Aggietalk.orgOmar Ghannoum&Peter Mack Grubb

Overview Website for matching language partners at Texas A&M

Cultural and linguistic exchange

Anyone with an @tamu.edu can use website

The idea originated because both of us are taking foreign language classes

Objectives Build the website

Attract a linguistically diverse user base

Have a high degree of user engagement

Find an organization that can continue to maintain the site

Strategies Website is a social network

Limited potential user base

Specific focus

Wordpress Content Management System used Easy to use for less technically inclined

Still highly flexible for our needs

Promotion done via organizations with large international base INTS, Arabic and Chinese clubs, fliers

Planning to hand off to International Studies student professional organization

Costs for hosting minimal (36$) so paid out of pocket

Challenges New Student Organization process is too bureaucratic

Trouble with A&M webhosting policies Required the use of Drupal

Did not allow for unfiltered student posting

Too many liability concerns

Establishing a relationship between the English Language Institute

Successes Around eight pairings were made, including myself

Users were very satisfied Had students come up to us in class and tell us what a good Idea it was

Influx of users after contacting International Studies Department

Connected with International students as well as local Texas A&M students

What we learned We are very resilient

We are effective leaders and communicators

When developing in a niche market, it is always more difficult to get started However, if it meets a need you will get a large user response

In order for the website to be successful, we had to always be on top of things

Assessment The good news: The final user count was 93

Split about 60/40 native vs. international students

The bad news: total number of Language Partners was 8 Caused by the timing people joined (international students after INTS)

Relatively late in the school year

Many pairings occurred where the user didn’t click “add as Language Partner”

High level of community involvement

Conclusion Project was all in all a success

Pairing Numbers were not as high as we would like, but community interest was most definitely there

Strong publicity push in the early Fall would probably lead to much better results

If this were a startup, we are ready for funding round 2