Group Project: Online Oral English Learning Community for International Students in U.S. Higher Education

LAC: Learn, Apply, Communicate - Online Oral English Learning Community for International Students in U.S. Higher Education

Design Document Guideline

Yanran Wang,  Jingshan Wang,  Anastasia Nossal

Presentation here

Part 1. Analysis

1.1 Problem description

Background of the problem

Being the most popular destination for international students coming for higher education, United States had enrolled 1,043,839 international students in its higher education institutions by 2016, sharing 5.2% of the total students in higher education (IIE, 2016), and the upward trend has been seen year by year. Considering the increasing number of international students，their academic performance, learning styles, involvement, satisfaction, learning autonomy and values are becoming very important for the evaluation of higher education in U.S in a general sense. With the increasing body of students who study by their second or third language, their challenges in academic  life worth being concerned.

In U.S. university classroom, students receives broad tasks, which require good speaking skills, in order to participate in large or small groups discussion, debates, and collaborations (Ferris & Tagg, 1996). However, studies (Leki, 2001; Liu, 2001; Morita, 2002, 2004) show that international ESL students in English-speaking classes report feelings of inadequacy and frustration while participating in oral classroom activities, such as whole-class discussions and formal oral presentations. Faculties and researchers also point out that international students are tend to be less proactive in classrooms (Sawir, 2005). Their incomplete understanding and interpretation, worries about their oral and colloquial expression, lack of speaking skills and confidence (Robertson et al, 2000) become the most direct factors that influence their academic performances.

Despite the fact that the problem of international students’ oral competence in academic learning has been figured out, efficient and effective measures have not been seen a lot to cope with it. Few studies lay emphasis on more silent international students in classroom, both from students’ and faculty perspectives. Although some universities provide short English training program for incoming foreign students who fail to reach the language requirement, students have limited time to practice and improve before immediately jumping into the fast pace of new semesters, and usually the charges these English programs are expensive. Moreover, periodical assessment and reflection are hardly carried out to specifically look at international students’ proactivity in class interaction, which in turn makes them more inactive and diffident.

Apart from linguistic challenge that international students are facing in U.S. higher education, they are also going through the cultural adjustment for the new academic learning environment (Pugh & Fenelon, 2017). According to Pugh and Fenelon (2017), the different teaching and learning cultures in class may raise “culture shock” for the newly coming international students and impede their adaptations. They take time to figure out the differences, make adjustments to new cultures and cope with challenges. With fast-paced curriculum and limited assistance, their active participation in class activities will be influenced because of  unfamiliarity with the academic environment. Although our project will mainly focus on delivering and improving oral English skills to improve international students’ participation in class, it will also incorporate features to help learners with their cultural adjustment as an supplementary  functionality to achieve the overall goals.

Problem statement

The problem being addressed is that international students in US higher education institutions have less active role in various kinds of classroom activities due to lack of English oral skills.

Inability and unwillingness to engage in class discussion and activity is the main problem of international students (Ferris & Tagg,1996). Active oral participation in group discussion and class-wide collaboration nowadays matters much to students academic performance and learning outcomes. U.S. higher education institutions in 1980s shifted their practice from lecture format to an interactive discussion format (Lucas & Murray, 2002; Mason, 1994; Meyers & Jones, 1993), which set higher requirement for oral speaking skills. Therefore, the incompetence in oral english of international students are setting more challenges to meet the high requirement in academic learning. Impeded by the oral english skills, international students also show less willingness and proactivity in interactive activities in class (Sawir, 2005).

As the number of international students in U.S. higher education institutions increases, their learning experiences, characteristics, academic performances and challenges are important to ensure the overall quality of higher education. The lack of oral skills in English and inactive role in academic learning can influence international students in different ways. Firstly, speaking skills directly influences in-classroom interaction and participation, self confidence and satisfaction of learning performance, harming the quality and efficiency of learning individually. Secondly, this participation gap caused by oral skills affects the equal opportunities for learning in classroom environment, impeding the overall quality and efficiency of academic learning in general. Therefore, eliminating the oral speaking barriers for international students ensure a fair assessment of students academic performances and outcomes for educators which proves the problem addressed worth studying.

