Abstract
This paper introduces the authors’ new English discussion board using TED Talks videos on the Internet, intended to establish an interdisciplinary ‘learning’ community. This updated discussion board aims at facilitating intercollegiate communication based on a Social Networking Service. It basically consists of four parts; 1) a short video taken from TED Talks, 2) scripts of the talks in English and Japanese, 3) a ‘Glossary’ for vocabulary building based on the video, and 4) a ‘Forum’ for discussion on some topics relating to the video. Students and teachers, both of whom are participants in the discussion, are to watch the video and discuss the topics in the ‘Forum’. Thus, the authors’ aim is for the participants to make up a ‘learning community’ by sharing information, exchanging their messages and enhancing their mutual understanding.
This paper also reports how practice using the discussion board was carried out at National Institute of Technology, Gunma College. As well as explaining the activity steps, it also demonstrates how the interactions between the students were developed with some examples of their comments posted in English and analyses their attitudes towards participating in the discussion.
