Identity, Sense of Community and Connectedness in a Community of Mobile Language Learners

Mobility can impact a learner’s participation to different communities that support language learning. In this paper we report on our experience with supporting a course in which language students are encouraged to travel to a country where the target language is spoken. On one hand, the students who travel abroad get in contact with local communities that can promote their learning of the language and the culture. On the other hand, they risk loosing contact with their classmates and the support that they provide. In this context we introduced a mobile community blog with the aim to extend the learning arena and promote knowledge sharing among the students, independent of their location. This paper discusses the design considerations for the blog and describes its use to support students’ sense of community. An evaluation and analysis of the usage of the blog is presented. These results suggest that the learners lack an identity within the community of language learners and there was no sense of community among the members. Reflecting on these results, we suggest that while a blog might be an appropriate tool for promoting knowledge sharing, it lacks functionalities to promote connectedness among learners and foster their identity as a community.