1.2 Target audience

Target audience of our project are international students who come to the U.S. to obtain higher education. Their English proficiency skills vary,  however those student who decided to come to study in the English-speaking environment usually possess intrinsic motivation to improve their English speaking skills and make extra efforts to study more. As a rule, all higher education institutions in the United States require international student to take an English language test that measure their language proficiency. Thus, international students’ efforts in most cases are aimed at scoring high on those tests in order to get accepted to the college or university of their choice. If oral English skills are taken into consideration, it is evident that those tests are not design to properly measure oral skills proficiency.  Ma. Luisa Roca-Varela and Ignacio M. Palacios (2013), when analyzing such tests, came to the conclusion that “it is not always clear which features of the grammar of spoken English are really under consideration; also, oral interaction, which is extremely important in oral communication, seems to be neglected” (p.14). As a result international students are not prepared to fluently communicate in the classroom as there is a gap between what they know and what they need to know in order to interact in the academic setting.

Moreover, our target audience undergoes the process of transition. When talking about transition of international students, Prescott and Hellsten (2005)  emphasized that  “The notion of transition generally indicates the progression from the familiar to the unknown and involves the adoption of new cultural, social, and cognitive challenges. The transition period extends through the first year of tertiary study and widely acknowledged as being characterized by adjustment and other problems.” (p.76)  Unsuccessful transition may lead to academic failures in the future.  

1.3 Learning Context

Needs Assessment: Discrepancy Model

Learning environments

In the current learning context for the international students to improve their oral English and communicative skills in class activities, our target audience now face diverse constraints.

Spatial context

           Spatially, their range of activity is mainly the campus, and due to busy schedule they may not take off-campus courses often. Then if colleges do not offer chances for them to practice their English speaking skills, the best choice for them would be to take informal instruction online.

Temporal context

        Our target audience are in such a stage: they have already passed standard English test and entered American universities, while finding out their oral English skills and cultural knowledge are still not sufficient to support their academic learning. Thus they are highly motivated to improve their English speaking skills as well as communicative skills to cope with daily tasks in academic settings and adjust themselves to current learning environments as soon as possible. Then our design focuses on their relatively urgent needs and aims at deliver theoretical and practical instructions in a compact structure. Temporally, international students’ spare time is limited and fragment, hence it’s hard to have them in class at the same time to give the instruction. Then we should offer such service that support them to study whenever they want. Also, we should carefully categorize the instructions and separate them into small sections so they could choose based on their prior needs and won’t feel the content too time-consuming thus to maintain motivated.

Social Context

        In social aspect, people assume naturally that international students speak fine English since they pass certain exams, and they may do well in reading or listening to English, so universities may not help them with English speaking. At the same time, instructors expect them to behave well in classroom interactive activities. While in reality the students may face communicative challenges resulting from cultural differences, expressing habits, unfamiliar slangs and terms and so on. Thus our project aims to soothe their social pressure in building a community where people understand each other’s struggles, which is mainly realized in the blogging section. People tend to share their experiences and help each other in virtual communities, and the forum module of some elearning websites can be seen as examples, such as the one of Udacity where people answer the questions posted there voluntarily. What’s more, we would involve native English speakers as volunteers to contribute to the communities. We believe direct interaction with them and the lively cultural communication will benefit our target audience technically and cognitively. While we should consider in advance the possibility of  cultural conflict. In order to maintain a harmonious community we may incorporate some supervision or keywords blocking system.

Technical context

         In technical aspect,  our project is based on website and mainly incorporates video and live streaming courses, thus internet connectivity, video and audio applications, hardware as PC, tablet or smartphone and earphone, microphone need to be accessible. Since most students need these devices for their everyday study, either they have their owns or they can use the technical support from institutions.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  1.4 Learning Goals and Objectives

Learning goal

International students pursuing American higher education will improve English oral skills regarding various class activities and acquire basic understanding of American class cultures, in order to actively and successfully engage in class interactions.

Objectives

Phase 1: After finishing anchored instructional video course.

1. Students will have a general idea of how instruction works in an American classroom context.
2. Students will be able to make interrogative sentences in English.
3. Students will be able to apply certain sentence patterns to express their own opinions in English.
4. Students will be able to apply certain sentence patterns to debate with others in English.
5. Students will understand the idea and procedures of giving a presentation or class moderation in an American classroom context.

Phase 2: After participating in live classroom courses.

6)  Students will be able to fluently construct and address questions in English in a classroom context.

7)  Students will be able to clearly illustrate their points of view related to the learning topic in English in a classroom context.

8)  Students will be able to give presentations fluently in English in a classroom context.

9)  Students will be able to actively participate in group discussion and collaborate with other native speakers in a classroom context.

10)  Students will be able to debate with other native speakers in a classroom context.

11)  Students will be able to fluently communicate with their professors to for example, ask for advice and discuss research progress.

