Promoting EFL Learner Autonomy in a Teacher-Centered Culture through Video-Sharing and Collaborating in Online Forums

. This action research was undertaken at a university language center in Ambato, Ecua- dor, as a result of concerns over the high level of teacher dependence among learners of English as a Second Language (EFL). The project aimed at assessing the development of autonomous learning be- havior and the motivational impact of student collaboration on encouraging a change in student behavior toward autonomy. The participating students were 154 EFL students of lower advanced levels who engaged in a 5-week intervention addressed at encouraging autonomous listening comprehension practice through videos. Participants used the Moodle ® platform to share videos with peers of the same level, who were also able to post comments on the content of the videos. Quantitative and qualitative parameters were used to assess the achievement of two objectives: the extent of the development of autonomous behavior; and the extent of the motivational impact of student collaboration on encouraging autonomous behavior. Analysis of participation showed development of student autonomy when measured against three of the four parameters used. Analysis of feedback showed the platform-based collaborative learning strategy had a significant impact on student motivation and engagement during the intervention. Feedback included the recommendation to extend and improve the intervention, while complementing it with a medium to allow greater interaction in real time. the final 80% of useful with no reservations or A videos some 9.3% them. random


Context of the research
The study described here arose as a result of the low levels of ability and willingness to engage in autonomous learning observed in advanced learner classrooms at a university language center in Ecuador.
These observations showed little evidence of any additional practice being undertaken by students other than the work assigned by teachers, and especially that which contributed toward the semester grade.
The lack of autonomy observed in the participants in this research is a symptom of the teaching-learning culture in Ecuador-and indeed, much of Latin America-, which is overwhelmingly teacher-centered and motivated by the desire to achieve certificates issued by teachers, often based on subjective criteria (Edwards, 2019;Yunga-Godoy, Loaiza, Ramón-Jaramillo, & Puertas, 2016). In an extensive report on the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) performance in Latin America, Chaia, Child, Dorn, Frank, Krawitz, and Mourshed (2017) consider a lack of individual growth mind-sets and a poorly developed ability to take responsibility for success in secondary-school students to be key factors limiting progress in PISA scores in the region.
Furthermore, language learning continues to be viewed as a largely academic subject dominated by rules and right or wrong answers, mediated by the teacher and institution, rather than the individual user's ability to perform real-world tasks based on the development of competences. These are ingrained behaviors that require a structured and consistent intervention if they are to be transformed. Therefore, the five-week intervention described below was conceived as an indicator of the potential for change in the autonomous learning behavior of students and to explore approaches to achieving a more long-term behavioral transformation.
Student autonomy and collaborative learning have both been labeled products of northern European and North American culture (Sonaiya, 2002;Tabulawa, 2003) due to the emphasis on individualism within a broad social network found in those cultures. There is an UNIVERSIDAD DE LA SABANA DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES extensive literature that critiques the imposition of these and other educational paradigms on societies whose view of individual and social relationships is historically distinct, with special emphasis on the conflict between autonomy and African and East Asian cultures. There is no corresponding corpus of research into the situation as experienced in Latin America. However, the authors of this study subscribe to the view that "there are no intrinsic differences that make students in one [cultural] group either less, or more, capable of developing whatever forms of autonomy are seen as appropriate to language learning" (Littlewood, 1999, p. 88). Therefore, there is no ethical question arising from encouraging autonomy in this context: It is an effective approach that enjoys a broad base of support among authors and practitioners aimed at ensuring continued progress for advanced learners and, as an action research project, was undertaken primarily in the best interests of the participants in this study.

