Eshani N.
Lee
*a,
Schetema
Nealy
b and
Laura
Cruz
c
aPennsylvania State University, Hazleton, PA, USA. E-mail: egl51@psu.edu
bCompton College, Compton, CA, USA
cPennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
First published on 9th January 2023
The unforeseen shift to virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic required instructors and students to face unprecedented learning challenges. Under these circumstances, Chinese international students who intended to come to the U.S. to begin their studies were required to remotely access their courses while still residing in China, which included a general chemistry laboratory course. Research suggests that English language learners (ELL) face a substantial language barrier in science-based courses as they must simultaneously be proficient in English as well as in the discipline-specific academic language; however, little is understood about how ELLs navigate these challenges in the context of a virtual chemistry laboratory course. This study examined the perceptions of Chinese international students about their learning as well as the tools/strategies they used to navigate the language barrier in the virtual laboratory course. Results suggest that although the participants perceived the virtual laboratory space as a safe and low-pressured environment to run experiments, they experienced difficulties in comprehending procedures adequately which potentially hindered them from developing a deeper understanding of the experiments. The types of strategies and tools that students used to navigate between their first language, the English language, and the academic language associated with chemistry mainly supported surface level learning. These findings underscore the need to identify and develop more sophisticated instructional strategies that help students navigate interlanguage spaces and reach higher levels of learning.
Supporting ELLs in college classrooms is perhaps especially salient for STEM disciplines, where there is a prioritized responsibility for advancing the strategic national interest in growing a larger, and more diverse, STEM workforce (Gamse et al., 2017; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018). In educational research, this imperative has taken the form of identifying, then remediating, sustained issues of persistence (or lack thereof) into STEM careers, especially in populations that have historically been underrepresented in the STEM field(s). There is indirect evidence that ELLs may be one of these affected subpopulations (LaCosse et al., 2020). At the K-12 level, a number of national level studies have indicated that ELLs tend to lag behind their counterparts in science-related assessments, starting as early as grade 8 (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018). Studies of a similar scope are largely absent in the higher education literature; however, practitioners note that the university setting is likely to compound the cognitive and linguistic challenges faced by ELLs in secondary science classrooms, especially as college students age (language learning is age sensitive) and disciplinary knowledge becomes more complex, abstract, and specialized (Oropeza et al., 2010; Harrison and Shi, 2016).
These challenges may manifest themselves in ELL attrition rates in STEM fields, especially in “gatekeeper” courses such as general chemistry. For example, the attrition rate of undergraduates pursuing STEM majors is more than 50% for first-year students, which is when many students are enrolled in general chemistry (Carter and Brickhouse, 1989; Astin and Astin, 1992; Woldeamanuel et al., 2014). Although the attrition rate for ELL undergraduates in STEM is unknown, literature suggests that ELLs face compounded challenges in introductory science courses, especially general chemistry, which likely adversely impacts their attrition. ELLs enrolled in general chemistry courses face a triple challenge as they must learn (1) basic conversational English, (2) content-specific language, and (3) deeper specialized language structures used in scientific inquiry (i.e., formulating hypotheses, making inferences, drawing conclusions, and asking questions). Indeed, researchers have noted that learning chemistry requires not only a knowledge of vocabulary and concepts, but also a “special way of thinking” as learning chemistry involves higher order skills such as forming an argument, analysing, synthesizing, and establishing cross connections in content knowledge and practices (Carter and Brickhouse, 1989; Woldeamanuel et al., 2014).
Understanding how ELLs navigate these types of challenges may help address issues related to attrition in chemistry. However, these challenges have not yet been examined in the virtual learning environment. The abrupt shift to remote learning imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic during the academic year of 2020–2021 potentially further exacerbated these challenges for ELLs and introduced new barriers to learning for most students (Gemmel et al., 2020; Ramachandran and Rodriguez, 2020). Virtual laboratories served a critical purpose during this time by providing meaningful learning experiences and methods to apply conceptual knowledge to solve practical problems (Singh, 2016). Although there were benefits to using virtual labs during this time, there were also some noteworthy disadvantages that left students to figure out their own strategies and tools to use to augment their learning (Chan et al., 2021). Understanding ELL students’ perceptions and the strategies and tools they used to circumvent the challenges imposed by virtual learning can provide key insights about how we can better serve the distinctive learning needs of these diverse populations across multiple modalities.
