家长参与的周末学前儿童外语（英语） 面授课程

网上学习解决方案： 灵格风中国案例研究

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Learning Science and Technology

by

Wenchao He

wenchao.he@sydney.edu.au

Centre for Research on Computer-Supported Learning and Cognition

Faculty of Education and Social Work

The University of Sydney , Australia

July 2008

学位论文全文

论文研究计划

参与者信息综述

家长参与者同意函

父母或监护人同意函

教师参与者信息综述

教师参与者同意函

Abstract

This case study was driven by the needs of Guangzhou Kids Centre, Linguaphone Group China Branch to explore the feasibility of developing an e-learning solution to promote parental involvement in order to enhance the learning outcomes of the preschooler-level students attending weekend face-to-face English classes. A pilot e-learning project was initiated in two classes (Level 1 and 2) to help the parents to organise weekly family-based English learning activities under the instruction of the teachers. During a five-week period, the parents were given access to an online learning management system where there were weekly instruction packages including the teachers’ summaries of what was taught in class, family-based English learning activity guide with relevant materials, and a feedback forum. The teachers checked and replied the parents’ feedback during the week to provide further assistance. To have a better understanding of parental involvement in the weekend English class and to avoid influences of any potential technical issues related to the e-learning project, an alternative method was taken at the same time in another two classes (Level 1 and 2), where the parents received the same instruction packages in print. The parents completed some questionnaires before and after the project, and were interviewed by the researcher. The four teachers were also interviewed at the end of the project. The results show that most of the parents of Level 2 students actively participated in the project while the participation by the parents of Level 1 students was limited. The E-Learning Group’s and Print Group’s parents participated in the program using different strategies. The teachers’ and parents’ observations seem to suggest that the students’ progress was associated with the degree of activeness of the parents’ participation. Suggestions for the subsequent development of the e-learning solution are made based on the analysis and discussion of the results.

Acknowledgements

Firstly, I am grateful to my supervisor Dr. Chun Hu for her support and help throughout my study. Her valuable suggestions and comments on my work gave me a strong direction to move further. Discussing with her usually triggered much new idea conducive to the subsequent research procedure. She cared not only my study but also my life in Australia, a foreign country for me. This has led to my confidence and enjoyableness during the study.

I thank Linguaphone China and Ask Idea Educational Studio for providing this study with funding, relevant materials and continual support.

I thank Mr. Yaowei Situ and Mr. Tim Ng for their promoting my proposed parental involvement program to be implemented in Guangzhou Kids Centre, Linguaphone China. Without their support, I could not conduct the case study with Linguaphone.

I thank the four teachers’ participation in this study. They have worked with me collaboratively within the parental involvement program. Without their support and effort, I could not implement the project and conduct the study internationally.

Finally, and certainly not least, my greatest thanks are due to my fiancée for cheerful encouragement and unfailing support during the study. And I thank my parents who are living in China but always encourage me to overcome difficulties via synchronous chat on the Internet.

Licensing

The author of this dissertation, Mr. Wenchao He, owns the copyright of this dissertation which is protected by Copyright Act 1968 and other applicable law in Australia . Without the copyright holder’s written permission, any use of this dissertation other than as authorised under this license is prohibited.

On 1 July 2008, this dissertation will be submitted to Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney for examination. The Faculty and University of Sydney Library and its agents will be permanently licensed to hold the hard and electronic copies of this dissertation which can be made available to the staff and the students of University of Sydney . Once this dissertation has been submitted, Linguaphone Group and Ask Idea Educational Studio will be respectively granted a permanent, irrevocable, free, world wide, non-exclusive license (including a right of sublicense) to use, reproduce, adapt and exploit the intellectual property rights in this dissertation for any commercial or noncommercial purpose.

From 1 July 2008 to 31 December 2008, the full text of this dissertation should be kept partially confidential and should not be copied, distributed, displayed or reproduced out of the scopes of University of Sydney, Linguaphone Group and Ask Idea Educational Studio. The author and any other staff and student in the three organisations who has received this dissertation should only use the dissertation for their work, study, or research within the three organisations and should not forward the full text of this dissertation to any other party or upload the full text of this dissertation to the Internet to make it available to the public.

From 1 January 2009, this dissertation will be made available to the public and become licensed unde Australian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Work 2.5 License , which is:

You are free:

to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work

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Any request for any use of this dissertation other than as authorised under the above licensing statement can be forwarded to the copyright holder, Wenchao He, who can be contacted at wenchao.he@sydney.edu.au.

