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Online Teaching and Learning Platform for Heritage Mandarin Chinese Courses
Grant program: Teaching and Learning Development Grant (TLDG)
Grant recipient: Cynthia Xie, School of Computing Science
Project team: Sally Huang, Research Assistant
Timeframe: June 2015 to March 2016
Funding: $5,000
Course addressed: CHIN 290 Heritage Mandarin Chinese III
Final report: View Cynthia Xie's final report (PDF)
Description: The proposed project is to develop a customized online teaching and learning platform for the Heritage Mandarin Chinese courses I teach at 911吃瓜. The students for these courses fall into two main groups: 1) born and raised in a Chinese-speaking country or region before moving to Canada; and 2) born in Chinese-speaking homes in Canada. Although their proficiency level of Chinese varies, they share quite a few common characteristics in their learning of Mandarin Chinese: 1) most of the students know the basics of everyday language as well as some common Chinese cultural facts, but lack the linguistic knowledge and in-depth cultural understanding to explain 鈥渨hy鈥�; and 2) some students feel 鈥渢he course will be easy for me as I know the language鈥�, while others think 鈥渞eading and writing will be hard and boring.鈥� These misconceptions hinder the students from engaging in their learning.
The proposed project will address these issues by developing an online course platform, which aims to: 1) integrate multi-media course materials (images, audios, videos, and web links) into the course; and 2) design authentic, creative, and interactive reading and writing exercises and activities with hints/instant feedback to engage students in practicing what they鈥檝e learned.
Questions addressed:
- Do students perceive the online teaching and learning platform effective in engaging them in learning?
- Do students perceive that the online teaching and learning platform improves their learning?
- What feedback do students have about how to improve the online teaching and learning platform?
Knowledge sharing: Report and showcase the project at the 9th Canadian TCSL (Teaching Chinese as a Second Language) Association International Conference in Vancouver in May 2016, which will be attended by my local Chinese-teaching colleagues.