For the purposes of the current study, we were most interested in understanding how Chinese-language students, who were quarantined in Shanghai, navigated their own learning during a virtual laboratory course in general chemistry that was hosted by a U.S. university and taught in English. This qualitative study uses a phenomenographic lens to gain insight on how these ELL students navigated this virtual learning environment. The following research questions guided this study:
1. How do ELL students perceive their learning in the virtual chemistry lab course?
2. What types of language learning strategies and/or tools do ELL students use to navigate linguistic challenges?
3. How do ELL students use language learning strategies and/or tools to support their learning?
This perspective has been predominant in many existing studies of ELLs in K-12 education, notably in STEM fields. A single-classroom study, for example, examined how a digital tutoring program that used images in conjunction with text addressed inequities in both knowledge and self-efficacy experienced by ELLs in high school math courses (Freeman, 2011). Similarly, a study concluded that VR experiences would need to be tailored to the needs of ELLs in order to provide “educational equity to those that may easily fall behind their peers due to cultural and language barriers” (Lee et al., 2019a, p.1). These studies underscore that the differences in language, race, culture, and country of origin have been too often regarded as educational obstacles rather than assets.
Emerging studies of interlanguage development have broadened the focus of research to include both cognitive and non-cognitive factors, with particular emphasis on the significance of context, whether disciplinary, instructional, or even social (i.e., other students) characteristics. In contrast to best practices in first language development from early childhood education, this line of inquiry emphasizes an integrated approach, in which interlanguage learning is interwoven across the curriculum, even finding its way into co- and extra- curricular activities.
Leaders in K-12 STEM education have had demonstrable success with this approach (de Araujo et al., 2018); however, it stands in even sharper contrast to the common practice in higher education, in which English as a Second Language (ESL) programs are offered separately from disciplinary-based courses, often in a non- or low-credit format. Part of the rationale for this separation are the considerable challenges inherent in integrating practice across university curricula. That said, several practitioners have pointed out that an integrated approach, emphasizing contextualized social learning, e.g., sociolinguistic approaches, is in keeping with recent pedagogical advances in both STEM and ESL education (Lee and Stephens, 2020). These advances include practices such as peer or team-based learning, as well as the deeper epistemological shift towards constructive theories of learning, which acknowledge how learners construct knowledge, regardless of domain, relative to their own personal context (Sanders, 2009; Collier et al., 2016).
Drawing on the K-12 literature, researchers in higher education have noted similar challenges with the “high linguistic demand” of many terms used in chemistry and argued for tailored pedagogical strategies to address specific challenges, including factors such as context, semantics, and dual representations, that ELLs may face (Pyburn et al., 2013; Vladušić et al., 2016; Rees et al., 2019). Among others, one proposed strategy is the use of metacognitive scaffolding, or repeated practice, across multiple contexts (Rees et al., 2019), as well as teach-backs, in which students explain how they solved a particular problem to another student (Mercier et al., 2021).
Conducting science investigations in small groups provides ELLs with an authentic context in which to communicate with peers (i.e., opportunity to make purposeful use of English), and hence improve their language proficiency (Jackson and Ash, 2012; Shaw et al., 2014; Zwiep et al., 2011). These studies also provide evidence that the multiple modes of communication (gestural, oral, graphic, and textual) and the concrete nature of inquiry experiences help make science content more accessible to ELLs (than decontextualized textbook knowledge), fostering increased science achievement.
