Spoken English Zone

Conversational English Online

Wuping LuSchool of EducationStanford University

06/07/06

Introduction Sub-community of the second language

acquisition community “Exue.” Focuses on oral English learning Audience: adult English learners in China. Learning needs: improve spoken English. Serves the leaning needs by providing various

services and tools: message board, file uploading and downloading, chatting room, blogging, social bookmarking, sub-groups, online dictionary tools, short message/email, and RSS feed subscription.

Message Board Sharing learning strategies/reflections,

presenting learning materials in the message body or as attachments, and making request for learning materials/learning strategies.

Three sub-forums/aggregators: Downloading Center, Highly Recommended, English Pronunciation

Can read/write Use collective intelligence

File Uploading and Downloading

learning materials, rarely created by users themselves in a strict sense.

Attached to posts having different access restriction

decided by owners More active users, the higher levels

they can access

Chatting Room both text and voice English only either publicly (many to many) or

privately (one to one) More experienced members seems

not willing to communicate with less experienced ones

Blogging Journal: users can write text and insert image, flash,

video/audio, and links into the journal body. Photos: user can upload and share their photos with others. Files: user can upload and share actually any type of files

with others. Buddy List: user can add and delete their buddies Social Bookmarking: user can book and tag the websites

they might want to visit later and share with others Favorite Websites: users share their favorite websites with

others. RSS Feeds Input: users can input RSS feeds from other

websites into their own blogs Forum Post Input: members can input their own forum

posts into the blog and keep posts synchronized at both places.

Comments: the blog allows readers to make comments.

Its educational use has not yet been fully explored (05/29/06)

Sub-Groups Launched recently (06/02/06) Currently, just a few groups Textual posting One group called “Friends Learning

Group” More time to see how it evolves

and how it can be utilized for educational purpose.

Other Services

Dictionary: general dictionary (kind of mush-up between two free web applications), grammar dictionary, and idiom dictionary.

Short message/email RSS feed subscription

Ranking Mechanism best contents on the top Ranked by the community

administrators Active members are rewarded e-money

and points depending on the amount and quality of posts and uploaded files

With e-money and points, members can access restricted and core contents.

Web 2.0 Features

A read/write web platform for services Harnessing collective intelligence Emphasizing participation and sharing User-generated content Providing RSS feeds for subscription Using mash-up technology Keeping continuous changing.

Recommendations – Community Building

Clear and Visible Purpose A short tag line that identifies the

community’s purpose: Talk to Learn, Learn to Talk.

A longer mission statement that explains what the community is all about

A distinct visual design that sets a mood and sets the group apart from others

A backstory that tells about the history of the group, and how it came to exist

Recommendations – Community Building

Social scaffolding to support a range of roles Create a visitor center Instruct the novices

Send email letter confirming their membership and telling them something about how the community works and relevant links, but info should not be too overwhelming

Welcome the novice with gifts. Educate novices by meeting, special message board

topics, and chatting room events to try and practice Reward the regulars

Get personal: provide a start page (e.g., eBay’s My eBay for a serious eBay user) as a reward, my buddy list, and private gathering places

Empower the leaders Honor your elders

Recommendations – Community

Building

Asking for feedback use email, message boards, chat,

surveys, or even interviews to collect data for complaints about technical problems, a wish list for new features, and requests for new gathering places or topics.

During my 6 weeks’ participation, I did not see any of the above happened.

Recommendations – Community Building

Leveraging Sub-Groups the management almost provide its

members no group guidelines/strategies

provide an environment and guidelines to facilitate and help purposeful groups to coalesce and flourish.

Recommendations – Pedagogical

Issues Use wiki for vocabulary, expressions,

and grammar the learners first have to know what

vocabulary and sentence patterns to be used in expressing what they want to express in a specific situation or context.

the threaded posts and comments do not reach a (tentative) final product based on collective intelligence.

Wiki technology can be used to address this problem

Recommendations – Pedagogical Issues

Provide audio dictionary for pronunciation To effectively communicate orally,

learners have to pronounce correctly Current dictionary tools do not have

pronunciation function

Recommendations – Pedagogical Issues

Add communicative language learning aids into chatting room Common scenarios: two members meet and

start chatting, soon stop provide supporting tools to offset the skill

gap between more competent members and less competent members so that both parties can benefit from the online chatting.

The management should also provide tutoring tools to voluntary tutors to maximum the tutoring outcomes.

Recommendations – Pedagogical Issues

Add communicative language learning aids into chatting room - Scenario/Topic-Based Skit Resource Center wiki-based and use collective intelligence A scenario simulating a real-life situation in a

specific social context One scenario can have different level skits Different versions to accommodate different

number of participants

Recommendations – Pedagogical Issues

Add communicative language learning aids into chatting room - Tutoring Support Center the volunteer tutor might not be

pedagogically trained a collection of user-generated lesson plans

using collective intelligence including learning objectives, content,

learning activities, and assessment ensure at least a bottom line quality of

learning outcome, even if the trainer does not have pedagogical expertise specific to the language

Student: Guided Conversation Space

The word is: abundance

Please say that againCan you type that word?

You Said: “Fresh salad has most desireI would say: “Fresh salad is the most desired”

Vocab To Use✔ Hot✔ Rice✔ Spicy

Shared visual space with learner. Includes images (i.e. menu) to prompt conversation,

anddrawing and whiteboard

tools

IntegratedVocabulary

lookup

Vocabulary student is trying

to learn

Jane Doe

Video over IP – video greatly enhances ability to learn language

Abundance: ###

Add to vocab

Recordable methods

to interact with trainer without interrupting

flow of conversation

Scenario Progress

• You’ve answer 12 of 30 questions.

•You have used 5 of the recommended vocab words

•Your trainer has made 10 corrections

Recommendations – Pedagogical Issues

Attract native English speakers to join by providing Chinese learning

Gaming for language acquisition: create a virtual town for realistic simulations of communicative situations

Blog as e-portfolio for assessment Video/audio annotating for correct

feedback

More User-Friendly Interface Contains false clues There is too much information on the

screen and it makes users cognitively overloaded

Added functionality generally comes along at the price of added complexity

Unnecessary features should be avoided The decorative pictures should be avoided private text chatting should be separated

from public chatting

Evaluate the Success of the Changes

Adopting Cothrel (2000)’s incremental value approach

The incremental value can be calculated by comparing the measures before the changes and after the changes in two aspects: participation and learning.

Participation Index Page views Session time Community click-through Registered members Repeat visits Frequent visitors Postings per day/week/month Read-to-post ratio Page additions Page revisions Peak number of concurrent users (in live events) Total number of users (in live events) Audience penetration (if the total size of the target population

is known) Conversion rate from visitors, members, to active members

Learning Outcome Most of participation measures

describe what is happening in the community, but they do not tell much about what it means to the learning

The learning outcome should be measured too

Use online survey for members to self-report their learning experiences.

Questions?