HOW SCHOOLOGY FACILITATES EFL LEARNER AUTONOMY IN WRITING PRACTICE

Abstract

This research investigates how Schoology can facilitate students to apply autonomous learning skills in writing practice, and finds out what student desire in a writing course on Schoology to improve learner autonomy (LA). Participants of the research included 60 grade-10 students who experienced practicing writing skill on Schoology during the first 26 periods of a semester. Questionnaire and individual interview were employed to collect data, which were then analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings show that Schoology could enable improvement of LA in writing practice by providing the students with an interactive community to voice their ideas, individualizing their learning, helping them to track their learning, and offering other facilitating activities. On the other hand, some minor challenges including encountering technical problems, having insufficient knowledge of using online learning platforms, lacking persistence, and being overwhelmed with core subjects were conducive to passive learning of several students on Schoology. To achieve better outcomes for the next course on Schoology, most of the students expected to have a larger number of learning references, writing tasks, recommendations on writing samples, and frequent teachers’ feedback and encouragement on their writings.