In the context of higher education, the corollaries to hands-on learning are experiential learning, especially lab-based science, and, more broadly, inquiry-guided learning (IGL). There are only a handful of extant studies (Lee et al., 2020) that focus specifically on how ELLs learn in university laboratory settings, however, they are suggestive that there may be similar benefits, with the addition of opportunities to learn from the instructor as a role model of (presumably) a practicing scientist and scientific researcher. At the same time, there is evidence that simply introducing hands-on activities in and of themselves is insufficient to reach the higher order thinking outcomes that are especially valued in the higher education context (Lee and Buxton, 2013; Oliveira et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2019b); and that intentional design is needed to maximize the benefits across the spectrum of ELLs (Freeman and Kochan 2012).
That said, there is evidence that virtual science labs also provided affordances for certain types of learners, including, to some extent, ELLs. Even prior to the outbreak of the global pandemic, emerging evidence suggested that virtual labs may provide ELLs with immediate access to linguistic support; greater integration of visual instructions; and a heightened sense of security, i.e. the ability to make, and learn from mistakes, whether scientific or linguistic (Rao, 2015; Chen and Kent, 2020; Nurieva, and Garaeva; 2020). The balance of the benefits and costs of virtual learning for ELLs has yet to be studied in the context of higher education; a gap the present study seeks to address by examining how a group of Chinese-language students (n = 10) engaged with an English-language virtual chemistry lab taught under COVID-19 conditions.
The current study's design was informed by phenomenography. Phenomenography is a methodological framework that studies the different ways in which people think of a lived experience, concept, or phenomena. Unlike phenomenology, which aims to study a given phenomenon (i.e., a common/shared experience), phenomenography is focused on studying how people experience a given phenomenon in different ways (Marton, 1981). Phenomenography has been applied to answer many types of questions related to chemistry education and science education studies including questions about students’ ideas of a scientific concept, students’ ways of thinking about a topic, and perceptions about science and scientific processes (Marton, 1994; Lybeck et al., 1988; Carlsson, 2002; Ingerman and Booth, 2003; Ellis, 2004).
In this study, we were interested in the various learning experiences of a small cohort of Chinese students in the virtual chemistry lab course under extenuating circumstances during the pandemic; therefore, we defined the phenomenon as the virtual laboratory course. Given the shortage of research on this topic and the novelty of these circumstances, we aimed to use this framework to understand the diverse ways that this cohort of students experienced the virtual chemistry lab course; particularly, how they perceived Lab Sims, and how they attempted to used strategies/tools to navigate the language barrier.
All international students from China were required to pass the College English TEST (CET) in order to enrol in the university. Many participants were exposed to English before college; however, English is typically taught in the traditional grammar-translation method emphasizing the written form more than the spoken form (Wan, 2001). Although all participants passed the CET, they still experience many challenges with using English as the primary language of learning. The participants in this study fulfilled the requirements to be admitted to the university and had planned to immigrate to the U.S. to begin their courses in the Fall 2020 term; however, due to travel restrictions imposed on China during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, they had to complete all their coursework remotely.
A total of ten participants were recruited. Announcements about the study and recruitment efforts were aimed at the students enrolled in the first semester general chemistry course that used Lab Sims. A schedule to sign up for interviews was posted on the learning management system by a member of the research team. Participants were in the age range of 18–20 years old; there were four female students and six male students. All participants were enrolled in a first semester general chemistry laboratory course, along with a general chemistry lecture course, with virtual instruction hosted through the learning management system.
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Fig. 2 Screenshot of Lab Sims’ virtual lab bench when running the acid base titration experiment. Permissions obtained from Macmillan Learning. Copyright 2022 by Macmillan. |
During the weekly virtual class meetings on Zoom, the instructor would introduce the experiment, provide a demonstration on Lab Sims and place groups of students in breakout rooms to run the experiment. The instructor and TA would monitor the breakout rooms. Near the end of the class period, the instructor reconvened the students to discuss any problems, reflect on the data and draw conclusions about the experiment. Students were encouraged to review their data for analysis and complete the post-lab assessment before the next class.