Current State of the Debate and Research Aims
Learner autonomy in Western educational models, and specifically in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning, is well established as an essential element of the teaching-learning process. Progress through the intermediate and advanced levels of target language acquisition requires both ability and willingness on the part of students to manage their own learning (Benson & Cooker, 2013). Of these two behavioral aspects, "ability" was the focus of earlier debate, starting from the 1980s with Holec's (1981) seminal work, and practical approaches to fostering student procedural knowledge were then developed by Nunan (1988), Benson and Voller (1997), and others. Following this, "willingness," that is, student motivation for undertaking the responsibility of managing their own learning, while always considered a factor, became increasingly central to the success of approaches seeking to develop student autonomy (Dörnyei & Murphey, 2003;Dörnyei, Ibrahim, & Muir, 2015;Ushioda, 2011Ushioda, , 2013. The current synthesis of these two concepts, in which this study was conceived, is that the empowerment that comes from ability promotes willingness to engage, while motivation to learn increases the efficacy of applied procedural knowledge. Various authors have also attempted to define stages of autonomy, rather than using a simple learner-centered versus teacher-centered analysis. Littlewood (1999) described "reactive" and "proactive" levels of autonomy, which were complemented by Smith's (2003) "weak" and "strong" pedagogies for autonomy. According to Littlewood's definition, "reactively" autonomous students are familiar with-and regularly use-some learner-centered strategies, but maintain a largely teacher-centered mind-set. Reactive autonomy and weak pedagogies are certainly not regarded as undesirable, but there is a consensus that the goal of developmental strategies in this area should be eventually to produce "proactive" behavior through "strong" pedagogies (Benson, 2007). In this definition, learners should, therefore, also show understanding and appreciation of the benefits of being autonomous and actively seek out opportunities for their own development, and this view underpins the first aim of this research: To assess the extent of the development of "proactive" autonomous behavior in university language center students.
The definition of the context in which autonomous learning should take place has also shifted over recent decades. Initially, authors emphasized the ability of the student to learn effectively when outside of the classroom, in total independence (Knowles, 1975;Holec, 1981).
During the 1990s, the importance of autonomy within the classroom became the central focus. This not only included the general transfer of control from teacher to student (Nunan, 1997(Nunan, , 2003, but the development of student-student interdependence as part of the Vygotszkian collaborative and social-learning approach might also be extended outside of the classroom, in what was once the domain of the fully independent, isolated learner (Nunan & Richards, 2015;Murray, 2015, Reinders & Benson, 2017. Several authors have put forward the benefits of encouraging collaboration within a learning community (Ke & Hoadley, 2009;Murdock & Williams, 2011), among which motivation for practice or study stands out (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011). For autonomy to be successful in this out-of-classroom context, students must have the ability and willingness to learn both independently of the teacher and interdependently with peers (Benson & Cooker, 2013).
It should be borne in mind that collaborative autonomy outside of the classroom is not simply a natural progression of the approaches UNIVERSIDAD DE LA SABANA DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES that originated in lesson contexts. Starting with Little's (2001) concept of tele-collaboration at the beginning of the broadband age, subsequent improvements in information and communication technology (ICT) over the last ten years, and particularly those resulting from the so-called Web 2.0 revolution (Guth & Helm, 2010), have led to the constant interconnectivity of individuals for the exchange of information, opinion and experiences. This has made the extension of the classroom-based social-learning group a reality that must not only be recognized, but exploited to maximum advantage (Reinders & White, 2016). A large number of studies have been carried out in the last ten years examining the impact of tele-collaboration on autonomy. Not all have been encouraging (see Carrió-Pastor, 2015), but most have es- ical zeitgeist as early as 2010: "…digital-age students want an active learning experience that is social, participatory and supported by rich media… [and also have] a growing appreciation of the need to support and encourage learner control over the whole/entire learning process" (Mcloughlin & Lee, 2010, p. 28). Butler-Pascoe (2011), following a review of nearly 50 years of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) manifested the increasingly central importance of internet-based collaboration to student autonomy and learner-centeredness as the twenty-first century progresses. More recently, Carrió-Pastor (2018), in an extensive survey of virtual platforms used in language learning, sees these innovations as now essential to maximizing progress in learning both in motivational considerations and in the rate of acquisition.
The intervention described in the following sections was undertaken as part of the ongoing development of approaches that seek to foster this complex, but potentially highly effective behavior in EFL students.
This was the second aim of the research: To evaluate the extent of the motivational impact of collaboration on encouraging "proactive" autonomous behavior in university language center students.

