Instructional-design Strategies of Implementing Videoconferencing to Engage Students in Learning

摘要

This action research investigates instructional design strategies to engage American students in learning foreign languages via videoconferencing.Based on the current literature, four instructional design strategies including relevancy, proficiency, sufficiency, and culture were established. The four strategies were further implemented in a collaborative project involving 14 CFL (Chinese as a Foreign Language) students in a southwestern university in the United States and 14 graduate students of a CFL teacher training program of a normal university in southern Taiwan. To explore whether the established strategies can engage students in practicing speaking Chinese outside of their regular classes, data were collected through observations of instructional materials (PowerPoint slides), 14 randomly selected conferencing videos and 5 post-chat surveys. This research found that the videoconferencing instruction incorporated with the four design strategies effectively provided engaging learning experience to American CFL learners.