To enrol in Lab Sims, students were required to purchase an access code through the Hayden-McNeil website. Once an access code was purchased, students were able to register and begin using the software on their internet browser on any device. To access a new experiment, the users first click on the name of the experiment from the home landing page, then they are routed to the background information page containing the concepts and applications of the experiment. The next page allows students to access the procedures and open the virtual lab bench simulation to begin the experiment. The students are expected to have two tabs open in the browser – one to view the procedures and one to run the virtual experiment.
The interview protocol consisted of four main sections: (1) informed consent, (2) demographics, (3) rapport building questions, and (4) questions related to students’ experiences in the virtual lab course and their use of self-help strategies in the course. Questions such as “How did you find the experiments on Lab Sims?” and “What were some challenges you faced with English being the language of instruction in this course?” were included to prompt participants to discuss their perceptions. A full copy of the interview protocol has been included in the appendix.
In-person interviews were scheduled at the end of the Fall 2020 semester after students had completed the final laboratory exam. One-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted using Zoom software (https://zoom.us/) and lasted approximately 25–35 minutes with each participant. A total of 10 interviews were conducted. All interviews were audio-recorded, and videos were kept disabled. Participants’ names and any pertinent identifiable information were de-identified and pseudonyms have been used to discuss the data.
All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the university's Internal Review Board with the Office of Research Protections (Case ID: STUDY00016332). Informed consent was obtained from all participants in this study.
1. Structural coding (Saldana, 2021) was used in the first round of data analysis. As such, transcripts were initially coded based on the specific research questions of this study: (1) how the students described virtual learning using Lab Sims, (2) how students responded to language-based challenges that may have occurred during the course, and (3) the types of strategies and/or tools the students used to navigate these types of challenges. Responses related to the study's research questions were identified and notes about the varying aspects of students’ responses were made. Transcripts were read repeatedly to collect all aspects reported in the data with the same degree of acuity (Marton and Booth, 1997).
2. From the responses highlighted and the notes made, we used pattern coding (Saldana, 2021) in the second round of data analysis to search for patterns relating to students’ perceptions of their learning in the course (e.g., “I liked using Lab Sims,” or “It was hard to follow the procedures,” etc.). These patterns were grouped into categories (e.g., positive or negative perceptions of Lab Sims, challenges in understanding procedures, and helpful strategy). All patterns were checked again in the data and then again in relation to overlapping categories. The categories shifted in response to re-reading the data.
3. The authors came together at this point in analysis to discuss their established categories to ensure inter-rater reliability. Representative excerpts from the transcripts were discussed that supported each category. Our discussions led to a re-working and re-grouping of some categories and re-classification of representative excerpts. With all authors in agreement, a final version of the category descriptions was established.
4. The final categories and excerpts from students’ responses created the “outcome space” in this phenomenographic study (Marton and Booth, 1997). These final categories fell under three main themes, which we labelled as assertions: (1) virtual labs foster a safe environment for ELLs (e.g., the ability for the students to make mistakes and repeat experiments as needed); (2) students struggle with trans-languaging in the lab setting (e.g., students experience linguistic challenges when making meaning between the Chinese, English, and chemistry languages); (3) students need more sophisticated metacognitive strategies to navigate (virtual) interlanguage spaces (e.g., the students’ use of tools and strategies do not provide sufficient interlanguage support required for deeper understanding of the chemistry topics).
To enhance the credibility of the findings, the coding team consisted of three coders, two of whom are researchers from outside of the campus where the course was taught, both with experience in qualitative methods.
Most students (7 out of 10) found the virtual lab environment to be realistic, especially in terms of the verisimilitude of the (visualizations) which can have a positive effect on their perception of learning. Lin stated, “The website is good looking and [has] fine and rich details. You can see real water on the [simulation] sitting there, not like it's just a figure on the bottle. So […] it's realistic” [Interview #3]. Similarly, Yan mentioned that the platform was “how to say that word? Lifelike? It's pretty real as a simulation” [Interview #5]. Visual animations like adding solutions to glassware, changes in the colors of solutions during chemical reactions, etc., were some of the favorite features of the platform. “The virtual lab is kind of amazing for me because you can show such phenomenon [chemical reactions]. Probably if we are in [real] lab, we can’t see the phenomena…” Zhen noted that there was added value in being able to see simulated chemical reactions occurring live on the screen as it made the experience feel more “real” [Interview #1]. A previous study on undergraduates’ perceptions of an organic chemistry virtual lab simulation program suggested that students who found the simulation to be easy to use and liked the “look and feel” are more likely to achieve a higher grade in the course (Woodfield et al., 2005). This finding indicates that students’ perceptions of Lab Sims is generally favorable in terms of its “look and feel,” which may play an important role in their learning.
