Case study :: British Council Date :: June 2007 Project name :: English Online - social networking website

About the British Council

The British Council connect people with learning opportunities and creative ideas from the UK to build lasting relationships around the world.

Brightlemon were asked to design and build a community based website (English Online) to help promote the learning of English in China.

Visit the British Council's English Online social networking website (UK Beta)

The requirement

Design, creation and implementation of a complete educational social networking site to assist Chinese students in learning the English language.

The following list summarises some of the features of the site:

Personalised newsletters

Like many websites, users can sign up for a html newsletter from English Online to be delivered to their email inbox.

However what is unusual about English Online is that the actual content of the newsletter delivered is tailored to each user's specific interests and learning level.

This is achieved by sophisticated taxonomy techniques which matches content with users based on their learning records and achievements, user role (learner, teacher, school) and other profile information.

One of the main requirements for the English Online site was that each user would be able to create their own 'profile' (similar to that which might be found on sites like myspace, facebook etc.) as a virtual toolbox for their study of the English language.

As they work through exercises, lessons and exams on the site, their progress is stored within this profile along with records of all other activities they have been involved in within the website (blogs, forum posts, pictures shared with other users etc.)

Users can choose from various pre-made templates to theme their profiles.

There are even different templates available for different user groups such as Learners, Teachers and Schools.

Blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are part of a wider network of social media.

For the English Online website each user has their own indivual blog - presented within their user profile page.

Obviously with the website primarily aimed at Chinese people wanting to learn English it was imperative that users of all skill levels would be able to access and understand the information and content presented.

For this purpose the site content needs to be available in both Chinese and English, but not only that as there are two main forms of written Chinese (traditional and simplified) and both of these are needed.

So brightlemon implemented a system where the user can instantly change the language of the site from any one of these three languages to another with one simple click of a mouse, no matter what page they are on.

An Internet forum is a web application for holding discussions and posting user generated content. Internet forums are also commonly referred to as web forums, message boards, discussion boards, (electronic) discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards or simply forums.

The forums on the English Online site provide a valuable discussion point for students, teachers and school administrators, where they can share advice and experiences with and ask questions of other English Online users.

Another point of interactivity is web based polls where users can vote on specific questions and share the automatically collated results.

An events calendar provides a straight forward guide to what is going on with the community and keeps users up to date with current and forthcoming events and activities which they might find useful or interesting.

To truly personalise the user experience people can also instantly change the colour scheme of the entire website by simply clicking a tab in the site's 'colour chooser', which sits top left of every page.

Technologies used

Programming Languages:

• HTML
• PHP
• JavaScript
• Drupal

Web Design:

• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe Photoshop

Contact Brightlemon about Social Networking and Web 2.0.

• British Council client page
• www.facebook.com
• www.myspace.com