This article reports the study of a novel way of raising tertiary-level students' native cultural awareness (NCA) via an informal mobile learning community. Through two cycles of action research at a teacher-education university in East China, the study drew upon the Community of Practice (CoP) theory to form a synchronous English chat group.…

There is much evidence to support the occurrence of learning in connection with collaboration, both in face-to-face and online teaching situations, but much less research on how such collaboration develops over the duration of a course. Using Dillenbourg's concepts of "situation," "interactions," "mechanisms," and…

Wikis are increasingly seen as useful tools for promoting active student engagement and collaborative language learning. Unlike most applications of wikis to foreign/second language learning thus far reported on, ours concerns complete beginners. In this paper, we focus on our approach to and evaluation of the integration of wikis into our…

An online discussion involving text-based computer-mediated communication has great potential for promoting equal participation among non-native speakers of English. Several studies claimed that online discussions could enhance the academic participation of non-native speakers of English. However, there is little research around participation…