Students also recognized that Lab Sims provided a low-pressure space to explore, make mistakes and repeat experiments if needed. Yan recognized that in the in-person lab, there would be limitations on the usage of reagents and materials due to waste and disposal protocols. However, in this case, there was no fear of “running out” of a reagent. Yan stated,
“We don’t have to worry about the materials, or somethings like that. I mean, just clicking mouse and watching screens are not like doing experiments in real lab and transitional liquids between tubes. I mean, since we can’t do the experiment, but under such a situation, it's pretty good” [Interview #5].
To maintain focus on lab safety practices, Lab Sims has integrated warning prompts that stop the user from mishandling equipment and remind the user to properly dispose of chemical waste. Many students (7 out of 10) indicated that they found these to be helpful and practical training reminders of best practices involved in working in a chemistry lab. For example, Lin discussed these warnings enabled him to correct his mistakes:
“I think [Lab Sims] helped me a lot. Not only providing me some equipment, some chemical matters. Also notices [warnings] like you need to wait until the vessel cools down, or you need to put some vessel in [water bath] …. It will cause some pretty serious problems [in real labs]. So, it gave me some chances to correct my mistakes” [Interview #3].
Research has shown that one of the reasons undergraduate ELLs are reluctant to dive in and conduct experiments in face-to-face general chemistry labs is the perceived risk of misinterpreting the procedures and potentially causing safety issues in the laboratory (Lee et al., 2020). Although the difficulty in reading and interpreting procedures was still apparent in the virtual lab environment (to be discussed in Assertion 2), students in this study seemed to be more engaged in conducting the experiment potentially because they were less afraid of making critical errors and understood that procedures can be repeated indefinitely. Shang stated, “There's no risk online. There's no health risk in a virtual lab” [Interview #8]. Similarly, Yimin mentioned, “I think I like it because you can do it repeatedly. And if you think you have something wrong, you can just do it again and again” [Interview #2]. Zhi also noted “I soon found that doing online is also helpful because I can repeat the experiment… I am not afraid of making mistakes” [Interview #6].
This finding is consistent with a previous study on undergraduates’ responses to an organic chemistry virtual lab simulation program, which highlighted that student generally favored the program because it gave them the opportunity to conduct experiments without making a mess in the wet lab and allowed students to freely run “what if” type experiments and “blow things up” (Woodfield et al., 2005). This idea of laboratory learning in a low-pressured and safe space should be further explored as it seemed to have assuaged a critical barrier for ELL students and encouraged a greater level of involvement in conducting the experiment.
In the current study, we found that many students (8 out of 10) were unable to process the procedural steps adequately, which may have hindered them from forming a deeper understanding of the experiment. Liang stated that although she can read the words in the text, it was still very difficult to interpret and perform the tasks described:
“So, when I read it, I can see what is asking me to do but I don’t know how to do it…. So, pressing the burettes in Part A, there is a sentence saying that front of the burette by pressing and holding the stop clock for about two seconds. I don’t know how to repeat this step in the virtual lab” [Interview #10].
Here, Liang is referring to a key step in the acid base titration experiment, where the titrant is gradually being added to the analyte by clicking on the burette's stopcock intermittently. The students’ comprehension was derailed by the wording, and they seemed to have missed that the overall purpose of this step was to incrementally add sodium hydroxide to the flask containing hydrochloric acid to find the volume of neutralization.
