Spoken English Zone Conversational English Online Wuping Lu School of Education Stanford 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/ , 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/ 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 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 , 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 again Can you type that word? You Said: “Fresh salad has most desire I 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, and drawing and whiteboard tools Integrated Vocabulary lookup Vocabulary student i s 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 3 0 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?