Introduction

The outbreak of COVID-19 has accelerated the large-scale implementation of online learning and mobile learning (Tang et al. 2021), which have been found commonly applied in language teaching and learning (Cheung and Wang 2021; Wang 2023; Ying et al. 2021). Various technologies are adopted to enhance online teaching and learning (e.g., ZOOM, Padlet, and Edpuzzle). Previous studies reveal that using technologies helps construct an effective language learning context (Ghanizadeh et al. 2015; Howard and Scott 2017; Shadiev and Yang 2020; Zhou and Wei 2018). When using technologies in language learning and teaching, students and teachers reported that the lack of sharing on TeLL&T is one of the obstacles in conducting TeLL&T (Wang et al. 2022). The current study aims to overcome the obstacles through building a Community of Practice (CoP) to enhance TeLL&T. Online CoPs have been studied using various terms, including communities of practice, professional learning communities/networks, or simply online learning communities (Boada 2022). The concept of CoP is originated in Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral publication published by Lave and Wenger (1991). They used an anthropological approach to argue that learning is not just receiving or absorbing information but rather is “increasing participation in communities of practices” (Lave and Wenger 1991, p. 49). Wenger (2010) defines communities of practice as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (p. 179). Wenger et al. (2011) define CoP as a “learning partnership among people who find it useful to learn from and with each other about a particular domain. They use each other’s experience of practice as a learning resource” (p. 9).

Vincent et al. (2018) identified the characteristics which help form successful CoPs. They are (1) bringing together researchers and users from the start of the project, (2) ensuring openness and empathy for each other’s contexts, and (3) regular face-to-face communication, where possible. For the first characteristic, Hanger et al. (2013) suggested that the CoPs would be more effective if the researchers and users could be brought together earlier. Kiem and Verdon-Kidd (2011) stated that all parties should be open and willing to show empathy or put themselves in each other’s context. Dilling and Lemos (2011), Kiem and Austin (2013), and Vincent et al. (2018) pointed out the importance of communication in building up CoPs. Face-to-face communication (full project meetings or one-to-one interactions) is considered as the mechanism for building up successful communities. However, the communications should be meaningful, purposeful, interactive, and sustained, and the communications should be tailored (Dilling and Lemos 2011; Kiem and Austin 2013). In the current study, we used online communications instead of the face-to-face one mentioned in the previous studies (e.g., Dilling and Lemos 2011) because of the pandemic of COVID-19. The CoP is characterized by three elements: domain, community, and practice (Gray 2005; Wenger 2004, 2010; Wenger et al. 2009). The domain refers to a shared common domain of interest (joint enterprise); the community involves engagement in mutual learning and knowledge sharing (mutual engagement), while practice means the body of knowledge, methods, tools, stories, cases, and documents that members share and develop together (shared repertoire) (Smith et al. 2017; Wang and Ma 2017; Wenger 2004). The current study built up a CoP for TeLL&T based on the characteristics and the three elements. The current study also reported the pre- and post-construction stages of the TeLL&T CoP, which aims to help future studies to construct successful CoPs. To Gray (2005), communities of practices are self-organizing systems of informal learning (p. 22). Members of the community of practice can deepen their existing knowledge and expertise and construct new knowledge by interacting on an ongoing basis (Wenger et al. 2002). This reflects that CoP practices match with a social constructivist approach in which learning is considered an ongoing process (Wang and Ma 2017) in which learners discern existing knowledge and create new knowledge through conversation, sharing, and negotiation within a supportive community (Naismith et al. 2004; Sharples et al. 2007). Wang and Ma (2017) constructed a mobile learning community (MLC) and evaluated the effectiveness of the MLC. In their study, the key factors of establishing MLC successfully are recruiting proactive community members, constructing an MLC website, and organizing sharing sessions. However, limitations of Wang and Ma (2017) were also listed. First, the enlargement of the MLC and more sharing sessions should be developed. Second, students and staff only came from one institution, The Education University of Hong Kong, and students and staff from other institutions should also be invited to join the community. The current study aims to fix the gaps. In addition, the MLC only focused on mobile learning, and a wider range of technologies should be included to help enhance more effective language learning and teaching in the online context. In this study, we aim to promote TeLL&T through the establishment of the CoP based on Wang and Ma (2017), and minor revisions were adopted to enhance TeLL&T better.