Action Research Design
As described above, advanced students at the university language center manifested limited learner independence, and since learner needs defined the choice of intervention, the study used an action research approach throughout. Three of the authors were also the class teachers of the participants, and any change in the learning behavior was sought not merely as a question of academic interest but for the immediate and long-term benefit of the participating students (Siegel, 2018).
As part of this consideration, a particularly weak area of language competence was chosen, so that the additional intervention would be of maximum benefit to learners in their progress in EFL. At the same time, it was necessary to have a narrow focus in order to make meaningful measurements of changes in behavior. To these ends, listening comprehension was the skill identified as needing extensive and structured intervention, based on the metadata of historical test results at the university language center, and on the individual data gathered by the research team from diagnostic assessments and observations. It is worth noting, at this point, that the research did not seek to measure a quantifiable impact on listening skills-improved listening ability per se was not the direct objective of the intervention-but rather how participants invested time and effort in listening outside of the classroom and exercised judgment in selecting appropriate material for listening practice. Improvement in listening skills may be viewed as a corollary to this investment by students, but it was not necessary to provide evidence of the degree of improvement in order to judge the success of the intervention. Moreover, the quantifiable impact on listening skills resulting from this approach is the subject of the future, second cycle of this action research.
The intervention described below was, therefore, grounded in the hypothesis that providing students with the opportunities to collaborate outside of the classroom in an appropriate development of their listening skills would have a significant motivational impact on the participants and lead to a degree of "proactive" autonomous behavior, rather than the hitherto "reactive" behavior observed.
The design of this intervention was guided by the questions for future research posed by Reinders and White (2016), by Ushioda (2016),

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and by general approaches outlined in Lamy and Magenot (2013), while specifically self-directed listening research design was based partly on a study of students of Spanish by Mideros and Carter (2015).
Elements of the mechanics of adapting the Moodle ® platform for collaborative learning in EFL were taken from Bateineh and Mayyas (2017), and general guidelines on the use of YouTube ® in tandem with various social networking tools to provide a virtual space for collaborative autonomous learning to take place were partly based on the studies by Alwehaibi (2015) and Rennie (2012). Meanwhile, approaches for using the variety of genres available on YouTube were taken from numerous recent studies (see, for example, Lin and Siyanova-Chanturia [2014] for their guidance on using TV dramas and comedies, and Coxhead and Bytheway [2014] for the use of TED ® talks). The following section describes the specific considerations for the design of the intervention and the tools for measuring changes in autonomous behavior and collaboration.

Description of the intervention
The interventions used as basis for this research were carried out at a university language center in Ecuador over a five-week period at the end of the spring semester in 2018. The participants were 154 EFL students divided among three Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) levels: • Two fifth-level classes (mid-level B2), comprising 41 participants.
Moodle ® was adapted for sharing student-selected videos targeted at developing listening comprehension of authentic sources, and for providing a forum for comments posted by the participating students on the content, interest level and difficulty of the videos. For these pur- There were no specific requirements, and the two questions did not need to be answered explicitly in the forum. At the end of each week, the forum was closed and a new one opened ready for the next volunteers' postings. All participants then completed a questionnaire about their activity on the Moodle ® forum for that week.

Research instruments and analytical tools
The study implemented an explanatory mixed-methods design (Creswell, as cited in Mertler, 2014), in which quantitative data and qualitative data were gathered throughout the five-week period. Quantifiable data came from weekly questionnaires completed by the 154 participants after viewing one or more peer-selected videos. These instruments collected feedback in numerical form on student engagement with the videos and forums, using closed-item questions of a variety of types, including Likert scaling and ranking (Ary, Cheser, & Sorenson, 2010). peers. Secondly, interviews were carried out with two randomly selected students per class, resulting in a total of sixteen interviewees, which provided further open-ended responses. The interviews were semi-structured, giving students the opportunity to express themselves in greater depth on their opinion of various aspects of the intervention and were conducted by the non-participating researcher in order to encourage the volunteering of detailed opinion and to reduce bias (Dowsett, 1986). The reports of the teacher-researchers provided additional qualitative data based on their observations over the course of the intervention and inspection of the collective digital resource created by the 154 participants in the form of forum threads and the banks of selected videos.
To analyze the quantitative data provided by the weekly questionnaires, the study used four parameters to assess the evidence of development of "proactive" autonomous behavior, as set out in Table 1.
These parameters were chosen as indicators of the following aspects of autonomy: 1) time invested in skills practice; 2) awareness of the need to have varied practice; 3) ability to judge the usefulness or relevance of material for practice; and 4) ability to judge the difficulty level of material for practice. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of proactive behaviors, but it serves as an approximation to the choices, awareness and abilities that a fully autonomous leaner should demonstrate. For each parameter, a threshold was established so that results that crossed the threshold might be considered evidence of proactive autonomous behavior. Results falling below the threshold would show insufficient development of autonomy. The analysis provided by this table would, then, establish the extent to which the first research objective had been reached. Qualitative information from written feedback and interviews was used where appropriate to corroborate the analysis of the quantitative data and, thereby, lend greater validity to the results. More than 67% of participants view videos in genres with a high content of verbal communication, and less than 10% view videos with content containing little or no verbal input.
3. Perception of relevance or usefulness of videos to student learning.
More than 67% of participants consider the videos as having been either useful or relevant to the development of listening skills.