List of Contents

1    Introduction. 1

1.1 Problem Statement. 1

1.2 Possible solution. 2

1.3 Purposes of the Study and Research Questions. 2

2    Literature Review. 4

2.1 Parental Involvement. 4

2.1.1 Parental Involvement’s Effectiveness. 4

2.1.2 Parent-school Partnership. 5

2.1.3 Communicative Issue of Parental Involvement Programs in Kindergartens. 6

2.1.4 Parental Involvement Possibility. 7

2.2 E-learning. 8

2.2.1 E-learning’s Representations. 8

2.2.2 Networked Learning. 9

2.2.3 E-learning in a Family Context 10

2.2.4 Using Technology to Promote Family-School Connection. 12

2.3 Second/Foreign Language Learning. 13

2.3.1 Family-based Linguistic Input and Interaction. 13

2.3.2 The Transitional Shift of CALL. 15

3    Methodology. 18

3.1 Research Method Selection. 18

3.2 Participants. 20

3.3 Instruments. 21

3.3.1 Questionnaires. 21

3.3.2 Telephone Interview. 25

3.4 Procedure. 27

3.4.1 Parental Involvement Program. 27

3.4.2 Data Collection. 28

3.4.3 Data Analysis. 28

4    Results. 30

4.1 Overview. 30

4.1.1 Overview of the Students and the Parents. 30

4.1.2 Response Rates. 33

4.1.3 Participation Rate. 34

4.2 Parental Involvement in Children’s English Learning. 35

4.2.1 Parental Modeling in Children’s English Learning. 35

4.2.2 Parental Involvement Preferences. 39

4.2.3 Summary. 43

4.3 E-learning Solution Supporting Parental Involvement. 43

4.3.1 Parent Involved Networked Learning Model 43

4.3.2 Promoting Connections. 44

4.3.3 Summary. 49

4.4 Enhancing the Outcomes of Children’s English Learning. 49

4.4.1 Enhancing English Input and Interaction by CALL. 50

4.4.2 Let the Students Know about their Parents’ Participation. 52

4.4.3 Multiple Language Representations. 53

4.4.4 Parent-Teacher Face-to-Face Communication. 54

4.4.5 Customised Instruction in Class. 54

4.4.6 Parents’ Learning English for Themselves. 55

4.4.7 Summary. 56

5    Discussion and Conclusion. 57

5.1 Summary of the findings. 57

5.2 Implications and Suggestions. 58

5.2.1 Multiple Solutions. 58

5.2.2 Instruction on Parental Involvement 58

5.2.3 Promoting Connections. 59

5.2.4 Promoting English Input and Interaction. 59

5.3 Limitations of the study. 60

5.4 Future research. 61

6     References. 62

Ernst & Young’s Practice of Designing

Global E-Learning Program:

a Review from the ISD Perspectives   

He, Wenchao

CoCo Research Centre

Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Australia

16 June 2008 

Introduction

Ernst & Young is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services, with about 130,000 staff helping clients retain confidence of investors, manage risk, strengthen controls and achieve potential in more than 130 countries in the world (Ernst & Young, n.d.-a, n.d.-b). To standardise or customise their services and make the staff members rely on explicit and tacit knowledge to solve problems, they have used the codification strategy since they frequently reuse their knowledge to achieve long-term advantage and economies of scale (Smith, 2004). To support this, they needed a flexible learning system to provide a global curriculum that all the staff from different offices in the world can participate in (Werner, 2002). On the other hand, using a blend of Web-based and classroom instruction, Ernst & Young reduced training costs by 35 percent while improving consistency and scalability (Bih, 2007). This paper, focusing on Ernst & Young’s Audit Methodology Learning Program, looks deep into the design process of their global e-learning program from the ISD perspectives, and provides suggestions for improvement of the e-learning solution.

Design Process

The Ernst & Young Assurance & Advisory Business Services (AABS) practice consists of financial statement audit, core assurance service, and six specialty assurance and advisory services. To support its AABS strategy, Ernst & Young created a global audit methodology that is organised in three layers: (1) overview of the methodology, (2) detailed guidance for applying the procedures and (3) examples and leading practices. The staff’s learning about this audit methodology would be critical to its successful deployment and application. So Ernst & Young used six months to design and develop the first 300 hours of the core curriculum of the global e-learning program to initiate and support such learning, which included six main stages (Werner, 2002):

(1)   Global Learning Committee Construction. The Committee Members were the learning leaders of Ernst & Young’s main geographic areas, who were responsible for defining the learning strategy and the development process, and approving all finished learning modules.

(2)   Content Creation. Ernst & Young used a modular approach to create the initial content which was divided into web-based and instructor-led learning modules based on the global audit methodology activities. Ernst & Young also assigned countries to develop the content for the modules related to a particular activity which would be bundled into logical groups later. All the modules were rated beginner, intermediate, advanced and expert.

(3)   Streamlined Development and Pilot Process. Once the relevant documents of the learning content had been ready, they used a streamlined development process to accelerate the actual learning module development and the build phase of the program. The Committee allocated the modules to different development teams and provided them with guidance including the detailed development process map, initial design documents, expanded design documents, leader guides, business English guide and roles description for team members (e.g. subject matter specialists, local project managers, etc.). A showcase was leveraged to test the content and gather feedback, in which approximately 80 hours of learning were delivered to the learning leaders and senior managers. The program manager and methodology team analyzed issues identified during showcase testing, and critical issues and suggestions for resolution were sent to the development teams.

(4)   Central Communication Point Creation. A central communication point was created to allow every developing team member from multiple countries to access the learning modules under development and make comments. Thus everyone could see what everyone else was developing.

(5)   Peer Review. When a learning module was developed in one country, it was systematically reviewed by a subject matter specialist from another country. Countries were asked to submit learning material related to all methodology activities, regardless of the activities their countries were assigned to develop.

(6)   Classroom-based Case Study Exercises Development. A separated case study team was created with a member from every country, which was responsible for creating all the information for a fictitious business. The case study was used in many of the classroom modules to create exercises to reinforce learning.

The six stages are more or less overlapped as there were different teams fulfilling responsibilities within each stage. However, the overlapped parts basically only appeared in the latter half of the whole project as the design process is actually a top-down approach (see Figure 1). The lower the levels of the teams were, the more overlapped the phases of their work were.