Networked technology has already been regarded as a vital means in facilitating practices and sharing among CoPs (Hoadley 2012; Johnson 2001). This study reports on how a project-based transdisciplinary CoP was built across four universities in Hong Kong, where researchers and learners from various disciplines share, contribute resources and information, and learn together with the aid of technologies. This is not only considered as accelerating learners’ communication and practices but also playing a significant role in building the learning capacity of the members. There are two main objectives of this study: 1) to establish a cross-institution CoP on TeLL&T at the tertiary level; and 2) to investigate how the CoP helps university students and teachers enhance TeLL&T. The current research attempts to answer the following research questions so that it can inform future CoP research and contribute to the establishment of other CoPs:

  1. 1.

    What is the process of constructing a cross-institution CoP on TeLL&T at the tertiary level?

  2. 2.

    How does the CoP help university students and teachers enhance TeLL&T?

Methodology

This study adopts an action research design (Cohen et al. 2017; Naughton 2001), that is, we conducted research and took action at the same time. To be more specific, we adopted the participatory action research design, as the participants were also members of the community of practice being studied. They are considered co-researchers, with their lived experiences investigated during the research process (Coghlan 2023). In order to answer the first research question, a TeLL&T CoP was developed and constructed. There are five stages to establish the CoP in the current study: investigation of information needed for TeLL&T through surveys, establishment of the CoP on TeLL&T, construction of the CoP website and platform, teacher and student sharing, and evaluation on its platform, sharing sessions and its implementation. University students and teachers from four universities in Hong Kong participated in our project and conducted related evaluations. The process has been described step by step in detail in the following section. For the second research question, evaluations on the TeLL&T CoP activities, CoP websites and platform, TeLL&T implementation, and overall evaluation from activities’ participants, platform users, university teachers, and external advisors were conducted, which help to investigate how CoP helps university teachers and students to enhance TeLL&T.

TeLL&T CoP construction

Pre-construction stage

Stage 1: Investigation of students’ and teachers’ needs in TeLL&T

Before the construction of the CoP on TeLL&T, university students’ and teachers’ needs in TeLL&T were investigated through online surveys (Wang et al. 2022). There were 657 student responses and 349 teacher responses. The ranking of information students and teachers would like to receive on the project website is shown in Table 1. Results of the pre-construction survey revealed that both students and teachers would like to receive information on reviews and recommendations of language learning apps/websites the most. In the following construction stages, we followed the needs that university teachers and students reported at Stage 1, which aimed to better fulfill university students’ and teachers’ needs in TeLL&T.

Table 1 Ranking of information students and teachers would like to receive on the project website
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Construction stages

In order to achieve the first characteristic proposed by Vincent et al. (2018), we constructed a CoP TeLL&T community, and researchers from four different universities in Hong Kong were gathered at Stage 2.

Stage 2: Identifying a critical mass to form the CoP on TeLL&T

Based on the needs that university students and teachers reported, we started to build up a CoP on TeLL&T. From the start of the project, we brought together researchers and users from four local universities, namely, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Education University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Baptist University, and the University of Hong Kong. The researchers of the project team had already developed or had been developing various valuable digital resources for language learning and teaching, e.g., corpus-based English learning e-resources, pronunciation learning e-resources, online resources for grammar learning, mobile-assisted language learning e-resources, e-resources for school English teachers, an online searchable Cantonese movie corpus for Cantonese studies, an online learning system for Cantonese learning, a Mini-MOOC on French learning, a Mobile App for Putonghua learning, VR/AR applications for Chinese language learning, and a VR App for English vocabulary learning, etc. The members from other universities are renowned scholars in the field of technology-enhanced language learning and teaching who collaborate with EdUHK colleagues closely so that cross-institutional exchanges on TeLL&T can be carried out smoothly. The users came from various disciplines of the four universities, e.g., English major programs, Chinese major programs, Science major programs, Social Sciences major programs, and other programs, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Vincent et al. (2018) suggested that ensuring openness and empathy for each other’s contexts is important. To achieve this aim, we built up a platform on which TeLL&T-related resources contributed by university students and teachers in Hong Kong are shared at stage 3. It is open to the public, and users can get access to it.

