Design of a reflective tool to integrate students’ context in Dutch language learning services (NLtraining use case)

Abstract

Language is one of the most important factors that international citizens need to acquire when stablishing in a new country, it enables communication, widens opportunities in relation to academic and professional development (Geurts & Lubbers, 2017b), and provides a sense of belonging. Therefore, it is important to understand what enables and inhibits the language learning process to make the integration process more user centered, propose actionable ideas and design effective interventions in order to optimize current language services, which in the end will result in cultural-societal impact (Sosa, 2019).

This project aims to contribute to such language learning services optimization, working together with NLtraining, who is a specialized Dutch school providing language courses for expats and immigrants.

A service design methodology is proposed to help bringing a user centric vision based on students’ real context but also provides a holistic scope including not just students and professors but also content making professionals and administrative departments.
The initial phase of the project explores existing literature from Second Language Acquisition and service design, where it was found that SLA research is centered on designing the ideal learning environment, however, in language learning, interactions in real life represent a great space for learning, therefore a gap between real context and learning environment was found.

Afterwards, exploratory research is carried out, interviewing students from NLtraining coming from different levels, where the main insights show that even though students have great motivation to learn the language and achieve academic and professional goals, their language use in real life is inhibited by different factors: cultural barriers, self-esteem, and deep complex reflective processes. It was found that professors who are the course facilitators have limited access to these kinds of insights, since they make their decisions based on assumptions from what they observe from the course, this, seen from a service design perspective, can become an opportunity to optimize current strategies.

The goal of the project is, then to design a tool that will help bridge students’ experiences through a reflective practice, which will support their learning process, as well as support professors with real insights of their students’ language use. Three exploratory concepts were developed, tested with students, and evaluated from a design perspective, then a final concept is presented, where a digital prototype is built, given its versatility and accessibility, it has the potential to be integrated into NLtraining’s current workload and bridge students’ context to the learning environment.

This tool helps collecting data such as: activity performed (listening, speaking, reading, or writing), description of the experience (text input), related class resources and emotion (good, neutral or not so good).

The prototype is validated in the final stage of the project, where the main findings conclude that enabling such reflective tool can promote students engagement with the course, in first instance because it provides a structured space to share and vent their (positive or negative) experiences, identify elements from the course that are working well or not, and finally allow professors to learn, empathize and best prepare the content of the course, based on a loyal portrait of students’ needs.

This project presents the impact of service design practices in an educational setting, which includes supporting stakeholder communication and collaboration, helping scope gaps in the service based on user insights and enabling an iterative approach to fostering optimizations.