Community Through Technology 

This project proposes that online ESL instructors’ decisions of which technologies to use and how to use them in their online classrooms can be simplified and made more efficient by looking at three approaches that have been shown to foster connections and collaboration: gamification, storification, and community building. By asking the single question:

“Can I explain in simple terms how my use of this technology storifies a part of the learning experience, gamifies a part of the learning experience, and/or builds community in the class?” 

when evaluating a new technology for their specific need and deciding how they might use it, instructors can make informed technology related course design decisions by efficiently focusing in on those technologies and uses that will empower them to empower their students to connect and collaborate, leading to higher student achievement. With this as the background, this project investigates the following research question:

How can ESL instructors best use technology to help build connections and collaboration in multicultural online English for Academic Purposes classes?

To discuss this question, I will present a review of the education literature in the three key areas of community building, storification, and gamification, and, incorporating my own research and practices using technology to operationalize each of these three pedagogical approaches, I will draw on constructivism, social presence theory, and validation theory to create a community building technology toolkit and idea sharing space for ESL instructors. 

To get started, let's take a quick look into Media Richness Theory

The aim of the project is to create an open resource instructors can visit to:

(1) review the literature discussing the value and importance of connections and collaboration for students in online ESL classes and programs;

(2) gain insight into the potentials storification, gamification, and community building approaches have shown for creating those opportunities for connections and collaboration;

(3) gain specific lesson and activity ideas using a variety of EdTech tools to incorporate these three components; and

(4) use the framework to efficiently review potential technology uses outside of the resource. 

All instructors have different interests, skills, and teaching settings, so the hope is this resource will be a place where instructors can (1) find and choose ideas that work for their specific needs and then modify and build upon those ideas to generate their own lessons and activities for creating those opportunities for their students to collaborate and connect; and (2) share their own ideas and activities.

Google Sites was chosen to house this resource as it is a freely available, accessible, and stable platform that allows for easy integration of multimedia, forms, and embedded EdTech tools. 

While the focus of this project is online classes, it is also important to highlight that since virtually all classes, even face-to-face ones, utilize a course management system, thereby providing the means for flipped learning where the home component is completed online, technology is an important consideration to even those who never teach online, and so many of the ideas discussed in this project can be applied in those face-to-face classes, using the course management system to keep building the learning community and helping it thrive and grow outside of the face-to-face classes.

If you follow the order of the menu bar at the top of this website, it will move you sequentially from the rationale and purpose of this project to a literature review in each of the three key areas and findings from my own research, followed by practical principles and ideas for applying the findings in the online classroom, and finally an area for collaboration.  

If you would like to jump straight to the research on storification, gamification, or community building, you may also simply click on the applicable "package" below. I have used a travel and destinations theme for this website to represent the exciting and engaging destinations of discovery employing the principles outlined in this website can take your students to. The use of a theme like this that runs throughout the resource also demonstrates a broad use of the one of the three principles discussed in this resource—that of storification. Aura, et al. define storification as "the wrapping of an activity inside a fictional or nonfictional narrative so that the activity becomes more engaging" (2021, p.1). The authors discuss how stories and storytelling are powerful tools for attaching meaning to new learning, allowing instructors to more easily communicate abstract concepts in "concrete and relatable" ways that enable learners to more easily make those connections between existing knowledge and new learning. 

While I have not provided a narrative structure, which would be a more robust use of storification on the storification continuum, there is the loose narrative of you and your students as adventurers, and this loose narrative is accompanied by visual elements that reinforce these familiar concepts of travel and adventure.  By relating the thematic structure of this resource to something we are all familiar with and have emotional connections to—travel, and all the accompanying emotions of excitement, newness, joy, discovery, anticipation, possibilities, and adventure that goes along with it—I am inviting you to join in as a participant, or a "traveler," in the hopes this will transform your experience to create more engagement and deeper learning. As Aura et al. found, the employment of storification does not have to be large-scale; "various levels of employing storification can empower students [and] support their academic performance . . ." (2021, 9). 

I have also incorporated a taste of gamification in this resource, hiding three "Easter eggs." The gamification literature review section will discus Easter eggs in more detail, as will the "Easter eggs" section in the "Practical Applications" area, but for now, an Easter egg is essentially a hidden element of a digital resource. For this website, two of the Easter eggs do not include any content related to the presentation of any of the topics in this project; they are simply fun elements that will provide you with a small reward if you find them. The third offers some related insight into one of the topics discussed in the project. 

Finally, to foster the third pedagogical approach of community building, I have included the "Connect, Share, and Collaborate" section, where instructors are invited to share their activities and ideas, view those of others, and provide feedback and engage in dialogue.

If you would like a quick video overview of this website, please view the screencast below. Otherwise, choose one of the three areas below to jump to or move to the next item in the main navigation menu at the top, "Purpose of This Project."