Stage 3: The construction of the CoP project website

Li and Hart (2002) pointed out that the “worldwide accessibility, multimedia capabilities, and interactive functions, make the Web an attractive environment for carrying on computer-based instruction” (p. 374). Therefore, using the web in language learning has provided not only language learners with a rich database of authentic materials but also a context for resourceful, collaborative learning. At this stage, we constructed a website which aims to provide language learners and teachers a platform to get access to TeLL&T-related resources contributed by both university students and language teachers in Hong Kong.

A website of the CoP Project, titled Technology-enhanced Language Learning and Teaching: A Community of Practice, has been created (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/tellt/). It is open to the public so that the creative or successful technology-enhanced language learning and teaching experiences can be shared among members of a larger community who currently use technologies or perceive the potential of doing so in language learning and teaching. By the end of 2021, around 3000 people had visited the project website. The website consists of 6 sub-pages: Home, About Us, E-Resources, Sharing Sessions, Students’ E-Portfolios, and Teachers’ Blogs. By so doing, the learning practice and outcome of the community can be reported and published through the Internet. ‘Home’ is a brief introduction to the CoP Project. Figure 1 shows the ‘Home’ page of the CoP platform. Project team members are listed in the section ‘About Us’. Under the section ‘E-Resources’, there are three sections including ‘Projects by CoP team members’, ‘Apps for learning different languages’ (Fig. 2), and ‘Language Learning Websites (English, Putonghua, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, etc.)’. Users can get access to the TeLL&T projects conducted by the CoP project team members and the TeLL&T e-resources used by university students and teachers in Hong Kong. On the ‘Sharing sessions’ page, the information and videos of the Monthly Sharing Sessions are displayed. The section ‘Students’ E-Portfolios’ displays information about the competition and the students’ works in the Technology-enhanced Language Learning E-Portfolio Competition (Fig. 3). The teachers share their experiences in using technologies in language teaching in their blogs under the section of ‘Teachers’ Blogs’.

Fig. 1
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‘Home’ page of the CoP platform

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Fig. 2
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‘Apps for learning different languages’ page of the CoP platform

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Fig. 3
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‘Students’ e-portfolios’ page of the CoP platform

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We organized sharing sessions for both university teachers and students, in which TeLL&T experiences and resources were shared. Instead of having regular face-to-face communication, where possible, is also suggested by Vincent et al. (2018), monthly online gathering and sharing sessions were conducted on ZOOM because of the pandemic of COVID-19. After each session, a Q&A session was organized to form discussions between the audience and speakers.

Stage 4: Teachers and students’ sharing

University language teachers shared their experiences on TeLT in two ways, Monthly Sharing Sessions conducted on ZOOM and teachers’ blogs on the CoP platform, while the university students shared their experiences on TeLL through e-portfolios.

Monthly Sharing Sessions

Regular theme-based sharing sessions and workshops were organized at four universities to facilitate students’ language learning and teaching staff’s professional development, and cross-synergy could be achieved. Exemplar practices in the field of technology-enhanced language learning and teaching were showcased through Monthly Sharing Sessions to empower students and teachers with the knowledge, techniques, and resources for technology-enhanced language learning and teaching.