Figure 1:  The Organisation Structure of Ernst & Young’s AABS Global Learning Development Project (Werner, 2002)

Design Methodology

The method used for the instructional design of Ernst & Young’s e-learning program is a systems approach. This approach has been described in literature as instructional systems development (ISD) which provides a practical, step-by-step system for evaluating student needs, developing the program content and determining the effectiveness of the instructional design (Hannum & Hansen, 1989). The widely used models for ISD are ADDIE Model which includes analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation (Branson, 1975), and the Dick and Carey Model which describes nine phases of an iterative process that starts by identifying instructional goals and ends with summative evaluation (Dick & Carey, 1978). Though systems approaches for instructional design have been criticized by some as being too rigid, too cumbersome, too linear, too inflexible, too constraining, and even too time-consuming to implement (Clark, 2004; Kruse, 2006), Ernst & Young still had to develop their e-learning program in this way because they had become a complex system which has so many locations through out the world (O’Leary, 1998; Seng, Zannes, & Pace, 2002). Such context is much different from a single teacher or lecturer designing instruction for the classes. This section of the present paper adopts the latest edition of Dick & Carey Model (see Figure 2) to describe and discuss the design methodologies of Ernst & Young’s e-learning program development project.

Figure 2:   The Dick & Carey Model (6^th Edition) (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2004)

The Dick and Carey model does not emphasize the first phase—analysis of ADDIE as Dick et al. (2004) believe that, before instruction is created, it is necessary to determine the need for that instruction in terms of what problem within the organization will be solved through the use of new skills, or what opportunity can be seized because of new skills in the organization. This step is critically important to the success of the design process. Ernst & Young’ e-learning program design decision was consistent with this assertion. In the very beginning, rather than analyzing the skills to be developed, the learners’ entry behaviour or the learning context, Ernst & Young clearly defined their instructional goal which was to promote their global audit methodologies that their staff was required to use consistently while providing clients with assurance and advisory business services. They valued and emphasised this goal to a considerable extent. To ensure the whole design process continually on the right track, they used a high-level committee to support and control the project, which has reinforced the importance of the project to all participants and made the project strongly goal-oriented.

However, Dick et al.’s (2004) not putting analysis phase as the first phase does not indicate that the analysis can be ignored. Rather, they recognise the constructivist points of view that learning is always a unique product "constructed" as each individual learner combines new information with existing knowledge and experiences, so the Dick and Carey Model’s second phase includes analysing the performance of the instructional goal as well as the learners’ entry behaviours, prior knowledge, learning and application context, etc., but this was much difficult for Ernst & Young to implement and actually they have not done much in this phase because the target learners and their contexts varied from places to place.

To make up the lack of analysis of learners and their contexts, Ernst & Young wrote the learning objectives according to the learners of different levels from beginners to experts and the learning content followed was designed based on these assumptions. The other compensation reported by Werner (2002) was to tie the learning content “to the learners’ previous experiences through open-ended questions (in the Web-based modules) and opportunities to share experiences through storytelling (in the instructor-led modules)” (p. 69). Anyhow, Ernst & Young tried their best to minimize the need for localization of the modules.

Without developing any assessment instrument, Ernst & Young directly proceeded to the fifth and six phases to develop instructional strategies (e.g. modular approach, blended approach, etc.) and materials (e.g. web pages, case study exercises, etc.). Once the pilot modules were completed, the formative evaluation was conducted by project managers and methodology team. Also, each completed module was sent to subject matter specialist from a different country for systematic review. However, the objective of this kind of reviews “was to use as much existing material developed by the different countries as possible” (Werner, 2002, p. 72). Therefore, the “real formative evaluation” only existed in the pilot process. And the feedback from the pilot process formed the basis for the revision of the instructional strategy and material. According to Dick et al. (2004), the data from a formative evaluation should not be simply used to revise the instruction itself, but should be used to reexamine the validity of the instructional analysis and the assumptions about the entry behaviors and characteristics of learners. However, because there were no actual learners participating in the formative evaluation, Ernst & Young could not identify the difficulties experienced by the learners in achieving the objectives and relate these difficulties to specific deficiencies in the instruction. Eventually, there were no data for the revision of the analysis phase. In addition, they even had no chance to validate the assumption for the four-level learners’ competencies.

To sum up, Ernst & Young’s e-learning design process basically went through most phases of the Dick & Carey Model but some components and links of the model were “missing” as labeled in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Ernst & Young’s E-learning Design Process Model

Critical Analysis and Problem Solving

The main decisions within Ernst & Young’s e-learning program design process were basically made by high-level staff (e.g. learning leaders, project managers, subject matter specialists, etc.) without much consulting the target learners. The learners were considered in the design and develop phases, but not involved in the actual design process. As learners are the important factors in the analysis, assessment and evaluation phases (Dick et al., 2004) and Ernst & Young’s design process had no learners involved, these three phases tended to be missing and this would lead the design process to be a vicious circle because of lack of effective revision of instruction supported by the data from learners. Such situation would also lead to learner readiness issues, such as lack of time, low interest in subject matter, low motivation for learning, poor self-study skills, poor time management skills, disrupting life interruptions, lack of necessary e-skills, psychological resistance to losing face to face learning perks, etc. (Phillips, 2002; Romiszowski, 2004). Furthermore, because of such situation, the leaders in the organisation would have not enough understanding on the learners’ needs in terms of the learning context, which would lead to poor internal marketing of courses and events, lack of clear reward structure, failure to provide quality learning environment, failure to provide quality learning equipment, failure to provide managerial feedback and support of learning, failure to provide time on-the-job to train, corporate-wide lack of dedication to a learning culture, blanket mandate of e-learning as the new-new thing (ibid).

