DEVELOPMENT OF INQUIRY-BASED HYBRID TRAINING PROGRAM FOR STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAM TO ENHANCE ENGLISH COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCIES

This research was to develop an inquiry-based hybrid training program enhance English communicative competencies of Thai students participating in an exchange program. The research procedure was divided into two phases. The first phase was the development of a hybrid training program based on inquiry-based learning and its effectiveness was evaluated by five experts. Second, the tailored learning platform was implemented to the 30 Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University students in the first semester of the academic year 2022, joined the Thailand-Taiwan-Australia Exchange Program. The instruments of this study were a questionnaire with efficiency at the highest level (x̅ = 4.81, SD = 0.30) and an English communicative competency test with item difficulty ranging from 0.42-0.57, item discrimination ranging from 0.42-0.76 and reliability of 0.89. The statistical analysis was frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, and t-test for dependent variables. The results of this research revealed that the inquiry-based hybrid training program consisted of seven components: 1) principles, 2) objectives, 3) training program content, 4) the training program’s structure, 5) activity guidelines, 6) training program media, and 7) program evaluation. Also, the instruction process set for both on-line and on-site classes were divided into five stages: 1) engagement, 2) exploration, 3) explanation, 4) elaboration, and 5) evaluation. Moreover, after the training program implementation, the students’ post-test mean scores were significantly higher than those of the pre-test and the increase with .05 significance level. These findings suggest that the use of inquiry-based hybrid training program enhances English communicative competencies of Thai students participating in an exchange program.