Sharing sessions included various TeLL&T-related topics. Speakers shared their experiences on using existing technologies in their language teaching or TeLL&T platforms or tools developed by themselves. For the platforms or e-tools developed by the speakers, there are four sessions (Session 1, Session 3, Session 6: 2nd speaker, and Session 12: 1st speaker). A platform for teacher training was introduced in Session 1. This platform provided professional development resources and formed a community hub for English teachers. Speakers in session 3 gave a brief introduction to a pronunciation mobile-based app and demonstrated how to build a mobile-based pronunciation learning app. The 2nd speaker in the 6th session shared two pronunciation corpora to learn English and Mandarin pronunciation. For the 1st speaker in the 12th sharing session, she introduced a 3D authoring tool, Omni-immersion vision (OIV), and how to use it in language learning.

Video-based language teaching and learning were also shared (Session 4: 2nd speaker, Session 10: 1st speaker, and Session 11: 2nd speaker). Self-made videos or existing videos were applied in language teaching and learning. Self-produced digital stories were integrated into English teacher education, which aimed to enhance the professional development of pre-service English teachers. Game-based language teaching and learning were shared by the 1st speaker in Session 8 and the 2nd speaker in Session 12. Role-playing games and game elements in language learning apps were used to enhance motivation, self-efficacy, and collaboration. The pedagogical applications of some popular e-resources/tools, such as Nearpod and Padlet, were also shared (Session 4: 1st speaker, Session 5: 2nd speaker). These tools were used for conducting effective language learning, assessing students’ language learning, enhancing motivation, and providing feedback. Besides, TeLL&T pedagogies were also shared in the sharing sessions (e.g., factors that can contribute to TeLL&T design), which aimed to inspire teachers to design effective TeLL&T (Session 8: 2nd speaker).

These sharing sessions were open to the public who are interested in using technologies to assist language learning and teaching or those who would like to know more about it. It is hoped that through the CoP project, we can create an E-Language Learning Hub in Hong Kong. We organized 12 Sharing Sessions in the project period, from September 2020 to December 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all the sharing sessions were conducted on Zoom. Totally, 398 university teachers and students attended our sharing sessions. Table 2 shows the detail of the Monthly Sharing Sessions. After each sharing session, a Q&A session was conducted, and speakers answered the questions related to TeLL&T posted by the audience or discussed with the audience on how to better integrate the e-resources/tools in TeLL&T.

Table 2 Information of the Monthly Sharing Sessions (from September 2020 to December 2021)
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Teachers’ blogs

Wikipedia (2022) defines a blog as “a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts)”. Dennis (2019) defines a blog as “online journal where an individual, group or corporation presents a record of activities, thoughts or beliefs. Some blogs operate mainly as news filters, collecting various online sources and adding short comments and Internet links”. Blogs, like other kinds of social media, provide users “with an accessible and easy to use communication means” (Shamsi and Bozorgian 2022, p. 4474). The teachers’ blogs on the project website are personal blogs which function as a compilation of online journals that allows the author to express and reflect him- or herself (Lee 2011). These blogs are “created to motivate students to learn foreign languages, to promote the teacher or to organize the learning of a defined group, etc.” (Gorąca-Sawczyk 2013, p. 95). We hope that the teachers’ blogs can motivate the CoP members and those who are interested in this issue to implement TeLT. Table 3 below shows the information of the teachers’ blogs (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/tellt/teachers-blogs/).

Table 3 Information of the teachers’ blogs
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University teachers provided related knowledge of the e-resources/tools (i.e., framework), demonstrated how to integrate the e-resources/tools in language teaching and learning, and identified the potential difficulties that teachers may encounter in their class in each blog. They also shared their experiences on the application of e-resources/tools that they introduced. The Teachers’ Blogs are open to the public, and both in- and pre-service teachers are encouraged to visit this page. Take the one ‘Using Nearpod to engage students and to facilitate their language learning’ as an example (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/tellt/using-nearpod/). Major problems in online teaching were first listed, and Nearpod can help to solve these problems. Then, a demonstration on how to integrate Nearpod into language teaching, and examples on how to engage students and conduct formative assessment were provided. The challenges that language teachers may face were also listed and suggested solutions were provided. Through reading the contents of the Teachers’ Blogs, both in- and pre-service language teachers can get a good understanding of the e-resources/tools. Their motivation on using TeLT can be enhanced, and they can follow the examples or guidance provided on the Blogs in their daily or future language class. The potential challenges listed in the Blogs also help them develop a smooth TeLT class.

