An exploration into factors that affect student perception of their online foreign language learning experience

Distance foreign language learning has been growing at a fast speed with the ever-increasing demand on the foreign language education and the paucity of foreign language teachers. A course design framework is much needed to promote and safeguard the quality of distance foreign language education. An optimal distance foreign language design framework could borrow from research findings from decades of distance education research and second language education research, and a test of such framework could not only identify crucial factors to effective distance foreign language learning but also help test the applicability and utility of those guidelines in those research areas. This study constructed an online foreign language course design framework, tested this framework through building a distance Chinese course and together with several existent distance foreign language courses. Students and instructors from several distance foreign language courses at a virtual high school in the spring semester of an academic year. Data were collected through surveys, classroom observations, interviews, and class participation and artifacts analyses. It was found that the course communication component of the design framework, interaction with the instructor and with classmates in particular, was a major component that influenced students' perception of their online foreign language learning experience. Some student and contextual factors like students' attitude and confidence in distance foreign language learning were also found to have influence on students' satisfaction with their course. In addition, this study pointed out some issues and problems related to the implementation of the designed framework.