Phase 3: After writing and reading blogs.

12)  Students will understand the culture of American higher education better in order to actively participate in the classes.

13)  Students will be familiar with interpersonal communication skills especially in American college scenarios.

The objectives are also classified according to the revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Krathwohl et al., 2002) as shown in Figure 1.

Table 1. The classification in a Taxonomy Table of the project objectives

The Knowledge dimension	Remember	Understand	Apply	Analyze	Evaluate	Create
Factual Knowledge	Objective 2,3,4		Objective 2,3,4
Conceptual Knowledge		Objective 1,5				Objective 6,7,8
Procedural Knowledge		Objective 5				Objective 8
Metacognitive Knowledge		Objective 12,13				Objective 9,10,11

1.5 Review of competing (existing) projects

What can you learn from existing projects?

Existing language learning application promise to learners  the best results in attaining proficiency in the target language. Ones are aimed at vocabulary memorization, some at drilling grammar rules while others  focus directly on the the oral skills acquisition. Inspired by the recents shift in teaching  foreign language such application strive for including culturally authentic contexts as well as interaction with native speakers.

Mango languages is one of the recent language learning platforms that offers courses in over 70 languages including English for non-English speakers. It claims to prepare its users to real world interaction by embedding culturally accurate conversation in the lessons. On top of practicing dialogue phrases by repeating every single world multiple times and receiving information about grammatical structures, the users learn one cultural fact each lesson as a bonus. This website is very inviting and engaging for a person to start to learn a language independently. However, the language courses offered there will prepare you only for everyday basic communication. Moreover, this platform does not offer real interactions with native speakers that would facilitate users to practice attained languages skills.

The other platform that was launched recently is called OWL Communication Academy. It offers Chinese speaking learners assistance in preparation oral presentations in English. It targets not only Chinese-speaking students who attend US colleges but also Chinese entrepreneurs who seek to master their oral English language skills for business purposes.  Through individualized instruction users are promised to master their language skills and successfully complete their projects. Even though one of the aspects of this platform is to facilitate Chinese-speaking international students to succeed academically in the US, its individualized nature would not allow those students to experience real classroom and interact with the the native speakers in an authentic academic setting.

Why do you need a new learning environment?

With all the advantages that such applications provide foreign students that come to the United States are still not able to acquire full set of oral skills necessary for productive communication in the academic setting as there is no universal application that prepare them for such interaction. That is why there is a need for a new interactive platform that would allow all foreign students to master oral skills specific for classroom interaction in the authentic academic context through anchored instructional videos and live lessons. On top of that, this platform should allow them to gain cultural awareness, confidence and interpersonal communication skills through interaction with foreign and native-speaking peers in the blogging community.

Part 2. Design

2.1 Content Analysis

Description of the Content

• Culture of American higher education classes
• Oral English skills required in classes

• Asking questions
• Narrating viewpoints
• Debating
• Giving presentation
• Communicative skills required in academic learning
• Communicating and collaborating with classmates
• Communicating with professors

The content that we chose to cover in the project is based on the learning goal and specific problems of our target users -- international students. We analyzed what are the skills or knowledge they may lack compared with those native classmates and what language-related instructions may benefit them in getting better academic performance. Then we come up with three aspects that we can work on, which are English speaking skills, communicative skills and cultural background, while eliminating language barrier is still our primary focus. When we try to deliver the instructions, we find these three aspects are not independent from each other, but are necessarily combined when learners conduct a learning task.

Our general structure conclude three modules: the video courses, the live streaming classes and the community where people blog and share.  We mainly teach basic English speaking skills through the video courses and let them practice in the live streaming classes; offer chances of communication in live streaming classes and blogs; deliver cultural knowledge in the blogs, too, but this is not a strict division. For example, to help learners get familiar with American classes culture, we can either describe the scenario in the video or let them feel for themselves in the live classes, or we can have volunteers share in blogs how it feels like to study in that environments. In aspect of sequence, we ideally want learners to take video courses first and then join in the related live classes in the order of learning and practicing, while the community is always open.

There is a more specific categorization under the course module which include asking questions, expressing opinions, debating and giving presentation. We find these skills necessary for learners to actively participate in classes and since different individuals may have different needs, they can choose freely among these courses. No sequence needed to be followed for the topic of our instructions.

Delivery of the Content

Course module:   

In the main section, learners will be given the choice of four sets of videos aimed at learning and practicing the following oral skills:

• practice construction interrogative sentences in English;
• practice construction proper sentences in order to express their opinion;
• practice utilization certain phrases, sentence structures for debating;
• practice phrases, sentences for project  presentation.

