Concept paper reflection

 

I am very happy with the concept paper we made. It is clear and talks about a very important idea: how students feel when they learn a new language. Our paper is about the Korean language class and it compares two ways of teaching. First, the old way, which is face-to-face (F2F) in a classroom. Second, the new way, which is online (like using Google Meet).

The main word we use is Social Presence. This just means how much a student feels that the teacher and other students are real people who are truly with them. When you feel connected, you have high Social Presence.

We were smart to focus on three key things:

Cue Richness: This is about all the little social signs we see, like smiles, eye contact, and the tone of voice. We know F2F has more of these than online learning.

Warmth: This is how friendly and close students feel to each other in the class.

Involvement: This is how much students want to talk and join in on the activities.

It is a great idea to check these three points. We are asking if losing the social signs online means students feel less friendly (Warmth) and join in less (Involvement).

The best part of our paper is that the answer will help many students. If we find that online classes need to be better, our study will tell teachers how to make them feel more connected, which will help everyone learn the Korean language better. This is a very useful project.