Level of challenge of the videos viewed.
Less than 10% of participants evaluate the videos as being too easy for listening practice and less than 5% consider them inaccessible in terms of difficulty.
Regarding the second research objective, the motivational impact of the platform-based collaborative learning strategy on encouraging autonomous behavior was appraised through analysis of responses given in the final questionnaire, completed by all 154 participants, and the interviews, given by 16 randomly selected participants. These were codified and categorized using standard qualitative research techniques (Esterberg, 2002). Participants were invited to reflect on their experience of being part of a learning community and, specifically, to comment on the motivational impact of selecting and sharing videos and posting comments through the social network provided by Moodle ® . Additionally, they were asked to reflect on the adequacy of the platform for these purposes, and to give practical suggestions for future improvements in the design of the intervention. Items from the weekly questionnaire pertaining to level of participation in the interactive forum were also used in this analysis. The responses from the 16 randomized interviews were contrasted with the data from the written feedback in order to provide greater validity.

RESULTS
The intervention lasted five weeks, in which 30 videos were shared by the 7 th and 8 th level learning communities, 20 videos by the 5 th level community, and a total of 797 comments were posted across all levels and classes. Analysis of participation from the weekly questionnaires using the established parameters showed a degree of development of student autonomy classifiable as "proactive" (Littlewood, 1999); therefore, the first objective was met, albeit with deficiencies.     made up 5% of the total on average, which passes the second threshold requirement. However, there was a peak in music video selection of over 10% in the first two weeks of the intervention. The category of "other" averaged at around a fifth of all viewings but rose steadily from 10% of selections to over 25% by week 5. The content of this category was variable, with some classifiable as mainly visual, while others had a high verbal content.  Feedback given in the weekly questionnaires used a Likert scale of 1 ("not useful at all") to 5 ("very useful"). In evaluating the fulfillment of this threshold, all ratings of 4 and 5 and exactly half of the ratings of 3

Parameter 2: Range of genres viewed
were considered generally positive, while ratings of 1, 2 and half of the ratings of 3 were considered generally negative. Table 2 shows the distribution of these ratings from the weekly questionnaires.  rather than function as independent comprehension practice. Isolated comments criticized the lack of engaging material offered, which was considered demotivating.
These criticisms were echoed, but in a slightly greater proportion, in the 16 randomized interviews. Three of the sixteen students (19%) manifested an overall negative response to the material and three (19%) gave an overall mixed response, suggesting that more guidance be provided on the selection of the videos, or else greater choice be given, since they had found some of the material repetitive or unengaging. The remaining ten (62%)-slightly less than the two thirds threshold established for this parameter-were either positive or very positive regarding the usefulness and relevance of the material to their listening development.

Parameter 4: Level of challenge of the material viewed
The purpose of this parameter was not to measure the participants' listening ability, but rather whether the selected material was appropriate for their listening development. Table 1 establishes a threshold of 10% or less considering the videos excessively easy in comparison with participant listening ability, together with a threshold of less than 5% finding the videos so difficult as to render them inaccessible. Figure   3 shows the distribution of participant evaluations within this parameter. The level of challenge of the material was skewed toward the easier end of the evaluation, with a clear correspondence between instances in which either music or "other"' video selections were favored and a high percentage of evaluations in the "very easy"' category. Nonetheless, the ideal "moderate" level of challenge was the mode in three of the weeks, and week 5 was the only week in which a higher-than-expected proportion found the material "inaccessible." Further to this, the average evaluation of level of challenge across the 5 weeks set against the expected values, based on a normal distribution, shows the skewing toward an evaluation of easy (see Figure 4) with the majority of evaluations lying in the moderate to easy categories.
Overall, the thresholds for parameter 4 were not convincingly passed. When averaging the evaluations over the five weeks, 3.6% of participants found the material inaccessible while 9.4% found them   In written feedback, the difficulty level was not highlighted as an area for improvement by most participants, indicating that the material was found to be generally adequate in this respect. The few comments that made explicit mention of level of challenge indicated that

