Final Paper Abstract

Exue - Online Conversational English Learning Community

1. Identify a specific learning community and users whose needs might be well served by an online learning community using Web 2.0 technologies.

Exue.com.cn is online community for foreign language learning, including English, French, Japanese, and Germany. Users are Chinese who are interested in language learning. Within this big community, a sub-community called "Spoken English" is for a group of users who want to improve their spoken English. My analysis will concentrate on this sub-community (http://bbs.exue.com.cn/forumdisplay.php?fid=40). All content are user-generated or the stuff they find somewhere else and then upload to share with others. It is free and uses Web 2.0 technologies.

2. Articulate their learning needs, how the community is addressing those needs today online

Their learning needs is "learn to speak English and speak English to learn" which is ignored by the formal school education in the field of foreign language learning in China. The community offers a discussion board, online dictionary, a voice chatting room, and other tools to address this need.

3. Propose design recommendations for improving the community (with constructive critique of current online approaches).

I am still interacting with the community to get more experience as a user. At this moment, I would like to make four recommendations: (1) more user-friendly interface; (2) Embed pedagogical principles, especially principles related to language learning, into the program so that the learning can be more effective (3) attract native English speakers to join; (4) provide tools to facilitate users to easily generate content for language learning such as annotating and archiving audio interaction.

4. Provide what grounds you argue your suggestions would work, and how you could evaluate the success of these changes.

Rationales behind recommendations will be based on learning theories and scientifically valid research studies.
Evaluation index: increase of members, increased participation time, more social interaction, user self-reported evaluation of community experience through survey, log data, observation, and interview.