An EFL flipped learning course design: utilizing students’ mobile online devices

This paper reports on a research project in a university English as Foreign Language (EFL) program in Japan which explored ways to sustain active participation in e-learning tasks. The tasks were intended to improve students’ scores on the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC), a test used by businesses to make hiring decisions. The research adopted a Flipped Learning (FL) approach to Blended Learning (BL). A web-based courseware, ATR CALL BRIX (http://www.atr-lt.jp/products/brix/index.html), which featured e-learning materials for the TOEIC Test, was used. The students used mobile devices to access the courseware before class in order to prepare for in-class teacher-student analysis of their performance on the learning tasks. The teaching methodology integrated the online and in-class tasks in a single learning environment by means of an e-mentoring system used in conjunction with an in-class student self-evaluation task. The findings of preand post-TOEIC testing showed a significant degree of TOEIC score improvement in the experimental group. Post-course evaluations revealed that the combination of e-mentoring and the in-class self-evaluation system had encouraged sustained engagement in outside-of-class learning activities.