A BuddyPress Experiment

This project aims to fill a need for web based e-learning in a social network. It does not aim to be a full blown learning management system like BlackBoard. If a LMS were to be provided in the future, it would probably supersede this project.

The scope for our experiment is solely within our Hawthorn-Melbourne campus of Navitas English. We are testing with 2 teachers and 3 classes over the 5 weeks of course 113, that is from the 4th of April to the 6th of May, 2011. An Upper-Intermediate General English class and 2 IELTS classes have been selected for trials.

Each week the classes have 1 hour in class (and optional homework time) to complete various activities based on their course curricula. Tomorrow begins our 3rd week of running an experiment with BuddyPress.

BuddyPress is built to bring people together. It works well to enable people with similar interests to connect and communicate. Some of the fantastic uses might be: A campus wide social network for your university, school or college.

See more about BuddyPress.

The project has 2 support staff helping administrate the site and design the lesson plans each week. Feedback from the teachers is given after each week’s activity via email and face to face meetings. Further feedback will be sought at the end of the program to contribute toward a full evaluation.

The following posts in this blog will examine the activities for each week with a summary of the students’ experiences and their teacher’s observations. Hopefully most of the activities are successful and can be fine tuned before implementing with additional classes and any willing teachers from the beginning of next course.

Tags: collaborative, communication, discussion, social