The scenarios of those video will be based on the experience of international students in the academic setting.  In the videos students will face certain problems that the learners will be offered to solve by  applying already possessed or learned from the tutorial videos oral skills.

Classroom module:

In this module learners will be offered to sign up for the live stream lessons where they will have an opportunity to reinforce the learned or already possessed oral skills necessary for the classroom participation and stated in the Phase 2 of the learners’ objectives.

The topics of those videos

Community:

The content of the Community will be generated by the users. International students will be encouraged to posts their questions regarding any concerns they have and/or issues they encounter. They will also be encouraged to make posts about their positive experience or words of wisdom so that their peers could learn from their posts.

Native-speaking students will be engaged in generating content as well. They will be encouraged to create posts to share cultural information and contribute to answering questions of international students.

           

2.2 Media selection

Description of the media

We choose to build a website for our project, on which video, live streaming, and text blogging are implemented. We would like our website to be a good resource of informal and remote learning for the target users, with video offering basic knowledge, live streaming courses building authentic learning environment and blogs making a community for the users.

Why was the media/medium selected?

Video is often applied in e-learning, as it is asynchronous which can serve many viewers at any time. Also, viewers can control their learning pace when watching video, since they can pause to think about it, or rewind to deepen impression. In our project, video is applied to introduce scenarios in American higher education as well as oral English expressions, in which we would pause at certain timing for audience to respond to or repeat the content, thus to add interactivity to the instruction.

Live media streaming would be used to build an online classroom thus authentic learning environment is supplied, where situated learning and problem-based learning are able to be conveyed. What is s more, it allows users to meet each other and meet with professors, and such chance of practice is not that easily realized offline.  it allows users to learn from the native speakers in observing and following their class interactions. Also, in these simulating classes, they get the chance to practice speaking skills for their own courses. Last, live streaming facilitates instant feedback to the users and help them better control their own learning.

Online blogging is for sharing experiences, asking and answering questions. This media is more casual and allows learners to communicate with each other in order to construct knowledge about cultural stuff. Blog is also asynchronous thus the knowledge shared could benefit many other viewers.

Description of the delivery platform

The project would be internet-based like MOOC which integrates several main functions and is available for anyone at anytime. Such a website can be easily reached no matter on PC or mobile devices as long as internet is available. International students, as our target users, are supposed to have connections to internet, so they can easily use our service.

2.3 Project Description

The project is a resourceful online platform which provides online courses to learn English oral skills needed in classroom, live-streaming authentic environment to practice, and blogging community to share, connect and collaborate. Our project is designed to be used by each U.S. higher education institutions holding international students and recognizing their needs. Only students from our client institutions are eligible to access the content and services. We will be cooperating with the office of international students to promote, introduce, implement and maintain the platform with long-term customer support provided. In the implementation at different higher education institutions, we will collaborate with OIS to invite instructors and volunteer native speakers to deliver live streaming classes, lead and moderate activities online and give necessary learning evaluation and feedbacks for users. Instructors for live streaming class will be compensated if possible and volunteer native speaker students are required to pass the interview to get the position. Details of their roles and jobs will be discussed below.

Description of overall functionality (major components & features)

The LAC website consists of three major modules: Course, Classroom, Community. Course module offers many anchored video courses focusing on improving specific speaking skills needed in class; Classroom provides authentic live streaming classes with college professors and peers to practice skills learned from Courses; Community is an blogging platform that allows learners to interact with peers and native speakers through posting, responding, connecting, and participating various activities. There is no sequential requirement to access to these three modules, but the design of each modules content and features are closely related to each other to facilitate the learning experience. The content of the courses provided by Course module and Classroom module are the same, but Classroom modules happen on live streaming learning environment with higher oral skills requirements. The purpose of such design is to let students acquire specific oral skills independently from the Course module, where they can take much time to learn, repeat and prepare by watching video courses. Then the Classroom module creates the authentic classroom environment with the same topics and content to let learners apply the skills they learned in Course module and receive real-time feedback. However, learners are not required to finish one course in Course module before participating in one live streaming class (e.g. learners are not required to finish Debate Course before participating in Debate Classroom). They can register to join any live streaming class in Classroom module as long as they feel ready for. Also, there is no sequential requirement for learners to access the Community module. Learners can post, respond and connect in Community once they create an personal account. Access to these three modules will be clearly presented on the navigation bar at the top of the webpage.

