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, Department of Global Humanities

Timeframe: June 2017 to October 2018

Funding: $6000

Courses addressed:

• CHIN 290 – Heritage Mandarin Chinese III
• CHIN 291 – Heritage Mandarin Chinese IV

Final report: View Cynthia Xie's final report (PDF)

Description: The purpose of this project is to develop a customized online teaching and learning platform for the Heritage Mandarin Chinese courses, in particular, 1) to integrate multi-media course materials (images, audio, video and web links) into the course; and 2) to provide interactive reading and writing exercises and activities with hints/instant feedback.

The pilot project in 2015 has designed the platform for two chapters: Chapter 13 the Red Mansion and Chapter 14 the Shaolin Kungfu from the CHIN 290 textbook of A Primer for Advanced Beginners of Chinese II (View Cynthia Xie and Sally Huang’s previous TLDG project). We received positive and encouraging feedback from the pilot project. Therefore, we want to extend the work to the rest of the chapters of CHIN 290 and the next course CHIN 291.

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: Result will be presented at appropriate workshops/conferences, including presentations at the SFU Language Institute, the Canadian TCSL (Teaching Chinese as a Second Language) Association International Conference 2018, and other international TCSL conferences.

Xie, C., & Huang, S. (2016, April). Building Online Platforms to Enrich Classroom Teaching. Presentation at the 12th Canadian National Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCLS) Symposium, Vancouver, BC.

Keywords: Online teaching, Chinese teaching, Heritage Mandarin Chinese, interactive online activities,
Engaging learning