Students’ sharing—e-portfolio competition

The use of the e-portfolio is increasing in higher education worldwide due to its striking benefits (López-Crespo et al. 2022). An electronic portfolio is “a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually on the web. Such electronic evidence may include input text, electronic files, images, multimedia, blog entries, and hyperlinks” (Wikipedia: electronic portfolio 2022). The e-portfolio competition was organized among students to encourage them to share their valuable technology-enhanced language learning experiences through their e-portfolios and to promote technology-enhanced language learning in higher education. The winners of the competition would receive prizes and certificates, while the other participants would receive a merit certificate. The participants could create an e-portfolio using any platform (e.g., Google Sites, Weebly, Wix, Mahara, Sway, etc.). They were required to write a review (at least 200 words) explaining how they used e-resources/tools (e.g., language learning mobile apps, language learning websites, social media, online videos, online news, online radio, podcasts, and corpus, etc.) to enhance their language learning. In addition, they had to write a personal reflection (at least 200 words) on how technologies enhance their language learning. The e-portfolio should include relevant images (i.e., screenshots of the mobile app, learning website, learning software, etc.) and a short video clip about the e-resources/tools they used to illustrate their own learning experience. They had to provide a transcript of their speech and show it under the video (or create subtitles for the video) when recording the video. We assessed the e-portfolios in four areas: Content, Layout, Organization, and Language.

The competition was a success as we received 39 entries from three local universities: the Hong Kong Baptist University, the University of Hong Kong, and the Education University of Hong Kong. There were 10 winners, including one 1st prize, two 2nd prizes, and seven 3rd prizes. We shared the students’ e-portfolios on the project website (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/tellt/students-e-portfolios/) so that other students could learn from them.

Post-construction stage

Stage 5: Evaluation

Evaluation surveys were conducted from three aspects, evaluation of each sharing session, evaluation of our CoP platform, and evaluation of the TeLL&T implementation. After each sharing session, the participants were required to fill in an evaluation form to assess the effectiveness of CoP communication, and the audience could inform us about what they thought of the sharing session to strengthen communication and enhance the culture of sharing.

Participants of the sharing sessions were 210 university students and teachers from four local universities in Hong Kong. Participants submitted their evaluation forms (4-point Likert scale evaluations: 4 = Strongly Agree, 3 = Agree, 2 = Disagree, 1 = Strongly Disagree). and gave comments on the sharing sessions that they attended. The following are some sample items/questions in the evaluation form: “The sharing session provided useful information about e-resources/tools for language teaching and learning”; “The sharing session inspired me to make use of e-resources/tools to enhance language teaching and learning”; “The content covered matched with my expectations”. There is also an open-ended question: “Do you have any further comments regarding the sharing session?”.

For the project platform (website) evaluation, users filled in the evaluation form (6-point Likert scale evaluations: 6 = Strongly Agree, 5 = Agree, 4 = Partly Agree, 3 = Partly Disagree, 2 = Disagree, 1 = Strongly Disagree) inserted in our website and gave comments and suggestions after they had visited our website. The following are some sample items/questions in the evaluation form: “The content presented on the website is informative for technology-enhanced language learning and teaching”; “The content presented on the website is useful for technology-enhanced language learning and teaching”; “I am inspired by the content presented on the website to conduct technology-enhanced language learning and teaching”; “The website is well-designed”. We also asked a multi-answer question “What are your favourite sections on our website? A. E-Resources; B. Sharing Sessions: C. Students’ E-Portfolios; D. Teachers’ Blogs”. After this question, there is an open-ended follow-up question: “Based on your answer to this question, could you please briefly explain what you like about the section(s) you chose?” At the end, there is another open-ended question: “Are there any other comments you would like to share with us so as to help us further improve our website?”.

