Abstract:
Refugee students face significant language challenges that hinder their academic success in higher education. Proficiency in English is a primary barrier, impacting their ability to engage with academic content, participate in discussions, and complete assessments effectively (Perales et al., 2021; Naidoo et al., 2018). Many refugee students continue learning English while studying, making it difficult to master both subject content and English language simultaneously. The struggle with academic English increases the risk of plagiarism and course failure, highlighting the need for targeted support to develop Academic English literacy (Arkoudis, 2014). This study proposes a Learning Management System (LMS) equipped with AI tools to create a flipped classroom for adult refugee learners to develop their Academic English literacy. The proposed LMS has 11 steps divided into 3 stages. In stage 1, the pre-class activities focus on remembering and understanding content. The AI tools in the LMS let the students ask questions, help to understand the content, and provide hints to complete the activities. Next, the LMS generates pre-class activity data of individual student focusing on number of attempts, re-attempts, correct answers, incorrect answers, unattempted questions and the logs of support taken from the AI tools. Moreover, the LMS suggests in-class activities for the teacher based on pre-class data. This data and suggested class activities support the teacher to plan in-class activities effectively. Next, in stage 2, the in-class activities are implemented by the teacher to create a student-centred learning environment that supports applying, analysing, and evaluating concepts and creating new knowledge. Next, in stage 3, the teacher assigns post-class activities for the students to revise and reflect on their learning. In this stage, AI tools in LMS provide support for the students to complete the tasks and consequently, generates post-class activity data for the teacher to assess the progress of each student, assess the effectiveness of the lesson and plan the following lessons. This proposed AI tool based flipped classroom model can provide accurate data about the learning-gaps and more in-class time to address student’s learning needs. Moreover, this model can offer a more personalized and adaptive learning experience which helps to increase academic engagement. However, refugee students might have challenges in accessibility to technology and they might need training and time to adjust to this new way of learning. In future, this proposed LMS could be piloted to assess the learning experience and long-term impact on refugee students’ academic English skills.