Recent research suggests that these kinds of cognitive overload occurrences can be ameliorated through the integration of external features such as illustrations, contextual cues, or linguistic simplification that assuage the language barrier in chemistry for ELLs (Lee and Orgill, 2021). The students made similar recommendations here, especially related to vocabulary and visual organization. For example, David discussed that pictures in the procedures would help them fill in the gaps when they are confronted with unfamiliar words: “…a picture would be more direct because reading takes a lot of time because there are so many words and long sentences. It's not easy for English learners” [Interview #7]. Another recommendation was to emphasize key parts, “maybe make the important sentences to be highlighted,” mentioned Lin [Interview #3]. Another student suggested that separating the tasks to perform in the procedures from the parts where they are asked to document data would make it easier for them to follow the steps: “I think you can add parentheses where you are giving things like ‘read and record the liquid body to meniscus’… You can separate the experiment from recording” [Interview #9]. Yan added that “…it can be divided in smaller steps, or you can make the words easier to understand” [Interview #5].
Language processing was not the only trans-languaging challenge these students faced in the virtual lab environment. Students were required to complete pre-lab activities and post-lab quizzes to prepare and reflect on the experiment, which required the use of higher order thinking skills to predict, hypothesize, form interpretations based on experimental concepts and synthesize probable conclusions. The cognitive struggle to conduct these types of activities was evident, especially during timed quizzes: “That's…a challenge to me because I always try to find the best way to express my idea, but you know the time is limited. So, I have to be quick on that,” stated Yimin [Interview #2]. Ling stated, “Sometimes I don’t understand the questions. I think their languages are blurred and I don’t know what the question is asking about” [Interview #9]. Other students were unable to get past specialized vocabulary. Zhi mentioned that it was challenging to follow because “Sometimes, some vocabularies [need to be translated] … [for example] ‘increment’” [Interview #6].
In this particular case, the word “increment” seemed to have disrupted students’ meaning-making processes as they were unable to find an accurate and meaningful translation that could be applied in this specific context of conducting the acid-base titration experiment. According to the Googled definition, increment (noun) is “an increase or addition, especially one of a series on a fixed scale.” This definition includes terms that ELLs are most likely unfamiliar with such as “series” or “fixed” or “scale” in everyday life, which impedes the process of understanding what “increment” means. Unfortunately, many ELL students in this study relied on such Googled definitions, and other readily available, commercial dictionaries and bilingual dictionaries that have often broader, not chemistry content-specific definitions, and translations to some words are not always available and/or accurate (Abedi et al., 2005) (to be further discussed in Assertion 3). This finding suggests that when faced with ambiguities or incongruities related to linguistic understanding (i.e., inability to form an accurate meaning of chemistry terms), the students tended to apply trans-languaging strategies (i.e., look up definitions in English, translate to Chinese and form meanings in chemistry) that resulted in incomplete knowledge creation, especially at the level of higher order thinking.
Yan: “If I think I need more explanation or something to help me understand about the definition or about some calculations, I will try to search some resources on internet.”
Interviewer: “What types of resources or sites did you find helpful?
Yan: “Actually, I can’t tell some specific sites…I have searched some definitions on site I googled” [Interview #5].
One of the major benefits of this virtual lab course was that the students can use online resources to enhance their learning; however, Yan's comment highlights that knowing how to look up information is not enough for effective learning. It would appear that these students have reasonable digital literacy skills (how to access, create, and share digital information) and are tech-savvy, but may lack the ability to effectively transition those skills into scientific understanding. Helping students learn how to bridge digital literacy with scientific literacy would be highly advantageous as learning becomes increasingly digitalized.
The shift to virtual labs may have enabled students to have more immediate access to online language resources, such as online translators, or visualizations, such as with Lab Sims, but this shift also constrained opportunities for the students to practice language-in-use, whether as modelled by the instructor, or through peer interaction. Jian stated:
“Before the virus, I preferred to study in the class because I can cooperate with my classmates and we can solve the problems together; however, because of the virus I must stay at home, so I cannot share my opinion with classmates face-to-face. It's really hard for me to study” [Interview #4].
