This research aims to create a platform to encourage online learners to build the sense of community among them by utilizing video storytelling. In this research, a platform "Beanstalk" is proposed and developed as a tool for supportinglanguage learning and building the sense of community simultaneously.
Current online education systems have issues of disconnection of communication among learners. To improve the situation, this research tries to form thesense of community in a distance classroom. Through establishing an online storytelling environment, it o ers students more chances to communicate with theirclassmates from other countries, and practice what they learn from classes as well.
The SOI Asia Project network, a partnership among pan-pacific universities that utilizes video conferencing system in their distance-learning courses, served as a testing ground for this system. By using the proposed platform, it is expected that students can keep the passion of learning language and also increase the level of engagement in the class among higher students.
The proof of concept comprises of an evaluation on user interface through online questionnaires and interviews, and two video-storytelling cases created to prove how storytelling helps language learning. The results acquired from several experiments show that Beanstalk needs to re-build a more specific user model to improve the current design, and develop a much clearer story line to help users utilize the website better. For future research,  eld tests examining how video-storytelling works in an online classroom need to be conducted. Finally, the results obtained in the research are expected to support SOI's learning environment development in the long run.

修士学位論文. 2011年度メディアデザイン学 第178号