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the videos, or the intervention, were generally appropriate for developing listening skills without offering specific details. Due to the paucity of quantifiable data for coded analysis in this respect, Table 3 directly cites all comments that pertain to level of challenge, in which a mixed picture can be seen.

Verbatim comments in written feedback and interview
Very difficult "…in most of the videos there weren't subtitles that can help" "It would be better if the videos have subtitles…" Challenging but useful "…some hard to understand, but the complexity was good for my learning." "…some very challenging but that was good for learning more." Neutral "Organize all the videos about language difficulty-easier in the beginning and it could get harder." Very easy "Some videos were ok, but it could be more useful if some students share videos about advanced grammar." "I think you have to choose better videos, because some videos were useless." Source: Own elaboration.

Student assessment of the collaborative approach to autonomy
The motivational impact of the collaboration on the development of autonomy, the second research objective, was measured in four ways, normally do when working individually and in isolation. Eleven (69%) stated that the collaborative design of the intervention was the most important factor influencing their engagement with the listening material. In written feedback, exactly 50% of participants explicitly praised the approach of sharing videos and comments as a vehicle to learning.
However, two interviewees (13%) showed frustration with the narrowness of topics selected by peers, and three (19%) wished to see teacher-led classwork related to the videos. This perception was echoed in written feedback, in which a significant minority of comments (16%) called for a degree of teacher intervention in the future, including some assessment and grading of the listening or class work based on the content of the videos.

The motivational effect on the volunteers who selected videos for sharing
Over the five weeks, 80 of the 154 participants (51%) had the opportunity to volunteer to select a video to post. Teacher-researchers reported that, during the first two weeks of the intervention, some degree of encouragement had been necessary in order to find enough volunteers.
However, later in the process, there were more volunteers than the required two per class. In feedback, only one participant stated that they were opposed to the idea of volunteering. Of the interviews carried out, nine (56%) were with those who had selected videos for posting. Seven (78%) of them reported feeling a degree of positive social pressure when making their selections. Their comments indicated that they had been anxious to select a video that would be considered both interesting and useful by the community of their peers. Five (56%) reported having viewed a wide variety of possible material before making their choice and that they considered aspects of broad appeal of topic, perceived difficulty of comprehension, and variety regarding the selections made in previous weeks before making their selection.

The motivational effect on all participants of interaction on the forums
The weekly questionnaires revealed that 74% of the students posted at least one comment per video viewed. However, only 25% posted more than one comment per video. This self-reporting of the quality of forum

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contributions was corroborated by a review by teachers of participant activity on the weekly forums, which were dominated by isolated comments related directly to the video content, and a developed back-andforth debate between students was less common. In written feedback, 20% of participants cited the forum as an essential part of the collaborative process, but exactly half of these suggested that greater interaction between students was needed. Meanwhile, in randomized interviews, 6 (38%) participants cited the forum discussion as a positive aspect of the collaborative process, and 4 (25%) suggested the forum be improved in order to encourage interaction.
On the other hand, 69% evaluated their contributions to the forum as having been of at least moderate quality (the guidelines for the weekly questionnaire established that a moderate contribution be at least one full sentence expressing an opinion); 27.5% made a detailed contribution of several sentences contained in one or more posts; 15.5% made no comment after watching a video.