Course is the major module which contains various anchored instructional video courses, each focusing on a specific oral skill needed in academic class, such as raising questions, group discussion, class moderation, debate and presentation (e.g. How to Debate in Class Course). Each course consists of series of anchored videos to lead learners through various experiences, deliver specific skills, and instructions will be given for learners to answer questions or solve problems. To be specific, each anchored video is a 20-minute story-based lesson, which happens in higher education class scenario with a certain problem to solve and skills to learn (e.g. group discussion, debate or presentation). There will be a character in the video who is also an international student going through different oral activities in class settings and interact with the viewers. Learners will follow the learning path with the character to learn skills to solve the problem and fulfill different tasks. During the video playing, there will be several pause to ask learners to answer questions in the scenario. Audio and video recording function will be provided on the learning screen to record the answers and all answers will be automatically saved. After the pause of each question, a sample answer will be provided for learners to compare and evaluate their own performance. Learners are allowed to take longer time to repeat recording their answers till they’re satisfied with their performances. It is also optional for learners to share their recordings in the Community module, send to individual friend or volunteer evaluators (will be explained in the Community module).  By registering for a specific course, learners can watch the series of video lessons at their own pace, while their personal learning progress will be tracked and shown in their profiles. In this learning module, learners will not be strictly assessed by their performances, and they will be rewarded with stars once they finish watching one course. The purpose is to offer learners a comfortable and independent learning environment with problem-solving approach to gain oral skills and prepare themselves to apply in authentic context. This section help students learn and master specific oral skills through watching and responding to the video content with simulated contexts, achieving the Phase 1 objectives.

The Classroom module schedules live streaming classes led by real lecturers and professors, providing an authentic environment for learners to practice oral skills they learned from video courses. We will collaborate with the Office of International Students at each institution to invite instructors to deliver live streaming classes, offering them extra compensation if possible. The content of the live streaming courses will cover all topics of the anchored video courses in Course module, where students can register to participate with other peers based on their own learning progress. Volunteer native speakers will be present in the live streaming class too to join the interactions and facilitate instructor’s teaching, the number of native speakers in each class varies according the requirement of instructors. Information of the course schedule will be posted on the Classroom webpage at the beginning of each semester and each scheduled live streaming class will be open to register two weeks ahead. To participate Classroom classes, students can join the class through the video conference link on the screen, so that everyone in the virtual classroom are connected through cameras with each other. Each live streaming class is limited to 12 students and last around 30 minutes long. The interactions and activities will be the same as those happen in real academic classes, and each student will receive personal feedback from the instructors about their performance. In this section, an authentic environment is created to facilitate students to achieve the Phase 2 objectives: being able to make different skills from the video into practice and fulfill tasks in the authentic live streaming classes.

Community module is an open forum for learners to post questions relevant to their learnings, answer questions from others, connect with peers and native speakers, and organize online or offline oral activities to improve English speaking skills. Volunteers will help in this module to answer questions, lead discussion and connect with learners to provide more assistance for their oral skills. This module also provides connection function which lets users to meet other learning peers online and add them as friends to start personal chat. Volunteer’s profile looks differently from other users so that learners can easily identify them and add those native speakers as friends to start one-to-one conversation. Each user’s profile photo and account information will be shown as they interact in the Community so that others can explore and connect with them. On this open social platform, students are not assessed by their postings or performances. Instead, they will be rewarded with stars based on their participation and interactions. Besides talking about oral skills in the Community, students can feel free to share or ask questions about other issues such as cultures, classroom behaviors, or interpersonal communication skills. In this way, learners will be able to achieve the Phase 3 objectives to be more comfortable and confident to talk in class.

Theoretical Framework

Constructivism is the learning theories that will serve as the basis for our project.

Bednar et al. (1991) states that “Constructivism is a theory that equates learning with creating meaning from experience” (as cited in Ertmer and Newby,1993, p.62). In other words, learner construct their own knowledge derived from experiences. The online platform introduced in this projects is comprised of three modules that will engage learners in a meaningful activities in the authentic context.  According to constructivist point of view, both learners and environmental factors are important as interaction between them enables knowledge construction (Ertmer and Newby,1993, p.63). In case of our project, the online  platform was designed in a way that would engage learners in an interactive activities facilitating their gradual oral skills mastery.

Classroom module in particular will allow students to have a real classroom experience by attending online classes taught by professors together with other foreign students as well as native speakers and participating in the offered activities. Brown et al. (1989) suggested that “situations actually co-produce knowledge (along with cognition) through activity” (as cited in Ertmer and Newby,1993, p.63). So designed activities for the Classroom module will be aimed at mastering their oral skills in real situations.