Ernst & Young’s current instructional design approach is exactly what Carr-Chellman & Savoy (2004) described about traditional instructional design—“the designer analyzes, creates, and negotiates, and the leaders initiate, approve and decide”, and “the users are left to accept or reject the innovation” (p. 702). If users are truly empowered to participating in designing products or processes, the products or processes will tend to create a significantly different adoption process. Therefore, a user-design approach, which indicates that actions such as initiation, approval, rejection, design, and decision making are negotiated among the users , designers and leaders, would be beneficial for Ernst & Young to avoid the disadvantages of the current design process and the potential risks on the organizational level (ibid).

Since user-design is very time-consuming and resource hungry (Carr-Chellman, Cuyar, & Breman, 1998), the suggestion about user-design approach may not be adopted if its disadvantages significantly constrain the e-learning solution to meet the business goal of Ernst & Young, and the possibility of this supposition tends to be large because saving learning and administrative time, training budgets and other resources is still one of the main reasons why corporations use e-learning (Oakes, 2003; Tai, 2008). An eclectic approach would be revising the traditional ISD models so that it can adapt to the context of e-learning that has special needs and constrains (e.g. lower cost, learners’ locations vary, etc.). Carliner (2002) revised the Dick and Carey Model and then proposed a four-phase model to describe the ISD process for e-learning (see Figure 4).

In the Carliner Model, there are no standalone instructional analysis (distinguishing from the analysis of goals and needs of organisations), assessment and evaluation phases and basically learners are not involved in the design process. Some of the components of each phase of the Carliner Model indicate the differences between designing e-learning and designing traditional classroom courses, and these components generally have existed in Ernst & Young’s e-learning design process. For example, in the Definition Phase, Carliner (2002) suggests collecting demographic data about the learners and preparing prose descriptions of them because within an organisation, learners with different backgrounds and of different levels have different appetites for content and use the content in different ways. Similarly, Ernst & Young prepared their e-learning content for four-different-level learners. We can notice that both the Carliner Model and Ernst & Young’s practice tend to construct the learning content that covers most of the learners and the term “learner” that they used actually refers to the abstract, assumptive or even imaginary concept of “learner”, rather than the learners known as actual people. Such situation is much different from traditional classroom where actual learners are known and reachable, and the learning content will be only prepared directly for them.

Figure 4:  ISD Process for e-learning (Carliner, 2002)

In the Design Phase, Carliner (2002) emphases using of style guides and templates to ensure the consistency of similar content (screens, text, number, language, formats of headings, etc.). And in Development Phase, effective communication, technical and editorial reviews, and running tests are also required in the context of designing e-learning. Ernst & Young’s design process included the provision of guidance for streamlined development and the review process. Such “additional” work should be done within the ISD for e-learning, which is not emphasised in traditional ISD because the most of the information from the course will be delivered through teachers’ speech which does not need the style guides, templates, review process, etc.

Assessment and evaluation are the two main missing phases for Ernst & Young’s design process as well as the Carliner Model. However, Carliner (2002) still mentioned assessment and evaluation in the Design Phase but disappointingly he only used limited words to address the importance of them and did not clarify whether the actual learners should be involved or not and whether the assessment and evaluation should be implemented in the Definition Phase to obtain the data for the definition of goals. So regarding to the assessment and evaluation phases in ISD, we probably can adopt some thoughts from Borich’s (1979) systematic evaluation model (see Figure 5) to the e-learning design context.

Figure 5: (a) Traditional view and (b) nontraditional view of the evaluator during planning, development, and evaluation (Borich, 1979)

Borich (1979) noticed that, traditionally, planners, designers, developers and evaluators each often begin their work in different phases in the instructional design process and then proposed a new approach involving evaluators to keep contributing through out the whole process. Here the evaluator, rather than entering the scenario late in the development process, plays an integral role in program planning and development alongside planners and developers. This model and Carr-Chellman & Savoy’s (2004) User-Design approach may meet a compromise and be integrated. While one representation of User-Design approach is design team members acting as users (Carr-Chellman & Savoy, 2004), this kind of “users” can keep contributing to the evaluation process within Borich’s (1979) framework. So if Ernst & Young used this systematic evaluation approach in the design process (e.g. using the special “users” to conduct a formative evaluation while senior leaders were reviewing the pilot modules), this would help make up the disadvantages caused by lacking actual learners involved.

To sum up, lack of actual learners involved in Ernst & Young’s e-learning program design process would lead to various problems and a user-design approach is recommended to the e-learning project. However, a user-design approach requires too much time and resources to support, so a revised ISD model was introduced specifically for e-learning design process. Finally, the evaluation issue was resolved by integrating a user-design approach and a systematic evaluation approach so that the drawbacks of lacking actual learner’s involvement would be overcome.

Reflection and Conclusion

Although there are places that could be further improved, Ernst & Young’s practice of global e-learning program development has given us a very good case to help us better understand Instructional Systems Development’s (ISD) application in the real world. ISD has been used for more than three decades. It experienced the change of contexts—from pure face to face instructional design to e-learning program development. In the middle of this change, there has been a need for us to study how bridge the gap between using it in traditional way and in nontraditional way. If new issues emerge, we need to identify opportunities to use other exist approach to resolve them, or to create new approaches to update ISD’s usage in the new context.

In this paper, we have summarised Ernst & Young’s e-learning design process, used a system approach (e.g. the Dick and Carey Model), and critically analyse the issues identified in this paper and finally provided the conceptual solutions for the issues.