To circumvent the challenge of not being able to work with others in-person, several students mentioned that they used group chats during class to collaborate and share ideas, such as WeChat (Chinese instant messaging and calling app for smart phones) and/or WhatsApp (international messaging and calling app for smart phones). In these settings, however, the predominant language of communication is (likely) Chinese, which provides little opportunity to advance their English language proficiencies and cultivate an interlanguage. Fig. 4 shows a synopsis of the types of tools students described here to navigate between the language domains.
Studies of online learning have shown that both synchronous (e.g., Teams, Zoom) and asynchronous (WhatsApp) online modalities provide challenges for students, regardless of language status (Wiederhold, 2020; Bailenson, 2021). Even “live” technology mediation challenges a learner's ability to perceive and process non-verbal communication cues, such as facial expressions or body language. For these reasons, learning design theorists place considerable emphasis on alternative means for bolstering instructor and social presence within online spaces (Garrison et al., 2010). The students in this study seemed to have recognized the challenge they faced in the virtual environment, in this case lower levels of social learning, but they lacked the ability to navigate it effectively, settling on sub-optimal substitutions, i.e., the online chat groups.
As we shift to more of a blended instructional approach in the post-pandemic era, the results of this study offer practical insights to chemistry educators about ways to better support ELL students in laboratory courses. For example, chemistry educators can offer virtual laboratory experiences as pre-laboratory exercises, which would provide a safe space for ELL students to navigate linguistic challenges at their own pace. Being able to work through the linguistic challenges ahead of time in this way may allow ELLs to focus more on gaining higher order skills necessary to learn chemistry. One of the findings showed that ELLs were unable to find clear and accurate definitions of chemistry terms using their own resources. To better support ELLs in navigating the interlanguage space, educators can provide embedded glossaries to define chemistry terms using chemistry-specific definitions and examples.
Additionally, the insights gained support a conceptual shift from deficit to asset-based models for both research and practice in working with ELLs across multiple disciplines. The experiences of the Chinese-language students in this study, while focused on a single course, shed light on the need to identify and develop more sophisticated metacognitive strategies that enable students to successfully navigate trans-language spaces and reach higher levels of learning in chemistry.
It should be noted that this space also includes students who may be native English speakers, but who are relative newcomers to the advanced language of chemistry. It seems likely that many of the challenges faced by ELLs mirror those faced by other students, differing perhaps in degree or intensity, but suggestive of potential interventions that may benefit more than just the ELLs in the classroom. Indeed, the literature on inclusive teaching is replete with similar examples, where affordances provided to accommodate the needs of one group have provided wider benefits to others (Gradel and Edson, 2009; Rao and Torres, 2016; Rao and Tanners, 2016). This research runs the risk, however, of treating ELLs as a single group of subpopulations, which, as noted previously overlooks key differences in how different groups, or even individual students approach trans-language situations.
In the case of this study, the students are all from China, and were engaging in online learning through a U.S. university, which limits the representative claims that can be made from their insights. Along with other countries in East Asia, China is moving towards the universal adoption of English as the primary medium of instruction in higher education (Galloway et al., 2020). The majority of students included in this study indicated that they have enrolled in multiple courses that used English as the language of instruction. English language instruction is, however, less and less likely to have been provided by a person who has spoken English since birth, as was the case for this study. Indeed, a number of studies have indicated that the majority of English language instruction is shifting towards non-native speakers, as the latter have greater insight and experience with learning global English later in life (Calafato, 2019; Floris and Renandya, 2020).
The shift towards English language instruction in East Asia, and elsewhere, is driven by the global economic realities, in which global or World Englishes, increasingly function as the lingua franca, or a shared language, of business, politics, and knowledge production inside and outside of academia. In other words, the development of proficient English language speakers is a matter of strategic importance that supports the development of a diverse and interconnected STEM workforce. Identifying integrated strategies to support the success of these students in advanced science fields, which Fig. 4 illustrates, is imperative, but not just because of the economic opportunities it provides to the students and their families, nor just because it benefits universities in English-speaking countries who are seeking to attract and retain international students. In the long run, these strategies may serve to enable everyone to speak the shared language of science.