An online survey on TeLL&T implementation was sent out to the project team members (university teacher participants) with the aim of evaluating the implementation of technologies in the language-related courses that they taught. E-resources/tools (e.g., social media, video-based learning, online dictionary, online assessment, online discussion, Google tools, Wikipedia, and Padlet) were listed in the survey, and the members selected the e-resources/tools that they used in their courses. They also reported the number of students who used the selected e-resources/tools to learn languages. Sixteen team members who taught language-related classes responded to the TeLL&T implementation survey.

In addition, two experts in the field of technology-enhanced language learning and teaching served as external advisors and completed two review reports on the overall design and implementation of the CoP project.

Findings and discussion

The construction of the CoP

In order to answer the 1st research question, 5 stages were designed in the current study, which contributes to the successfulness of cross-institutional CoP on TeLL&T. The stages were designed based on the previous studies. Vincent et al. (2018, p. 75) listed out the characteristics that support successful transdisciplinary CoPs:

  1. 1.

    Bringing together researchers and users from the start of the project.

  2. 2.

    Ensuring openness and empathy for each other’s contexts.

  3. 3.

    Regular face-to-face communication, where possible.

Regarding the first characteristics similarly, Wang and Ma (2017) pointed out that one of the key factors in establishing a successful mobile learning community is to strategically recruit the community members. Our CoP Project strategically recruited the expertise in TeLL&T to become the core members, bringing together researchers and users from the start of the project. Secondly, the presenters of the Monthly Sharing Sessions showed their openness and empathy as they were willing to share their experiences in technology-enhanced language teaching with their colleagues. Some members were agreeable to share their project products on the CoP Project website, and some were happy to share their good practices on blogs, showing how they used technologies to enhance language learning and teaching on the project website as well. All these could inspire more teachers to use technologies in their language teaching and provide teachers with more information about the latest development in technologies. It is true that the members’ shared interest, desire, and motivation to share their knowledge and good practices of technology-enhanced language learning and teaching is the most significant determinant factor contributing to the success of the CoP. Stage 2 (establishment of the CoP on TeLL&T), Stage 3 (construction of CoP website and platform), and Stage 4 (teacher and student sharing) are consistent with Vincent et al. (2018) and Wang and Ma (2017). Researchers and users from different universities in Hong Kong were brought together, shared their TeLL&T-related studies regularly, and the CoP platform was constructed, which is open to the public.

Previous studies show that organizational support is one of the factors of CoP’s success. Akhavan et al. (2015)’s study shows that organizational support is one of the six success factors of communities of practice. As universities can see the potential of CoPs to create and share knowledge, the university managers, who wish to cultivate sustainable CoPs, need to facilitate and support the CoP to emerge rather than creating or constructing the CoPs (Akhavan et al. 2015; Hanisch and Churchman 2008). Our CoP was supported by the university managers as two vice-principals were the core members of the project, who shared their expertise with the members and played the role of encouraging the success of the CoP (Miller 2006). In addition, the project received funding and manpower from the university.

CoPs are mainly operated online so that expertise can be accessed when needed without hindrances of space and time. Regardless of this convenience, face-to-face meetings are necessary for communities as not everything can be done online (Hanisch and Churchman 2008; Miller 2006). Therefore, face-to-face meetings are important to strengthen the social side of the communities (Miller 2006). However, we could not have regular face-to-face communications due to the COVID-19 pandemic during the project period. We could only have project team meetings and sharing sessions via Zoom. In addition, the members would communicate via emails to transmit messages to the CoP members for information sharing. In addition, we sent out mass emails to teachers and students when recruiting participants for individual interviews, online surveys, Monthly Sharing Sessions, and the students’ e-portfolio competition so that CoP’s activities could proceed as planned.

Evaluation results

In order to answer the second research question, we evaluated the TeLL&T CoP from four aspects, evaluations from the participants from each sharing session, evaluations from the platform and website users, evaluations from university teachers on the TeLL&T implementation, and evaluations from two external advisors who are experts in TeLL&T.

