TIME ON TASK AND TIME MANAGEMENT IN AN ENGLISH E-LEARNING PROGRAM

E-learning has a lot of benefits. Flexibility is one obvious benefit of e-learning. Students can study anytime anywhere. It also provides students the flexibility to study at their own pace. However, absence of face-to-face supervision in e-learning requires learners to manage their study autonomously.
For the past ten years, the authors have developed an English e-learning program called “Intensive English Training on the Web (IETW)” for their university students studying English as a foreign language. The program has been offered as a regular undergraduate course for first- and second-year students. Under the program, students are given intensive practice in English reading, listening, and grammar for eight to ten weeks. Practice exercises are presented on web browsers through a computer network. All the study records are stored on a file server, and the Learning Management System (LMS), specially designed for this program, allows teachers to monitor, track, and assess the students’ study progress and performance. TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) tests are administered before and after the program to measure improvement of students’ English proficiency.
This presentation reports on the study the authors conducted in 2010 to investigate the relationship between the participants’ TOEIC score gains and their time management on the program. The findings of the study include:
- Unmotivated students tended to have poor time management; they had a tendency to cram immediately before the weekly deadline.
- Time on task for students who had a tendency to cram before the deadline was much shorter than that for those who distributed their study rather evenly throughout the week.
- Average TOEIC score gain for students who had good time management was larger than that for those who had poor time management.