Furthermore, elements of  interaction and collaboration in authentic situations and with authentic communities will be incorporated in a Community section where learners will interact and collaborate with other foreign students and native speakers while reading, writing blogs and answering blog questions.

Anchored video course module will be based on anchored Instruction as a constructivist approach. “Anchored instruction is a technology-based learning approach which stresses the importance of placing learning within a meaningful, problem-solving context” (Bransford & The Cognitive and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1990). It uses the context, in case of our project there will be real course videos, to “situate the learning and application of knowledge”(Bransford & The Cognitive and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1990). Problem-solving activities associated with this type of instruction will enable students to practice their oral skills while completing challenging but engaging and interactive exercises.

Considerations for contextual and learner characteristics

One of the aspects of the interactive platform that needs to be considered is prevention from cyber bullying and harassment. Blogging module will be an open space for all registered foreign students and native students. Even though all the communication will be conducted on the voluntarily and purpose-driven basis the possibility of cyber bullying and harassment still might take place. That is why all the conversations in the Blogging module will be moderated on the constantly basis. Moreover, the authors of  inappropriate or offensive messages will be blocked and those messages will be deleted from the platform.

2.4 Information Architecture

2.4.1 Flow diagram

Figure 1 presents the sequence which learners will go through on the website. In order to take course and interact online, users should first create an account by clicking the register button. After creating an account with email and password, users can start to participate and learn on the three modules. They will have equal access to either start video course on Course module, join live streaming class in Classroom module, or post and interact on Community module.

When users go to the Course module, they can choose any course they would like to start with. There is no restriction on the sequence of the courses that students take, and they can register to take multiple video courses at the same time as well. After finishing one anchored video course, learners will rewarded by stars to be shown in their profiles.

When users interact on the Classroom module, they can register to join different live streaming classes offered and the schedule is shown on the webpage. After participating in live streaming class, users receive real-time and one-to-one feedback and assessment from the instructors.

On Community module, users can directly interact with others even if they are not taking any video course. In this area, they can post any thoughts, questions, experiences related to oral English learning or culture learning, and respond to other users freely as well.  Another activity that users can do is connecting with other learners and native speakers through the “add friends” function to start one-to-one communication. Based on one’s participation and interaction, starts will also be given as rewards here.

Figure 1. Flow Diagram of the LAC

2.5 Implementation

Prototype

https://invis.io/KAEKJUKB6#/265101222_Screen_Shot_2017-11-20_At_21-44-13

Plan of implementation

Our project will require certain considerations in order to be implemented. As it is a new product  we will focus on adoption and diffusion of innovation by following Bukman’s “user-oriented instructional development” approach that consists of five steps (Smith and Ragan, 2005, p. 106):

1. Identify the potential adopter.
2. Measure relevant potential adopter perceptions.
3. Design and develop user-friendly product.
4. Inform the potential adopter.
5. Provide posadoptation support.

The above mentioned steps will be taken into account  in the further description of the plan of implementation.

The project will be implemented in U.S. higher education institutions hold international students and wish to help them improve oral English in academic learning. Based on the concept “Mutual Adaptation” from Fullan and Pomfret (1977), we will work with the Office of International Students of each institution, which provides international students with services in academics and living, to promote and implement the project and make modifications according to the local conditions if needed. According to Fullan and Pomfret (1977), local professionals can make better assessment of the needs and potential reception of the innovation, thus we will hold meetings with each institution’s professionals before the implementation to learner their specific needs and concerns. The quick access link of the website will be presented on the homepage of the OIS website and we will make sure every components of the platform maintain high fidelity to the original design. The users themselves are also a good source of assessing the potential reception of the innovation. Therefore, we will also conduct questionnaire surveys with international students to learn about their concerns and preferences.

Resistance factors are definitely important to be considered during Implementation phase. Zaltman and Duncan (1977) defined resistance as “any conduct that serves to maintain status quo in the face of pressure to alter the status quo” (p.61). In web-based learning, which is the learning environment in our project, resistance is divided into three categories according to Pajo and Wallace (2001): personal barriers, attitudinal barriers, and organizational barriers. The Table 2. shows the possible strategies we have to cope with the three types of resistance that may happen during the implementation based on Pajo and Wallace’s (2001) idea.

