagiarism or collusion. It also has not been accepted as part of a submission to another purpose elsewhere.
I accept heavy penalty for any cheating or plagiarism. Date submitted : 15/05/2021 Signed : Truong Thi Thanh Huong Word count : 8064 words Supervisors: Phan 2|Page Student name: Truong Thi Thanh Huong Student ID number: 17016611 ESL ENGINEERING STUDENTS’ SELF-EFFICACY IN LEARNING AN INTERDISCIPLINARY ENGLISH MOOC: A COMPARATIVE STUDY ABSTRACT MOOCs play an important role in higher education in the current time. More and more English MOOCs in various academic fields have been applied in colleges and universities, especially in Asian countries. Besides, self-efficacy is thought to be a critical component in successful online learning.
This investigation were carried out in order to a) value the level of self-efficacy among engineering IUH and NIU students in joining MOOCs and b) compare the self-efficacy level of students between these contexts. A mixed method was used in this present study. About 250 students from the two schools participated in the questionnaire survey and then about 30 participants among them joined the interviews. The scale which was utilized in this study was designed based on the Self-efficacy Questionnaire for Online Learning (SeQoL; Shen et al.
The level of self-efficacy was measured in three aspects: using technology, time management and learning in an Interdisciplinary English MOOC environment. The study found out some problems that affected the students’ self-efficacy level in joing MOOCs. The findings’ interpretations and implications were discussed. KEY WORDS: engineering students’ self-efficacy, ESL context, English MOOCs, self- efficacy level in E-MOOCs Supervisors: Phan 3|Page Student name: Truong Thi Thanh Huong Student ID number: 17016611 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This study would not be completed without any assistance.
As a result, the author of this study gladly acknowledges the encouragement and motivation of my team through the course of conducting this research as a condition of completing my graduation thesis. First of all, I would like to thank all teachers of Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City and Faculty of Foreign Languagefor facilitating the completion of my graduation thesis. I also would like to express sincere appreciation to my supervisor Dr. Phan Thi Tuyet Nga.
She is one of the most enthusiastic and patient teacher that I have ever met. She is a well-organized person that always helped my team and I made good plans for achieving our goals. Phan had tons of work to do because of her position in the Faculty of Foreign Languages, she still encouraged and helped us to keep up with our schedule. She was extremely conscientious to find out the best way to help us conductthe study successfully.
Without her instructions and support, this thesis would have been impossible to be done effectively. Secondly, I would like to send my gratitude to Pro. Chen and his team at National Ilan University (NIU). Thanks to their support and motivation, my team and I were able to have many valuable materials which were taken full advantage of in our thesis.
Chen played an important role during our process of doing surveys. He and Dr. Phan provided a link between us and NIU. He also helped us collect the data from NIU students.
The success of our thesis had a great contribution of Pro. Chen and his team. Thirdly, I would like to thank my group members: Dang Thi My Chau and Nguyen Nhu Quynh who always supported me whenever I needed. They are the best partners during my school life.
Working with them wasa special opportunity for me to widen my mind and obtain more skills. Their encouragement helped me much during the process of completing the thesis. Last but not least, I wholeheartedly thank all of my study participants. Without their help, my team and I could not gain reliable data and complete this thesis.
Particularly, my family and my friends also encouraged me a lot during this graduation thesis. Hence, I would like to give my deep gratitude to them. In short, I would like to thank all people that helped me finish my graduation thesis. Besides,this is my first time doing scientific research, so the thesis inevitably has limitations and shortcomings.
I look forward to receiving the comments of teachers of the Faculty to improve this thesis. Supervisors: Phan 4|Page Student name: Truong Thi Thanh Huong Student ID number: 17016611 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.4 Scope of the study:. CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW. CHAPTER III: RESEARCH DESIGN.
Research methodology and research methods. CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. 34 Supervisors: Phan 5|Page Student name: Truong Thi Thanh Huong Student ID number: 17016611 LIST OF TABLES Table 3.The English level of IUH and NIU engineering students.Scale: Self-Efficacy to manage time.Scale: Self-Efficacy to learn in the interdisciplinary English MOOC environment.The average rating of engineering students’ self-efficacy in joining MOOCs at IUH and NIU.Measured factors, items, and descriptive statistics of self-efficacy level among engineering IUH and NIU students in using technology .Measured factors, items, and descriptive statistics of self-efficacy level among engineering IUH and NIU students in time management.Measured factors, items, and descriptive statistics of self-efficacy level among engineering IUH and NIU students in learning in an Interdisciplinary English MOOC environment.24 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4. Comparison of the self-efficacy level in using technology in MOOCs of IUH and NIU engineering students.
