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Zheng, Dongping

Assistant Professor
Department of Second Language Studies

University of Hawaii, Manoa
Moore Hall, Rm 474
1890 East-West Road, Honolulu, HI 96822 USA
Tel: 808.956.2791    FAX: 808.956.2802

B.A.1995, English Education, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China
M.A. 1997, Applied Linguistics, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
M.A. 1998, Master of Arts in Teaching, University of Great Falls
Ph. D., 2006, Educational Psychology, University of Connecticut

Dongping Zheng draws her diverse educational and professional experiences to develop her research agenda that focuses on language development in a community of practice. She uses virtual worlds and web-based technologies to engage children and teachers from multifaceted linguistic and cultural backgrounds and study how design affects learning trajectories and authentic language use in such environments. She recently was accepted as Quest Atlantis international consortium of scholars. This consortium is a part of an international scaling initiative supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. With this support, she will bring students from local schools in Hawaii and China to investigate what unique sets of affordances face-to-face and virtual environments can bring students to experience whole body and whole world learning.

Prior to UH, she worked in Confucius Institute at Michigan State University as an assistant professor. She created and developed a variety of Chinese language and culture online curriculums for different age groups. One of them that she holds pride in is the development of Second Life Chinese School virtual quest curriculum. She also worked with Mandarin Chinese to bring them up to speed through teacher certification courses and professional development.

Dongping has 18 years of teaching experience in variety of content to different age groups in face-to-face and online settings. She engaged learners with different instructional and motivational techniques. No matter the age, she finds an entry to their life and helps students make sense of new information and transform their thinking and actions.

Dongping actively participates in community activities, which reflects her firm belief of learning occurs not only in instructional settings but also in the serving and participating in communities. She has helped many international visiting scholars and international students acclimated to the local community and develop their multicultural identity.

Publications

  • Zheng, D., Young, M. F., Wagner, M., & Brewer, B. (2009). Negotiation for action: English language learning in game-based virtual worlds. The Modern Language Journal, 93(4),489-511
  • Zheng, D., Young, M. F., Brewer, B., & Wagner, M. (2009). Attitude and self-efficacy change: English language learning in virtual worlds. The Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium Journal, 27(1), 205-231.
  • Zheng, D., & Young, M. F. (2006). Comparing instructional methods for teaching technology in education to preservice teachers using logistic regression. In S. Barab, K. Hay, & D. Hickey (Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (873 – 879). Bloomington, Indiana: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
  • Young, M. F., Schrader, P. G., & Zheng, D. (2006, April 1). MMOGs as learning environments: An ecological journey into Quest Atlantis and Sims Online. Innovate: Journal of Online Education, 2(4). Retrieved April 1, 2006, from http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=66.
  • Schrader, P. G., Zheng, D., & Young, M. F. (2006, February 1). Teacher’s perception of video games: MMOGs and the future of preservice teacher education. Innovate: Journal of Online Education, 2(3). Retrieved February 1, 2005, from http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=125.
  • Zheng, D. (2004). Learning and reflecting through Quest Atlantis: A multi-national 3D gaming environment for English language learning. In F. Malpica, F. Welsch, & A. Tremante (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Education and Information Systems: Technologies and Applications (pp. 209-212). Orlando, Florida.
  • Lang, H. G., Babb, I. G., Scheifele, P., Brown, S. W., LaPorta-Huper, M., Monte, D., Johnson, P. R., & Zheng, D. (2002). Classroom of the Sea. National Technical Institute for the Deaf Research Bulletin, 7(1), p. 1, 6-7.