Evaluation of the sharing sessions

It is delighted to have positive feedback from the participants as 100% of them agreed that the sharing sessions had provided them with useful information about e-resources/tools for language learning and teaching, inspired them to make use of e-resources/tools to enhance language teaching and learning, and the content covered matched with their expectations. The possible reason for the positive evaluation results could be attributed to the fact that we considered both students’ and teachers’ needs that they reported in the pre-construction survey. Both students and teachers would like to receive information on the review and recommendations of language learning apps/websites the most. The speaker in each sharing session shared not only useful resources in language teaching and learning but also how to integrate them into language classrooms. In addition, there were encouraging comments given by the participants in the evaluation form or in the chat room of Zoom, for example:

Very interesting and practical sharing.

Very impressed e-learning platform, thank you Dr XXX.

“Teaching community” is attractive to me.

Thanks for the PIs’ efforts in organizing this. I enjoyed the session given by Dr XXX.

The sharing is extremely useful. Hope to attend again. Thanks.

An inspiring, innovative, and resourceful sharing session.

Dr ZZ’s sharing is very inspiring. I am eager to try using the tools and apps.

Thanks for the inspiring workshop.

Participants who attended the sharing sessions learned about new e-tools or new functions of an e-tool from the community members. They stated that they learned about the different functions of the e-resources and ways to engage teachers to be part of the community. Sharing sessions participants were also inspired by other members. They claimed that the e-tools used mainly in primary or secondary schools could be applied to university courses.

Thank you for sharing. It’s inspiring to learn about the different functions of website and ways to engage teachers to be part of the community. Great Work!

This seems relevant for teachers in primary or secondary schools, but it could be applied to university courses.

There were some concerns from the participants regarding the length of the sharing sessions.

A 30-minute sharing session is fine for a quick review, but not long enough for in-depth discussion.

The session is a bit too short, so the speakers had to rush. I think it’d be better if there’s more time for them, so they don’t have to hurry and we can catch up.

Based on the comments above, more time was given to the speakers during later sharing sessions, allowing them to thoroughly share their good practices of TeLL&T.

From the above evidence, we can see that the community members engaged in joint activities, and interactions to share knowledge and ideas, and learnt from one another. The speakers and the participants, who indisputably cared about how to use technologies to enhance language learning and teaching, interacted to learn together from each other. The results of the participants’ evaluation are consistent with previous studies (e.g., Wang and Ma 2017; Wenger et al. 2002). Participants in the current study confirmed that their existing knowledge of TeLL&T was deepened. They also confirmed that they learned new knowledge on TeLL&T through participating in the sharing sessions given by the community members.

Evaluation of the CoP platform

All users who filled in the evaluation survey form agreed or strongly agreed that the content on our platform was informative, useful, easy to understand, and clear for TeLL&T. 100% of them agreed or strongly agreed that the platform was well-designed, user-friendly, and easy to navigate. They also rated 100% agree or strongly agree that they were inspired by the content on our platform to conduct TeLL&T.

Users were also asked to rate their favourite section(s) on our platform. 100% of users rated the ‘Sharing Sessions’ page as their favourite, followed by the ‘E-Resources’ and ‘Teachers’ Blogs’ pages (66.67%), and the ‘Students’ E-Portfolios’ page (33.33%). Positive comments on our platform were also provided by the users as follows:

I learned a lot from the sharing sessions and the blogs.

All are useful resources.

I can watch the video recordings of the past sharing sessions, and I learned a lot. Teachers’ Blogs are also very inspiring.

For the platform design and construction, we also tried to meet the needs of the university students and teachers reported in the pre-construction survey. Experiences in TeLL&T were shared from both students’ and teachers’ perspectives. This could be the possible reason for users’ positive evaluation.

