Multiple Design Ideas

The presentation of educational challenges and brainstorming of solutions in today's ED256 class were really exciting. In light of the challenge I am most concerned about, motivating college students in China who study English as a foreign language to practice their communication skill orally, with reorganization and integration of some of the ideas provided by my classmates and my own thoughts, I have got several design ideas as follows:

1) a virtual environment with multiple preset scenes and contexts, as well as NPCs (non-player characters). Students are expected to finish certain tasks alone or in collaboration by orally communicating with each other and the NPCs and making themselves understood. It could be designed as a game in which players win by finishing tasks most quickly and effectively, then the winners would be rewarded with access to more complicated tasks which demands a higher level of oral proficiency. The scenes could be in the street asking for directions, at a theater trying to get tickets, at a restaurant placing orders, making phone calls and leaving messages, in a classroom participating in discussions, etc., which could be used separately or together in accordance with the objectives of the language class and the learners' level.

2) an online distance collaborative learning space in which students in China can work with English native speakers from another country by orally talking to each other and having tasks completed. For example, learning pairs or groups can exchange videos of real life scenes they have recorded in their home countries, have discussions orally, then write reports to share with other pairs and groups; or they can enter a contest in which one person orally tells a story, and his/ her partner on the other side reproduce the story, then the best matching wins.

3) a collaborative learning program which allows one student to describe what happens in an animation he/ she is watching, and his/her partner to manipulate drawings or puppets on a separate screen to reconstruct the animation only with the help of the oral description given.

4) a "talking" second-life in which avatars could pick whatever major cities in the world they want to go to, then orally interact with each other or "Siris" while living their life in the city.