ARCS model

The purpose of this instructional design project is to motivate English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers to cultivate intercultural competence through an online course (https://yuchieh6.wixsite.com/mysite). While it is crucial for EFL teachers to equip intercultural competence in the era of globalization, resources that incorporate EFL classes with intercultural components are inadequate due to the complicated nature of cultures.

To explore the topic of language and identity, three motivational lessons were designed based on the attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction (ARCS) model. In each lesson, participants were exposed to text, images, tutorials and follow-up online discussions. Considering the intercultural components in this project, critical literacy pedagogy was used to capture non-tangible cultural aspects such as assumptions and implications of a discourse.

A total of 16 EFL teachers from six countries were recruited to evaluate the courses’ impact on motivation. Quantitative data from the pre-lesson and post-lesson questionnaire were collected. Qualitative data from one-on-one interview, intercultural conversations online, and open-ended questions in the retrospective survey were clustered into patterns through selective coding.
Three themes from this research emerged after analysis: willingness to communicate online, awareness of the language and identity issues, and confidence in making changes through language teaching. This result showed that well-designed online tasks, where participants interacted with each other to discuss intercultural issues can be motivating. Since current research may reveal only a partial view of motivation, long-range research would be worthwhile to learn participants’ attitudes on this topic, as well as on group dynamics.