References 

Bih, J. (2007). When it comes to e-learning. ACM Ubiquity, 8(43), 1-11.

Borich, G. D. (1979). A system approach to the evaluation of training. In J. H. F. O’Neil (Ed.), Procedures for instructional systems development (pp. 205-231). New York: Academic Press.

Branson, R. K. (1975). Interservice procedures for instructional systems development: Executive summary and model. Tallahassee, FL: Center for Educational Technology, Florida State University.

Carliner, S. (2002). Designing e-learning. Alexandria, VA: ASTD.

Carr-Chellman, A., Cuyar, C., & Breman, J. (1998). User-design: A case application in health care training. Educational Technology Research and Development, 46(4), 97-114.

Carr-Chellman, A., & Savoy, M. (2004). User-design research. In D. H. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Educational Communication and Technology (2nd ed., pp. 701-716). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Clark, D. (2004). The Dick and Carey Model – 1978.   Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://www.nwlink.com/~Donclark/history_isd/carey.html

Dick, W., & Carey, L. (1978). The systematic design of instruction. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.

Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2004). The systematic design of instruction (6th ed.). Boston & London: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Ernst, & Young. (n.d.-a). Creating the right climate for your business success.   Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://www.ey.com/global/content.nsf/International/Services

Ernst, & Young. (n.d.-b). How we make a difference.   Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://www.ey.com/global/content.nsf/International/About_EY

Hannum, W. H., & Hansen, C. D. (1989). Instructional systems development in large organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.

Kruse, K. (2006). Introduction to Instructional Design and the ADDIE Model.   Retrieved June 15, 2008, from http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art2_1.htm

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Oakes, K. (2003). E-learning. Training & Development, 57(7), 17-20.

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Seng, C. V., Zannes, E., & Pace, R. W. (2002). The contributions of knowledge management to workplace learning. Journal of Workplace Learning, 14(4), 138 – 147.

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Englishtown.com’s Efekta^™ System : Could Be Further Improved

He, Wenchao

CoCo Research Centre

Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Australia 

October 30, 2007
 

1.  Introduction

This paper reports on aspects of the possibilities and potentials for Englishtown.com’s further improvement from the perspective of user experience. It could help online language teaching program developers, both from Englishtown.com or other institutes consider the ways that they could make progress.

Englishtown.com is an online English learning website operated by Englishtown Inc, a division of Education First Group (EF) which is said to be the world’s largest private educational organization, with 26,000 staff, 300 schools, and 75 offices in 50 countries. Englishtown asserts that they have combined EF’s 40 years experience in language training with over $40 million in research and development to their Efekta™ System  for learning English (Englishtown, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c).

There are four main components in Efekta™ System (Englishtown, 2007b):

l        Teachers:  live, online teaching, 24 hours a day 

l        iLab:  interactive tutorials and study tools 

l        Coaching:  constant feedback and guidance 

l        Community:  classmates from 120 countries 

Teachers in Englishtown.com give 45-minute-long conversation classes every hour for the different levels of students based on different topics. Averagely, eight students of the same level will participate in one class. Students can make their own plans for conversation class and self-study in iLab but it is not compulsory for them to keep strict with the plans. In iLab, students will take their lessons by participating in different interactive activities. The lessons are divided into 15 levels and every level has 8 units. Based one topic, every unit has 13 parts: Introduction, Movie, Simulation, Map, Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Review, Conversation Class, Writing Class, Net Tour and Test. While studying the lessons, students will use study tools if needed, such as translator, pronunciation lab, grammar lab, podcast, etc. In Writing Class, students will be requested to write an article with a given topic in relation to what is taught in the previous parts. A writing teacher will review the writing assignment, compose the coaching note and send a feedback email to the student. Besides learning the lessons, students can also make friends in a virtual community and have voice chat with their classmate. Generally, Englishtown can meet most of the needs of English learning from the students with different language and social backgrounds.

Though Englishtown has achieved some success and been recognized by many personal and corporate clients, it still need to be improved. As the rapid development of  learning technologies and theories has increased the affordance for online learning (Conole & Dyke, 2004), only those education providers keep adapting themselves to emerging technologies and to the dynamic needs of students and clients, can maintain and increase their predominance in the more and more competitive global education market.

Hence, this paper will focus on the shortcomings and outdated components of Englishtown.com and provide suggestions for its further development. The developers of Englishtown could consider this paper as a reference for their future work, while other distance education providers, including Englishtown’s competitors, would consider surpassing Englishtown or doing better in their own fields by employing some idea from this paper.

2.  Placement Test and Study Plan

Before enrolling in any course of Englishtown, users will be asked to take a placement test to determine which level of course they are advised to take. Placement is “a process of matching students and courses to achieve the best fit between what students know and what they need to know…[It helps make] the best possible match between a student’s current achievement status and the prerequisites of various alternate course sequences” (Frisbie, 1982). Englishtown’s placement test is significant for their realizing the slogan of “customized for each student” and they say they will “evaluate your [users’] weaknesses, interests, schedule and personality”. Based on that data, they create a customized study plan for users (Englishtown, 2007c).

