Project Proposal

The intended audience of the project will be study abroad students in Chicago taking a required culture class to become better antiquated with the city and help ease their cultural transition as they will be staying in the Chicago for six months or longer. The CALL tools we will be utilizing for our project are wikis and blogs.

The blogs project is meant to be a weekly journal where students are free to discuss any experiences they have had in Chicago, or any feeling of culture shock, etc. It is intended as a more open-ended forum for the students to record their reactions and have a place to compare their experiences over time, and with peers. The benefit of using an online forum is that the instructor will not have to carry an arm load of journals home, and the blogs will be easier for other students to access and read. Also, the students will not be deprived of their journals while the teacher is evaluating/reviewing them. The main goal will be the cultural benefits and the secondary goal will be writing fluency as the blogs will not be graded for grammar errors, and again, the purpose of the class is to ease the students’ transition into US culture and to create a community of solidarity amongst the classmates. Creating this environment in the class will, in theory, help the students have a better overall study abroad experience and lower their overall affect so they can perform better in their other classes.

The wiki project will be assigned at the beginning of the semester, so the students will have all semester to complete their task. The students will be asked to perform two tasks. First, they will be asked to visit major tourist sites of their choosing from a list ranging from museums, to going to a sports game. Second, they will be asked to visit places that they might miss if they were to just visit museums and tall buildings. These places could include restaurants, or anywhere recommended by a native Chicagoan as non-tourist places that shouldn’t be missed. The students can choose to work in pairs or as individuals. Each pair or individual will submit two wiki pages, one for each site visited. Out of the two projects, this one will focus more on accuracy although the class is not intended to be a grammar/writing class. The main goal, once again, will be for the students to become more acquainted with the city and to help lower their overall affect. The secondary goal will be giving the students the opportunity to practice their writing skills. The wiki format will also provide students with a forum for submitting multiple drafts over time, so any evaluation will be more heavily weighted on the process, and not necessarily the product. The students will have a follow- up writing class where they can just focus on honing their grammar and writing skills.

The students will be using the following sites:

www.blogger.com
www.wikispaces.com