Developing an Online Community of Learners for Second Language Students Using Design-Based Research

This paper describes the design of a research project that adopted a design-based research (DBR) approach to create and implement an online community of second language learners of Italian. For one semester a group of sixteen intermediate and advanced level students of Italian, their teacher and seven Italian native speaker facilitators participated in the activities of an online community of practice and interacted with each other through the communication tools and resources of an online learning management system. This paper presents the four phases of the study using the DBR model outlined by Reeves (2006) and the methodology that informs the development of each phase. In particular the discussion focuses on the design of the overall study and the theoretical framework that supports the development of the online learning environment.