Table 2. Resistance factors and strategies

Barrier categorization	Resistance	Strategy
Personal barriers	Lack of proficiency of using computer and internet; Having difficulty using our website;	We will provide brief tutorial video to help learners navigate and use the materials on the website. The tutorial link will be presented on the homepage which is easy to access to.
Attitudinal barriers	Not motivated to take extra curriculum courses;	We will conduct marketing strategy on university social media to advocate the benefit of our project; We will also collaborate with OIS to send out emails to encourage students to use the website.
Organizational barriers	Funding; Universities don’t recognize the needs;	We will work with the OIS to conduct survey to recognize international student’s needs to improve oral English for academic learning.

Apart from preparing for possible resistance factors during implementation, it is also important to make sure the facilitative conditions are provided to ensure the successful implementation. According to Ely’s (1999) eight conditions that contribute to implementation, our implementation plan includes efforts to meet these conditions for better implementation, as shown in Table 3

Table 3. Eight facilitative conditions plan

	Plan
1.           Dissatisfaction with the status quo	As analyzed in the needs assessment of the context by using Discrepancy Model, international students need to improve the status quo of their oral english interaction in class settings.
2.           Knowledge and skills exist	As mentioned in the Problem Statement, oral english skills for participating in class activities are essential both for international students’ individual academic learning and the overall quality of higher education.
3.           Availability of resources	The availability of internet and computer for university students are not a problem for most of the students now. All the learning activities of our project will happen online, which will ensure this conditions are met to facilitate the implementation.
4.           Availability of time	The design of the learning content considers the busy schedule of international students, so our video course has no time limits for learners to finish. Learners can go at their own pace according to their school schedule.
5.           Rewards and/or incentives exist	Users will receive stars rewards shown in their profiles once they finish anchored video course, participate in live streaming class, and interact in community.
6.           Participation	There will be meetings and surveys conducted with university professionals and international students before implementation. Their voice and ideas will be heard during the decision-making process.
7.           Commitment	We will provide continuing support for the implementation, including technical support, periodical user surveys, data monitoring and analysis and so on.
8.           Leadership	We work closely with OIS faculty who will mainly supervise the daily use of the innovation.

• Institutionalization

To ensure continued use of our online platform we are going to provide 24/7 online technical support that will allow to resolve any technical issues associated with the website utilization.

One of the ways of keeping stable participation rate of the registered users  we are  going to provide extra support for international students by organizing  meetings.  Those meeting will host guest speakers to talk about their experiences as international students, what challenges they faced and how they found the solutions to overcome them. Native speakers will be invite to share some of their geniously cultural experiences that are of particular interest to the international students as they will indicate in the survey answers. Overall these activities will be an extension of our Community where international students will be given a chance to speak to each other and native-speaking students in real life and gain more confidence and experience of oral interaction. Though this kind of interaction will be more of informal type and it is not the focus of our project, we still believe that out project has a room for extension and may allow international students not only to improve their oral skills for the academic setting or communicate with their peers by means of Community, but also have an experience of  spontaneous real-time interaction. It also entails motivational aspect, as they have a chance to see what oral skills are important to master.

2.6 Evaluation

Evaluation Plan for the learning environment

Stufflebeam’s CIPP Evaluation Model

Our evaluation plan will follow Stufflebeam’s CIPP Evaluation Model which contains four distinct types of evaluation: context evaluation, input evaluation, process evaluation, product evaluation.  

Context Evaluation  

Context evaluation examines the learning environment in which the project will take place to determine needs, objectives and influencing factors, which is also called needs assessment.  We conduct the needs assessment by using the Discrepancy model. Readers can refer to the Learning Context section for detailed analysis.

Input Evaluation  

The Input Evaluation process aims to examine the resources needed to develop the design project, strength of project strategies and their effectiveness to produce the desired product.

We will adopt inventorying method to evaluate the resources available for the project, including funding, people, space, software and so on. The basic format will look like Table 4.

Table 4. Inventory for input evaluation

Item	Available / Not available	Details
Funding	✓
People	𐄂
Space	✓
Software	✓

To evaluate the strength of project strategies and their effectiveness, we will consult design experts to review the project plan and evaluate the efficacy to achieve the learning goals. We will hold meetings with both experts of instructional design and content experts to identify problems and come up with solutions of the design.

Process Evaluation (formative evaluation)

According to Stufflebeam’s CIPP evaluation model, process evaluation “is used to examine the ways in which an innovation/program is being developed, the way it is implemented, the initial effectiveness, and the effectiveness after revisions.” (Reiser and Dempsey, 2012, p.88)  In other words this data informs implementation decisions.

