Acceptance and Effectiveness of Rain Classroom in Linguistics Classes

Literature Review

Rain Classroom has been evidenced as effective in learning by many studies. Learners positively evaluated that Rain Classroom assisted learning, in which they showed their willingness to participate. Assisted with Rain Classroom, teachers also achieved success in curriculum design, organization of learning activities and implementation of teaching strategies (Li & Song, 2017). Aided with Rain Classroom, Yu (2018) designed a five-step teaching method, which could activate students’ participation, enhance their self-discipline, and promote their learning effect.

Coupled with quantitative evaluation and diverse pedagogical approaches, Rain Classroom could effectively be used in teaching and learning (Liao & Ding, 2018). Rain Classroom could help teachers design appropriate teaching styles and improve College English teaching and learning effect (Lou et al., 2018). Integrating Rain Classroom into pedagogy could also improve effectiveness in the instruction of English for postgraduates (Yuan et al., 2018), ideological and political courses for tertiary students (Han, 2018), English communicative courses (Yang, 2017), translation and interpretation of business English (Zhu, 2016), biological courses for graduates (Yang & Yuan, 2016), and Blended Methods (Yao, 2017). The Rain Classroom integrated platform could also effectively promote learners’ information technology literacy, as well as mastery of learning theories (Li et al., 2017). This study aims to confirm the effectiveness and acceptance of Rain Classroom among English language learners.

Interaction is an unavoidable element to be included when discussing the effect of educational technologies on learning. Mainly three types of interactions are studied, i.e. learner-learner interaction, learner-teacher interaction and learner-content interaction. Close attention should be paid to these three interactions (Parsazadeh et al., 2018). By linking teachers, students and learning contents, Rain Classroom has taken these three interactions into account, which it lays a solid ground for its effect on learning and teaching.

Usability is another important element to determine the effectiveness of educational technologies, such as Rain Classroom, and other various kinds of mobile applications. The degree of usability of educational technology greatly influences the acceptance and satisfaction of users, which exerts a great impact on technology assisted learning outcomes and academic achievements (Shitkova, Holler, Heide, Clever, & Becker, 2015). When designing and using educational technologies, numerous factors such as convenience, ease of use, data input, Internet connection, and computer processing speed, should be taken into account (Nielsen & Budiu, 2013).