主持人｜王于瑞
Students lack exposure to developing youth-based solution to community issues that involve the use of the English language. As such, there is a disconnect between students’ classroom learning and real-world application. Consequently, this project was implemented. This project began with identification of the following problem: Yunlin County is a rural area with an e-commerce community that is small, disconnected, and cut off from the global community. To address this problem, the following solution was proposed: developing an English newsletter to tell the story of Yunlin’s E-commerce and to encourage more conversations and efforts in society on building an internationalized e-commerce culture. A sample of 42 sophomore students from various departments of the College of Management who were registered in the same sophomore English speaking and writing course participated in this study. The students’ average TOEIC Reading and Listening Test score was 607 and was considered to be at a higher band of B1, making them suitable for journalistic forms of writing such as feature stories that rely on descriptions of experiences, story development, and reports of facts. Through the initiation of project, students were afforded the opportunity apply their English writing skills in the development of the local community.
發展歷程與步驟
In order to assist students in developing the newsletter, the entire course was divided into the following four sections, which only involved guidance from the instructor combined with support from an industry expert and which also had the following purposes:
1. Media and Field Research Section: aimed at helping students identify topics and develop and conduct their research that involved collecting data from literature and from interviews with different categories of individuals in the community (scholars, local businesses, freelancers, governments, individual consumers, etc.)
Industry expert: Mark Wilkie, award-winning script writer for National Geographic documentaries
2. Journalism Section: aimed at helping students develop feature story journalistic writing skills by taking them through practical training that eventually leads to high quality articles valued by media and the public.
Industry expert: Phillip Charlier, journalist and editor of Taiwan English News
3. Design and Layout Section: aimed at helping students who are novices to design develop the newsletter with proper consideration of design elements to ensure satisfactory visual communication.
Industry expert: Chia-wen Tsai, freelance designer
4. Marketing Sessions: aimed at helping students develop the ability to market their newsletter.
Industry expert: Lilian Yang, Shop.com, social-media marketing
成果與衍生價值
Students were asked to rate the quality of the course using an adapted version of the Service Learning Course Quality Scale. On a Likert scale of 1-5, students ranked the course highly on each of the three sub-constructs: (a) value of community service project (4.8), (b) the extent to which service-learning was given special attention in planning and implementing the course (so that students and community agencies were prepared for the service experience and the service was integrated into the course) (4.4), and whether students were provided sufficient opportunities for reflection (oral or written) (4.5).
The Social Change Orientation scales was adapted so that students could rate the course on its social change orientation. Again, the course received a high ranking of 4.7.
In addition to the above, a survey was used to assess learning outcomes. Students provided rankings as follows: learning about the community (4.75), academic learning (4.33), problem-solving (4.34) and leadership (4.48), and satisfaction with the university (4.46).
Finally, students’ newsletter articles were assessed for writing ability. A thematic analysis of the students’ articles using the CEFR demonstrated that the students could had reached the course goals of being able to write articles that exhibited detailed description of experiences, the ability to describe feelings and reactions and also giving reasons to explain those feelings. detailed descriptions that covered a main theme and a variety of sub-themes, and the ability to put the points together in a logical and smooth-flowing sequence. Students indicated that before the course they could not imagine writing such in-depth articles and credited mainly information literacy (literature review and field research), the project’s stimulation of their passion and development of their voice for others, and the concept map as the main reasons for improvement in their writing.
未來方向
1. The participants of the project were College of Management students and naturally focused on the commercial and business aspects of the e-commerce experience. In the future, the project can be expanded to also include College of Engineering students, who can focus on the technological aspects of the e-commerce experience, College of Design students, who can focus on the artistic elements of the e-commerce experience, and College of Humanities students, who can focus on the social, cultural, linguistic, and ethical aspects of the e-commerce experience. A diversity of perspectives will ensure balanced development of the e-commerce newsletter.
2. E-commerce is still in the early stages of development in Yunlin, yet there is a high interest in it. The youth can also be engaged in organizing e-commerce campaigns and events to stimulate community awareness, interest, and participation in the e-commerce experience.
3. Our project can be expanded in its international scope by recruiting an overseas university to also implement an e-commerce newsletter in their respective community. Students from both universities can share stories and perspectives of e-commerce in their respective communities.
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