Englishtown does provide a placement test concerning grammar, listening and reading to determine a user’s level according to the score he or she gets. However, they do not really “evaluate” users’ interest, schedule and personality and create a plan really based on that result. In stead, the only thing that the users will experience concerning the “evaluation” is being asked to answer the following multiple choice questions:

l        What is your main reason for wanting to learn English? Professional? Academic? Social? Travel? Other?

l        Which area of English would you like to focus on? Speaking? Pronunciation? Listening? Reading? Writing? Grammar? Vocabulary?

l        How many hours per week do you intend to study? Light – 1 to 2 hours a week?  Normal – 3 to 4 hours a week? Intensive – 5 or more hours a week?

l        How many conversation classes do you plan to attend each week? One per week?  Two per week? Three or more per week?

l        For how long do you want to keep your study plan active? 3 months? 6 months? 12 months? 18 months?

l        When do you prefer to study? Morning? Daytime? Evening? Weekend? Weekdays?

It seems that the developers for this part misunderstood the word “evaluation”. Actually, rather than directly asking for the result, “evaluation is an applied inquiry process for collecting and synthesizing evidence that culminates in conclusions about the state of affairs, value, merit, worth, significance…” (Mabry, 2005). If Englishtown was really evaluating users’ interest, schedule and personality, the users should be asked to provide some personal information to let the system make conclusions and suggestions for their own study plans. However, by asking the questions above, Englishtown virtually let users directly make the final conclusions. Even though the users do submit their answers, the significance of the data deserves suspicion. Since the user have not known much about what exactly is in the system, it is difficult for them to imagine the teaching style and the most useful component in the system, the outcomes of the courses and the time they should spend on it. When is asked “what is your main reason for wanting to learn English”, the users would be confused with the meaning of “English” in the question—the English courses in Englishtown or the English spoken by native English speakers? When is asked “which area of English would you like to focus on”, the users would consider whether they are being asked the weakness and whether this information determines the structure of their courses…

When the “customized study plan” is created, the users will receive a changeable calendar with random located course names according to the answers to the third, fourth and sixth questions in the “evaluation” (See Figure 1). Then the system will provide some pieces of study advice based on the answers to the first two questions. The disappointing content of the advice is basically the repeat of the introduction of some components of the system. For example, if users answered “writing” to the second question, the advice would be “The Englishtown Writing class is a great way to develop your Writing skills. Submit your essay to a teacher and get detailed feedback within 48 hours.”

Englishtown tries to let the potential users imagine how they could convey learner-centred curriculum, especially when the users are asked to process the study planning with the “evaluation”. However, no curriculum can claim to be truly learner-centred unless the learner’s subjective needs relating to the process of learning are taken into account (Nunan, 1988). Englishtown has not linked users’ subjective needs, such as their will to overcome the personal weakness in English, to the content, structure, procedure, objectives, learning style and assessment method of the courses. Every user actually does receive a personalized suggestion for the appropriate level and weekly study plan. Virtually they are still provided the same courses because there is not any change of the courses according to the result of the pre-evaluation.

Figure 1  Weekly Study Plan Calendar

Back to the placement test, without a timer, different users spend different time on the test, which could lead to the fallibility of the result of grammar and reading test. Furthermore, in the listening test, the audio clips can be played unlimitedly and some of the questions even use the same audio clips.

One of Englishtown’s Competitors—GlobalEnglish.com, has a better placement test with a timer in every session and a limitation of times (twice) for listening to the same audio clips in listening test, which is worthwhile for Englishtown to refer.

The fatal objection to Englishtown’s goal—“customized for each student” is not only the suspect placement test and the poor designed questionnaire, but the lack of a cyclical needs assessment and summative evaluation plans during the whole period of the courses. (Smith & Ragan) (1999) created a figure (see Figure 2) to interpret that the conclusions of a needs assessment should provide the reasons for developing or providing the appropriate instruction (p. 32).  So the really customized study plan is not a calendar or some advice, but specific instruction that meets the users’ exact needs. Different from traditional face-to-face learning environment, e-learning system can prepare different solutions for predicted result from needs assessment and provide the most suitable one to the right user. A further evaluation for the study plan after implementation would provide the basis for modification of the solutions.

Figure 2  Relationship Between Needs Assessment and Evaluation

According to “discrepancy” model of needs assessment (Kaufman & English, 1979; Rossett, 1988), the placement test and the questionnaire should help find out the gap between “what is” (what learners are currently able to do) and “what ought to be” (what learners should able to do) and determine which of these gaps should be addressed within the instruction—the customized solution. Without a pedagogical context, new users with different social backgrounds usually don’t know much about these two statuses and the gaps between them. So in order to create a customized study plan and provide the most appropriate solution, it would be better for Englishtown to analyze other more concrete information from users and make up the determination, rather than to let the users input their preference based on speculation. And the instruction, including the suggested study plan, should be scientifically in relation to the analysis of the data collected.

3.  Conversation Class

The benefits of conversational interaction between native and nonnative speakers or between nonnative speakers in their acquisition of second language have been investigated, claimed and proven (Gass, 1997; Long, 1996; Mackey, Perdue, & McDonough, 2000; Pica, 1994). Englishtown highlights its conversation class in many occasions and does give great effort to maintain and promote it by employing lots of certified, native-speaking English teachers to teach online 24 hours a days and encouraging users to participate more in it. However, conversation class in Englishtown still has two main weaknesses, detailed in the following subsections:

3.1  Lack of Preparative Materials

Englishtown’s conversation classes are separated from the topic within a study unit. There are different conversation class topics for every day and students can choose their favorite topics by taking the conversation classes on specific days during the week. Before entering the virtual classroom, students are encouraged to do some preparation by listening to a dialog and studying the new vocabulary. We do know that it is impracticable to arrange teachers to give the conversation class based on a specific unit because there are too many units and there may be not enough students available for the class at the same time and in the same unit, which leads to extreme increase of the cost. As a result, the preparation session for conversation class becomes important. However, currently this session is quite simple and doesn’t have much pedagogical significance. For the one hand, only if the class has been started can the students know the structure of the lesson. While looking through the content presented on slides, they are asked to answer questions. This leads to students’ high cognitive load and a higher cognitive load should result in more errors (Ayres & Sweller, 1990). Since our working memory is limited (Miller, 1956), if we read, listened and spoke at the same time, our brain would be overloaded. According to Sweller (2007), conversation class teachers’ PowerPoint-based instruction “can backfire if the information on the screen is the same as that which is verbalized, because the audience’s attention will be split between the two.” Furthermore, language classrooms which require oral communication are more anxiety-provoking (Horwitz, 2001; Kim, 1998). This emotional factor further increases students’ cognitive load. To overcome this problem, the conversation class teachers could utilize students’ schemas^* by providing more preparative materials to them, such as the details of the subtopics, activities and tasks in class. Teachers could even ask students to do some preparation for specific questions and provide some websites for them to find useful information. These activities before class would help activate students’ schemas which help them answer questions and solve problems “automatically” without much consideration in working memory while they are in class. So they could focus on improving their spoken English skills, rather than the content of the topics. To realize this, Englishtown should create a path for conversation class teachers to provide preparative materials to students.

3.2  Cursory Feedback from Teachers

Conversation class teachers will grade and feedback on students’ performance in class. The problem is that there is insufficient quantitative standard to support the grading and feedback. As a result, students don’t know their progress and exact weakness. See some samples below:

Sample 1: I hoped you enjoyed talking about France in today’s lesson and learnt some interesting information about the country as well as some English vocabulary. You participated well throughout the class and used appropriate intonation in the reading. Good work! Grade: 90%

Sample 2: You have developed some really good skills. You simply need to fine tune these to improve your English; practice makes perfect! See you again soon in class. Grade: 83%

Sample 3: Your vocabulary is very good! Thank you for your enthusiastic participation in class today. Keep practising the vocabulary you have learnt in class today so that you continue improving. Keep reading books and listening to television so that you improve your grammar. Hope to see you soon. Grade: 80%

Sample 4: You did a great job! Thanks for your excellent contributions to today’s lesson. I enjoyed hearing your ideas and opinions about parties. You demonstrated a solid understanding of the topic and showed that your skills in English are strong. Keep up the good work and see you in class again soon! Grade: 88%

Sample 5: Excellent! You are speaking very well in class. You have great skills and you have a sound understanding of the topic areas. I hope that my corrections during class have helped. Keep up the good work! See you again soon in class. Grade: 86%

        In the feedback samples, those words underlined and in red have focused on specific points in relation to language learning, such as intonation, tune, vocabulary and understanding. It helps students recall what they said and heard during the class and be aware of their zones of proximal development (ZPD) ^† by thinking of what has been actually developed and what could be developed potentially. Though after class the teacher could not provide further help, the students could know their updated goals and then give more effort on them. But it seems that the teachers focused more on what students had achieved while seldom described the potential development levels for students.

        The comment in blue in the samples seem either too simple or irrelevant to the students’ personal situation known from class. In Sample 2, 4 and 5, teachers gave much positive feedback without details. Students will want to know what exact aspects they have done well. Though general positive feedback may motivate the students at first, they would ignore it if they received too much without satisfying reasons. On the other hand, the first sentence in Sample 1 and the fourth sentence in Sample 3 are just repeating what have been said in class and the audiences are the whole class.

Because different students have different preference for feedback in second language learning (Brandl, 1995), it would be better for Englishtown to let the students choose the  kind of feedback they would receive before class and let teachers know their options. If the teachers even could see the portfolio of every student, they would provide more relevant and useful feedback. Furthermore, though the system provides flexible learning environment, students should be still encouraged to take the conversation class given by the same teacher according to the teacher’s personal time table, rather then encouraged to try classes from different teachers through out the whole learning duration to demonstrate how “flexible” the system is. The more the teachers know about their students, the more effective and relevant the feedback could be.

To raise the quality of feedback, Englishtown could also create a criteria system to assist teachers’ evaluation work and let students know how the grading comes out. Hyland (Hyland, 2001) pointed out that over a half of online second language learners wanted to know about their strengths and weaknesses, which, from their perspectives, was considered to be the main purpose of teachers’ written feedback (p. 241). While most teachers prefer not to interrupt the communication by correcting students’ errors in class (Engwall & Bälter, 2007) and students’ performance is more likely to improve if they are encouraged to correct errors by themselves (Hendrickson, 1978; Lyster, 1997), it would be better to assign students some small oral practice tasks in relation to their personal errors and weaknesses perceived by the teachers in class when giving feedback according to the criteria system. Thanks to the student-only voice chat room in Englishtown, students have the opportunity to do the tasks with their peers after the conversation class.

4.  Online Community

Englishtown builds an online community for English learners by promoting their friendship. Actually it is like a SNS (Social Networking Service) website, where users are asked to create a profile that includes personal information such as gender, age, nationality, introduction, interest, etc, and can upload their photos and write articles and comment. Based on that the profiles, users can search for their pen pals according to some conditions they input, and then use English to communicate with each other by sending text message. There are also some chat rooms with different topics, where users can practice English instantly, but only subscription members are allowed to use voice chat rooms. The voice chat rooms are labeled with levels of English—Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced.