The suitability of the Moodle ® platform for the purposes of sharing and posting
The weekly questionnaires provided quantifiable data regarding the accessibility of the process used. At all stages of the intervention, at least 80% of participants reported feeling comfortable with the platform in general, and their access to the video links and forums in particular. However, the minority who felt very negatively about their use of Moodle ® quadrupled from 2.5%, initially, to 8.7%. In written feedback, 5% of participants indicated that they felt the Moodle ® interface had been a barrier to access. However, a further 21% of par- In consideration of the stages of autonomy, the average participant had moved from the baseline of teacher-dependence toward a measurable behavior characterized by Littlewood as "proactive" or by Smith as "strong" forms of autonomy (Smith, 2003;Littlewood, 1999).
However, there is considerable room for further development in the future; for example, participants need to develop a greater awareness of the appropriate level of challenge and to engage with a greater number of videos per week. The decline in activity in week 5 may also be interpreted as a loss of momentum in participant motivation, rather than being the result of external factors, and a longer intervention is needed in order to examine the sustainability of participant engagement in this, or similar, processes.
This analysis refers only to this specific instance of autonomous behavior, that is, how learners approach the development of their own listening comprehension skills. The authors make no claim to having established a broader autonomous mind-set that the participants might apply to any aspect of their learning, although the ability and mo-

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tivation gained during the intervention should be partially transferrable to other skill areas. Indeed, due to the strongly teacher-centered educational culture of Ecuador (Yunga-Godoy, et al., 2016), it is to be expected that far-reaching transformations of autonomous behavior should require more extensive processes than those described here. However, the modest success of this approach to autonomy in listening development might serve as a model for changes to be implemented in other areas of the EFL curriculum in this and other educational contexts.
Those participants whose feedback called for greater teacher involvement in the process remained in the 'reactive' or 'weak' stage of autonomy development (Smith, 2003;Littlewood, 1999).  These comments notwithstanding, the majority of participants, both through their active and consistent participation in a fully student-centered intervention, and in the nature of their feedback, demonstrated a degree of ability and willingness to work toward their own skill development, independently of the teacher, and in collaboration with peers.
The collaborative and social dimension provided by the use of the digital platform, both for sharing and commenting, was considered highly motivating and was evaluated as the most important factor influencing engagement with the videos by more than three quarters of the participants. Benson and Cooker's (2013) contention that "learner autonomy is now understood to be a social capacity that develops through 'interdependence' rather than 'independence'" were to decrease over time, some teacher involvement may be necessary in order to inject renewed interest among participants, in which case there would be a loss of proactive autonomy. At the institution in which this intervention took place, in Ecuador, and in Latin America in general, the strong teacher-dependent culture is likely to act as a constant brake on this spontaneous development of autonomous behavior. Longer interventions, or longitudinal studies over several semesters may reveal that autonomous ability and the willingness to engage generated by collaboration are not fully self-sustaining.
Rather, short periods of highly motivated autonomous learning may result from teacher-led initiatives, and such initiatives may need to be introduced continually, as part of the learning curriculum, in order to maximize the benefits of autonomous skills practice. These are considerations for future analysis, which, together with other recommendations for changes in the design of similar studies and classroom interventions, are discussed below: • A longer intervention beginning earlier in the semester is required, as was called for in participant feedback. If the decline in participation in week 5 was due to external issues at the end of the semester, this must be adjusted; if there are inherent problems of motivational sustainability, these must be given time to reveal themselves and be analyzed.
• Although the use given to the Moodle ® platform in the intervention was not widely criticized, both participants and teacher-researchers suggested making use of technologies that allow constant interconnectivity within the learning community, either as a replacement for or as a complement to Moodle ® . A generation increasingly based on mobile, rather than desk-top devices (Lyddon, 2016) may respond well to instant messaging applications such as WhatsApp ® .
The correct balance of older, dedicated educational platforms, and the most recent social networking applications could establish the "nexus between digital literacies, autonomy, and the globalization of interpersonal communications," which Benson (2013, p. 841) cites as a key to future development in this area. videos for further listening practice may prove both motivating and rewarding in terms of skills practice. Again, an improved digital interface may help this process. Recent studies into Flipgrid ® (Green & Green, 2018;Stoszkowski, 2018), an educational application specifically designed for video sharing, have indicated that the ease of access and the possibility of posting verbal, rather than written comments may encourage greater participation.
The next stage of this action research is to quantify the impact of collaborative autonomous skills development on listening ability in absolute terms. A similar intervention (adjusting for the recommendations outlined above) set against a baseline and final measurement of comprehension is proposed.