Design Reviews

To answer the question that whether the development and implementation of our project are carried in the direction of our learning goals, we need to do design reviews, which is to assess the outcome when each stage of design is completed. The subjects of the review would be the learning goal and the task analysis.

To review learning goal, we would applied the needs assessment to confirm that there is a real instructional problem to be solved and the solution is congruent with learners’ expectations. Thus, we will conduct in-depth interview and focus group to learn about target audience’s expectations and then revise the goal based on the conclusion drew from needs assessment.

The task analysis is to evaluate which skills need to be covered in the instructions as well as which prerequisite skills are required to assure learners to reach the learning goal, and thus to determine if the contents of the project are comprehensive and effective. We will observe the students who are able to fluently express their opinions and actively participate in classes, resolve the tasks they have completed during the process, and also examine if they can perform the tasks listed in learning objectives.

Usability reviews

After we produce the prototype of our project, it is important to test its usability, affordances and effectiveness before implementation. The methods applied during this stage are expert reviews, one-to-one evaluation, small-group evaluation and field trial.

1. Expert Review

It is helpful to consult relevant experts’ opinions before bringing the design to the users. Aside from instructional design experts, in our case the experts on English speaking, English teaching, linguistics or cross-cultural communication can all be involved to examine the accuracy of our content and the effectiveness of our instructional methods. Then we will make revisions according to experts’ reviews.

2. Learner validation

It is rather important to see if users can make use of our affordances and to learn in advance what problems they may come across when using it thus we will conduct one-to-one evaluation, small-group evaluation and field trials in turns to see how our project works for a more and more diverse group. Pretest, instruction and posttest, attitude questionnaire and group debriefing are the specific methods to conduct learner validation, with which the problems of the project and the users’ suggestions could be gained to guide the revision of the prototype.

Product Evaluation (summative evaluation)

In this part we mainly focus on summative evaluation to value if the implementation of our project help learners reach the learning goal effectively and efficiently, which is to actively participate in classes with improvement in English oral skills and understanding of related culture. Both objectivism and subjectivism, both qualitative and quantitative methods will be applied as evidence of the accomplishment of the project.

Measure the learning outcomes

1. Pretest, Instruction, Posttest

To assess what learners acquire after taking our instructions, we would reach to a certain amount of users and do pretest before they start and do posttest after they accomplish certain instructions and the test subject would be their oral English frequency, communicative skills and class participation. For specific test content and form, we need to refer to some existing standard language test to design our test while the core is to reflect the 13 objectives and at the same time define criterias for the success of goal accomplished. After the test, we will collect and analyze data. Such quantitative and goal-based method would help us evaluate the project objectively.

2. Observation

We would have already done observation before implementation to test the usability of our project, while for the observation in this stage, we would track more of the real users’ behavior to see how our project work on the majority and if there are unintended problems and outcomes. For the instructional videos, we would track data like the user accomplishment of each video, specific positions that users pause or repeat and the results of the tests related to each video. For live streaming classes, we observe users’ participation and the transfer of instruction-based knowledge to authentic practice, to see if the skills delivered are applied by most users. For blogging module, we assess whether most people contribute to the community and are nice to each other. We also need to observe the job done by instructors in live streaming classes and volunteers in blogging to see if they are congruent with our goals, clear with their duties and complete them well.

3. Self-report and Expert Review

To complete the product evaluation, we also need to hear from stakeholders like experts and users. For expert review, we would collect the data and write reports based on the aforementioned assessments, give them to experts and require feedback. At the same time, we would invite a certain amount of users to complete a self-report survey, mainly to learn about their gains, motivation, suggestions and worries. The questions would be like: “Do you feel the improvement of your oral English?” “Do you feel more confident in classes?”

Assess the project efficiency

Besides project effectiveness, it is also important to assess the efficiency. Thus we need to calculate the time and money cost for the implementation as well as the technical and human resources needs to compare with our adopters’ affordance and competing projects.

Learners evaluation

For our project, we will use learners’ knowledge evaluation: first, when they sign up, we will ask them to self-assess their language skills to see the level of their knowledge as well as confidence to start to work with the platform modules. This information will be useful to track learners’ levels that decide to use our platform.

When they are going to work with the first module, that is anchored instruction, their complete assignments will be assessed by the language instructors who will be hired to work at the platform team. This assessment will facilitate tracking of the learners’ progress to ensure that they possess the required set of language skills to proceed to the next module, that is live lectures.

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