Scaffolding postgraduate thesis-writing in a virtual learning environment: Postgraduate student perceptions from a non-English-speaking context

Abstract

Thesis-writing is widely recognized as one of the most challenging aspects of postgraduate study, as it requires not only academic but also linguistic and psychological support. For Postgraduate Research students (PGRs) studying in non-English-speaking contexts, these challenges may be further complicated by the need to produce linguistically accurate and rhetorically appropriate academic texts in English. Although previous research has explored academic writing practices in various contexts, relatively little attention has been paid to how technology-enhanced environments can support thesis-writing. To address this gap, this study developed and evaluated a corpus-informed virtual learning environment (VLE) to support thesis-writing. The VLE was informed by two corpora: a learner corpus of thesis abstracts written by PGRs in the research context, a non-English-speaking country and a target corpus of abstracts written by PGRs from English-speaking countries. Corpus analyses informed the development of corpus-informed resources and tasks, which were integrated into a Moodle-based VLE. The study adopted an action research-informed descriptive case study design and involved seventy postgraduate students enrolled in a thesis-writing course. Participants' engagement with and perceptions of the VLE were examined through questionnaires, discussion forum posts, and Moodle learning analytics. The results indicate that the VLE, mediating between the individualized nature of thesis work and collective learning, promoted exploratory learning and provided sustained academic and psychological support throughout participants' entire thesis-writing journey. Taken together, the study findings suggest that corpus-informed VLEs can complement thesis supervision by integrating corpus consultation, instructional scaffolding, and collaborative learning into a single technology-enhanced environment that supports thesis-writing.