Comparison of the self-efficacy levels in managing time in MOOCs of IUH and NIU engineering students .Comparison of the self-efficacy levels in learning in the Interdisciplinary English MOOC environment of IUH and NIU engineering students. The English level of IUH and NIU engineering students. 30 Supervisors: Phan 6|Page Student name: Truong Thi Thanh Huong Student ID number: 17016611 1.1 Rationale: In current society, the development of technology has changed the way information is delivered and approached, which has also brought many benefits to humans in many fields, especially in education. Online learning has a great effect on educational systems and teaching-learning activities.Many things are involved in online learning, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
According to New Media Horizon (2012), MOOCs were the next major thing in higher education's technological evolution. Also, New York Times (2013) described that it had taken the educational world by storm, signaling a significant educational change (retrieved from Chen, 2013, p. Therefore, more and more Asian universities are considering to offer MOOCs for students to access various academic fields in English as Second Language (ESL) context. Furthermore, science and technology fields are raising day by day so that engineering students have also considered to study through MOOCs in an ESL context.
Human knowledge is extremely large and unstoppably growing in modern society; therefore, it is crucial for engineering students to access the world, learn and widen knowledge via MOOCs. However, to connect to the world, the students have to use a global language as well as English. English language becoming a bridge to connect people around the world has resulted in a fact that more MOOCs taught and learned by English (English-MOOC or E-MOOC) have been launched. On the other hand, according to Chen (2013), the number of students participating in MOOCs have been increasing rapidly since 2012 (p.3), this has resulted that the number of Asian countries has been also growing as following brief descriptions: “In 2013, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education started a MOOC project to include 15 universitieswith 100 courses as target and the National Taiwan University joined Cousera.4) “The website glr.cn is the proponent of MOOC in China.4) “The National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technology University joined iTunes U.
The former also joined Coursera.4) In order to learn through English-MOOCs (E-MOOCs) effectively, university engineering students' self-efficacy is one of the most essential elements that can help to predict their successful performance through English-MOOCs as Hodges (2008) said that the main finding is that students' self-efficacy beliefs are related to academic achievement in a significant and positive way". Perceived self-efficacy is defined as "people's judgments of their capabilities to Supervisors: Phan 7|Page Student name: Truong Thi Thanh Huong Student ID number: 17016611 organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (Bandura, 1986, p. Based on a study of the literature on self-efficacy in Internet-based learning environments, Tsai, Chuang, Liang, and Tsai (2011) concluded that students' self-efficacy has a positive role in their attitude toward, as well as their processes and outcomes derived from Internet-based learning (p. For example, engineering students with a higher level of self- efficacy are likely to be more confident in online learning through E-MOOCs and vice versa.
Ali and Leed’s study (2009) shown that students in online learning environments have a greater drop- out rate than students in traditional learning contexts. That was linked to a lack of self-efficacy (Lee & Choi, 2011). In other words, self-efficacy can be a crucial component of academic achievement in distant education (Hodges, 2008); therefore, learning via MOOC with high self- efficacy levels can solve this matter. Thus, it is necessary to consider the levels of ESL engineering students’ self-efficacy in joining in English-MOOCs and factors that affect their self- efficacy levels in the two contexts in order to develop effective E-MOOCs in these ESL contexts can retain engineering students.2 Research Objectives: The purposes of the study were to a) compare how confident ESL engineering students are in E- MOOCs between NIU and IUH universities and b) examine if there are any differences in the factors that influence engineering students’ self-efficacy in E-MOOC between the two universities.
The results of this study may contribute to the development of MOOCs and the improvement of ESL engineering students’ self-efficacy at the two contexts in participating in English-MOOCs.3 Research Questions: To accomplish the purposes of this study, the research was carried out by a mixed-method utilizing questionnairesandgroup interviews. The following research questions were used to guide this study: 1.What are the perceived self-efficacy levels of engineering students in joining MOOCs at IUH and NIU universities? 2.What predicts engineering students’ self-efficacy in joining a MOOC in the two contexts? 1.4 Scope of the study: This study focuses on engineering students’ self-efficacy levels in learning an interdisciplinary English MOOC between the two contexts: at National Ilan University (NIU), Taiwan, and Supervisors: Phan 8|Page Student name: Truong Thi Thanh Huong Student ID number: 17016611 Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City (IUH),Vietnam. About 250 engineering students from the two universities will take part in this research. Quantitative data, which was collected by using a scale based on the Self-efficacy Questionnaire for Online Learning (SeQoL; Shen et al., 2013) will be processed by Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for getting valid and reliable results.
Qualitative data included focus group discussions collected from students in both contexts. The scale of this study consists of 30 items and 3 subscales (technology use, time management and learning in an interdisciplinary English MOOC environment). Supervisors: Phan 9|Page Student name: Truong Thi Thanh Huong Student ID number: 17016611 2. CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definitions Students’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs As stated by Bandura (1986), the term "perceived self-efficacy" refers to "people's judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments".
"Self-efficacy beliefs determine how people feel, think, motivate themselves and behave".