A. Hi_________________, I want to thank you for taking time to meet with me today. I appreciate your insights and help with this project.
Your TA, _________, is also joining us for this interview. He is available to help us translate between English and Chinese. Please feel free to speak in either English or Chinese and do not hesitate to ask him for help with translating your thoughts.
Before we begin, I’d like to ask – did you receive the Informed Consent document I emailed you?
i. Did you have a chance to read it?
ii. Do you have any questions about it?
iii. Do you agree to participate in this interview? Do you agree to be audio-taped during the interview? If so, could you please sign this copy of the Informed Consent document? Thank you.
II. Demographic questions
A. Where were you born? Age? Gender?
B. Which language(s) did you grown up speaking?
D. How long have you been learning the English language?
E. How many courses have you taken that required the English language so far?
III. Rapport building questions
A. Is this your first year in college? Which courses are you currently taking?
B. How do you feel about your coursework so far?
IV. Learning chemistry virtually during the pandemic
A. A lot has changed this year since the COVID-19 lockdown. The pandemic forced all of us to change the way we attend, participate in class, and even change our study habits. Think about how classes were for you before the pandemic lockdown and how different things are now. How have you changed your own approach to learning since the shift to remote learning?
i. Do you find your study habits changing? If so, how are you studying differently during now?
B. Before the pandemic, this course would have been offered to you to be in a physical laboratory, where you would be performing experiments using real lab equipment. We used Lab Sims as the virtual lab platform in this class. I want to know about your experience doing virtual experiments in Lab Sims.
i. Can you please tell me about how virtual labs have been for you in this class? What has been good about it? What has been not so good about it?
ii. How did you find the experiments you did on Lab Sims? Easy? Difficult? Why?
iii. Did the experiments give you a good idea of how could do the same experiments in real life?
iv. What was your favourite experiment so far? What was your least favourite? Why?
v. If you had to do the same experiments in a real laboratory, how do you think it would be? Similar or different? Why?
vi. Do you think this course would have been better if it were in person in a real lab space? Why or why not?
C. Have you ever taken a lab-based course before this class?
i. Before you started this course, what did you expect out of a virtual lab course?
ii. Are in-person lab classes better than virtual labs for you? What are the advantages of each? What are the challenges of each?
iii. Would you rather take a hands-on lab course or a virtual lab course as this one again? Why?
D. In this class, we meet on ZOOM, and you meet in person with your TA.
i. What are some benefits to you about meeting live on ZOOM?
ii. What are some benefits to you about meeting in-person on campus?
iii. Which one do you prefer? Why?
iv. What has been your experience been working with other students in this class?
v. Do you think you participate more in-person or on ZOOM? Why?
V. Comprehending lab procedures: i want you to take a look at this lab protocol from Lab Sims on Acid-Base Titration lab. (Share on ZOOM screen and file share) Please take a few minutes to read steps 1 to 9 under Experiment 1.
A. After reading these steps, do you feel like you have a good idea of what you need to do in this experiment? Explain how you would set it up.
B. Which parts were unclear? How would you change these steps to make it easier?
C. Do you need to look up any info to understand the procedures? If so, what would you need to look up?
D. In the beginning of lab, the instructor typically provides a demo on how to setup the experiment. How useful is the demo for you?
VI. Language barrier: as you know, this course is taught by Penn State, so the official language is English in this class. Because your first language is not English, there could be some challenges with translating some words and expressing thoughts in English.
A. What were some challenges you faced in this class because of the language being English?
B. What did you do to overcome these challenges?
C. Were there any tools or someone else you asked for help to support your learning?
VI. Let me take this chance to thank you for meeting with me. I appreciate your time and feedback.
A. Member checking: just to make sure I have everything correct – let me review your responses to these questions. Please let me know if you would like to add or change your responses.
B. Is there anything else you would like to share regarding your experience in this class? Do you have any questions for me?
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