QR Quest: Smartphones Beyond the Classroom
Professor Jared Sandler and Professor Drew Mountain
Abstract
During Gimcheon University’s annual Spring Festival in 2012, we created and deployed a location-based, EFL QR Code Quest for students, faculty, and community members. Our goal was to offer players a relevant and authentic way to engage with second language acquisition. Players used their smartphones to link to internet videos of EFL professors and Korean students giving spoken directions to the location of the next QR code station. Videos also featured speaking tasks that matched Gimcheon University's General Education EFL curriculum. Our videos contained Korean pop music from the festival musicians, followed by video commercials that we produced for local sponsors of the QR Quest. We tried to incentivize student participation by distributing coupons from these local sponsors. We emphasized all four core areas of language: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. QR Quest was location-based, but it employed approaches/methods from Task-Based Language Teaching as well as Collaborative Learning. We tackled a multitude of barriers en route to the project completion and wish to share them with progressive-minded EFL educators.
Bio-sketches
Professor Jared Sandler
Born, raised, and educated in the United States, Jared backpacked across South Korea before deciding to embark on an EFL career back in 2008. He first lived in suburban Seoul, but quickly moved to rural Gyeongsangbuk-Do to begin work as an English professor at Gimcheon University. The highlight of his first two years in Gimcheon was co-creating a location-based smartphone game called QR Quest. Jared is also keen to continually improve the Ban-Jang-Nim system with his students. He is currently a professor in the Departments of Physical Therapy, English, and General Education at Gimcheon University. Jared's research interests are not limited to Computer Assisted Language Learning or Collaborative Learning; he is also keen to explore other areas of TESOL such as Total Physical Response and Content-Based Instruction. Jared is a master's degree candidate in the dual degree program of St. Cloud State University and Woosong University.
Professor Drew Mountain
Drew Mountain holds a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Kansas. He began his TESOL career in Busan in 2009 after leaving a research and training position at the University of Kansas Work Group for Community Health and Development where he helped build collaborative online web sites for public health initiatives. Drew has since taught ESL at US public high schools and San Francisco State University. He is primarily interested in figuring out ways to help L2 learners use technology to empower their own learning in relevant and authentic contexts. In 2012 he helped create a location-based smartphone game called QR Quest for deployment during Gimcheon University's Spring Festival.
