Engagement and Teamwork in Chinese as a Foreign Language and Culture Curriculum Development for Teacher Education

Abstract

This study explores how task engagement principles could be integrated into the design of online foreign language and culture instruction. It employs a design-based research (DBR) approach, which combines research and instructional design during curricular development. With the intent of solving problems of practice in an existing teaching context, a design team worked in this study to refine an online Chinese as a foreign language and culture module. Through the design process, the team explored how task engagement principles could be integrated into seven online language-learning units and how collaboration and interaction among the researchers and designers could support the implementation of the design. This study underscores the importance not only of designing engaging online language tasks but also of working with expert others to accomplish this goal.