Evaluation of TeLL&T implementation

The top five most commonly used e-resources/tools by the project team members were video-based learning, online assessment and discussion, Google tools, and Padlet (Fig. 4). 81.3% of university teacher participants reported that they used video-based learning e-resources/tools in their language teaching, the greatest number of the participants, followed by online assessment and online discussion e-resources/tools (68.8%), Google tools (56.3%), and Padlet (50%). The team members also reported the number of students who had benefited from TeLL&T activities in their classes. Totally, the sixteen team members reported that around 1770 students benefited from the TeLL&T activities in the language-related courses.

Fig. 4
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The top five most commonly used e-resources/tools by project team members

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Overall evaluation by the two external advisors

The two external advisors holistically reviewed all the activities organized by the CoP project and the project website. Both advisors gave very positive reviewing comments. For example, Advisor 1 remarked that “In conclusion, the project is one that the organisers should be commended for, and their attempt to bring together a community was indeed a very ambitious but meaningful undertaking”. Advisor 2 concluded that

Overall, this CoP Project is an impressive initiative to integrate technology with human agency in terms of enhancing and promoting language teaching and learning practices... This CoP Project is another indispensable “front” in which technology meets language and people to enhance teaching and learning outcomes through collaborative creation of resources, and construction and transfer of knowledge regarding language teaching and learning in the ever-changing global linguistic landscape.

Both advisors encouraged our team to continue to grow and flourish. Advisor 1 suggested that the project team could involve not only the tertiary language education sector but also primary and secondary school language education sectors in Hong Kong, and members of language education from wider communities of practice globally. Advisor 2 also suggested that there should be follow-up activities and plans which aim to ensure the continuity of the community, otherwise, the community might be outdated. For future CoP studies, TeLL&T tools used for different levels and contexts should be investigated, and further regular CoP activities which aim to maintain the community should also be designed.

Conclusion

This paper reports the establishment of a Community of Practice to facilitate TeLL&T in Hong Kong higher education. In general, we had a clear purpose of establishing the Community of Practice, i.e., to facilitate technology-enhanced language learning and teaching (Domain) in higher education. The CoP fitted the culture of the university as the members shared their expertise in TeLL&T and created knowledge of their own (Community). Real benefits were delivered to the CoP members by organizing various activities and creating the project website under the good leadership of the core members of the CoP (Practice). Those who wish to implement similar pedagogical innovations should be aware that the establishment of a successful CoP on TeLL&T requires a concerted effort from various stakeholders, such as the students, the teachers, the supporting staff, and the policymakers at the university level. We need to recruit proactive community members strategically, construct a TeLL&T website as a platform for resource sharing and idea exchange, organize a wide range of student and staff sharing sessions on TeLLT&T and make a positive impact on students’ learning and staff development, and evaluate the effectiveness of various CoP activities.

However, there are also limitations of this study. For the current study, we only evaluated students and university teachers who participated in our CoP activities, including those who attended the sharing sessions and/or used our platforms. There is a lack of control group data. For future studies, students and university teachers should be divided into two groups, experimental and control. The experimental group participants should join the CoP on TeLL&T based on the construction procedure designed in this study. For the control group participants, they should join a traditional TeLL&T program. This way, we can find out if the CoP has made a significant impact on the students’ learning and teachers’ teaching compared with the impact of a traditional TeLL&T program. Another issue is that it is rather difficult to promote the CoP across the four universities. In our record, there were more activity participants from our own university than the other three universities. The promotion of activities to other universities was rather difficult as we could only send mass emails to our own colleagues and students to promote the activities, whereas we had to ask for help from the core members of the other three universities to do so. This proves that only through concerted efforts of the community members can we promote technology-enhanced language learning and teaching efficiently and effectively. In future studies, it is suggested that facilitators should be assigned when there is more than one university or institution. In addition, the audience of the sharing sessions should also have the chance to share their ideas on using the technologies introduced by the speaker in each session to evaluate the implementation of TeLL&T in their language-related courses.

To conclude, we need continuous support both from the members and the administration to make the Community of Practice a success. It is hoped that the CoP project will further be fostered through the combined efforts from various universities and may shed light on how technology-enhanced language learning and teaching help facilitate students’ language enhancement.