        While the era of Web 2.0 has arrived, many SNS websites become popular and have much influence on people’s life on line. The educational potentials of SNS websites are worthwhile for us to explore and realize. Online learning website can also integrate the functions of typical SNS website to analyze learners, to help instruction and to enrich users’ learning experience (He, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c). Englishtown’s SNS product—Englishtown Friends, is still in its Beta. It has not been integrated into the main instruction system.

Englishtown could begin to promote this integration in “Student writing”. It is a place in the system for users to post their own writing. Users can also comment on other’s articles. Actually this is like a discussion board. Users can post whatever they like. Some users post their written assignments finished in a unit’s learning but most of the messages are like casual writing. The so-called 9 million users seem seldom participate in such a section shown in the column of “Student Center”. Since 2003, there have been only 13,018 messages in it, which is quite a small number. This may be because:

        (a) the users are not required to participate in it while they are learning in the system;

        (b) teachers don’t give feedback for the writing in it;

        (c) since the writings are not linked to the authors’ profile, it is difficult to develop and maintain a friendship in it.

        To encourage learners to participate more and to realize the instructional functions, Englishtown could integrate three things: (a) written assignments from every unit, (b) teachers’ coaching notes for written assignments and (c) Englishtown Friends (users’ profiles). This means that the section of “Student writing” could directly display every user’s written assignments submitted from Writing Class in unit study and teachers review them and write coaching note there. Every user could read and comment on others’ assignment and relative coaching note. Teachers could answer users’ further questions referring to a specific assignment. When an author’s name is clicked, the page could turn to his or her profile page in Englishtown Friend. Users’ profile pages could also display all the written assignments. Considering users’ privacy, the system could let the users decide whether the system publishes their writing and relative coaching note.

        This integration could not only promote peer learning but also enlarge the significance of teachers’ coaching—it becomes open to everyone! Furthermore, from peers’ writings, users could find more favorable friends because they know more about a user’s background, interest, goals and other information. Typical friend finder will not help find the right person like this.

Besides written assignment, users would have more to discuss about what they have learned in a unit. The discussion board could also build separated folders for each unit’s topic. While learning in a unit, users could click a link to turn to the relative folder in discussion board and post a message. They could reflect what they think about the topic, ask or answer questions and provide further materials such as some pictures and video clips. As usual, they could find their favorable friends during the discussion. Besides text version, voice chat room could be another good place to discuss and share something about a unit’s topic. Then every unit could have its own voice chat room.

        Furthermore, during conversation class, participants more or less disclose some personal information such as their interests, goals, locations, occupation, etc, some of which may become the base for further communication and even friendship. Hence, a tracking record of classmates with links to their profiles would be benefit for those who would like to process further interaction.

        Last but important, assessment for users’ participation in the activities above should be taken into account. The system could report how much the user has participated in the community during a unit’s learning through commenting on others’ written assignments, posting message or chatting in voice chat room about the topic, making new friends, and maintaining friendship by sending private message or chatting in text or voice chat room.

5.  Some Bugs

While evaluating different aspects of Englishtown.com, the author experienced some bugs:

l   Inappropriate Suggested Learning Time—the suggested time for every session is not like the real situation. If you finished a task much quicker than expected, it would indicate that you haven’t completed the session and you are not allowed to continue to next session, especially for the Writing Class—you could actually finish the written assignment within 30 minutes while the system expect you to spend 120 minute. To avoid this error, the suggested time could be designed to be displayed dynamically according to learners’ previous completion time for a specific session. That is, the current "predicted time" for completing a session is based on previous average time spent on the same kind of session.

l   Unchangeable Input—it seems that once writing class teachers submit their grading and comments on students’ writing assignments, they can not make any change by themselves until an administrator with higher privilege help. The author has experienced that a teacher provide much positive feedback for the writing assignment but gave a very low grade—9%. The author received three same feedback emails from the teacher. It seems that the teacher wanted to change the grade by further submitting or something, but failed. Then the author requested the administrator to help let the teacher reexamine the assignment. Several days later, the author received an email indicating that the grade has been changed to 90%. Hence, it would better to develop an error avoidance mechanism for teachers.

l   Inconsistent Statistic Data—it is said that Englishtown.com has millions of users all over the world. But in terms of the exact number, they have different versions in different web pages. From the “about us” page, they have 2 million users; from the message sent by the moderator of “Englishtown Friends”, they have 7 million users; and from most other pages, such as the register page, they have 9 million users. The numbers of active users, former users and total users may be changing every moment. So the places that show the numbers could be replaced as some variables defined and controlled by administrators. Then once a variable is changed, all pages including the variable will be changed automatically.

6.  Conclusion

There are always a gap between advertisement and real situation, a gap between clients’ expectation based on advertisement and the real experience and a gap between technologies’ potentials and the current status of a product. Englishtown.com has successfully set up a good example for e-learning by providing proven English courses. However, since learning science and technologies keeps developing, previous success of Englishtown does not guarantee forever success unless it also keep being improved based on updated technologies, feedbacks and researches.

        In this paper, we have discussed the weaknesses of Englishtown mainly from the aspects of placement test and study plan, conversation class and online community, and provided solutions. We can conclude that currently Englishtown provides poor placement test and study planning tools and does not really customize students’ learning; Conversation class provides insufficient preparative materials and cursory feedback; online community’s instructional potentials have not been fulfilled; and there are some bugs influence users’ experience. However, these weaknesses could be eliminated by better design, such as creating a better learner analysis system, a path for conversation class teachers provide preparative materials, a better feedback system with more explicit criteria, an SNS-integrated learning system, etc. All in all, Englishtown should keep being improved if they want to keep the dominant status in online English learning industry.

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