LC Academic Technology

I attended CALICO 2008 San Francisco 3/21 and 3/22.

CALICO: https://calico.org/

CALICO 2008: https://calico.org/conference/

CALICO 2008 Presentation Schedule with Abstracts: https://calico.org/conference/publicBrowse.php

Presentations I saw:

• Making the Unconventional Conventional: Examining the Role of Emerging Digital Media in Language Learning - Julie Sykes (University of Minnesota) and Steven L Thorne (Department of Applied Linguistics, The Pennsylvania State University)
• Bridging the Three CALL Communities (Research, Practice and Engineering): Building on Facts, Findings, or Informed Opinion? - Jozef Colpaert (University of Antwerp)
• Taking One Step Further in Language Technology – Summer Workshops for the Language Educators - Hajime Kumahata (Rice University)
• Using Speech Processing Technologies to Assess Airplane Pilots’ English Proficiency - Masanori Suzuki (Ordinate Corporation) and Jian Cheng (Ordinate Corporation)
• On Using Online Asynchronous Discussions in Graduate School: TESL Students and Faculty Perceptions and Experiences - Carla Amaro (University of Cincinnati) and Gulbahar Beckett (University of Cincinnati)
• Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication for Real-life Tasks: Ordering Pizza - Karina Silva (Iowa State University) Jacob E. Larsen (Iowa State University)
• Changing Realities of the Writing Classroom: The Effects of Computer-mediated Feedback on Revision in L2 Writing Soo Hyon Kim (Division of English as an International Language, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

• CALL Learner Training in a Listening Course - Phil Hubbard (Stanford University) and Kenneth Romeo (Stanford University)

I would urge you to take a look at the full selection online, but there were several recurring topics of note: wikis, second life and gaming.

For wikis, there were a number of interesting ideas for what could be done in and out of class, mostly focusing on empowering teachers to create and continuously update a web presence easily. There was some emphasis on the collaborative nature of wikis, but it seemed that one of the main features that attracted teachers was the ability to use them as web pages that can be edited through a browser. Unfortunately, there was very little discussion of any privacy issues related to using third party wikis, but this is often the case. However, in one presentation about training instructors to create their own websites, there were several questions from the audience to the effect of why would someone learn to make their own website when they could do it on Blackboard/WebCT/Sitemason? Of course, the speaker’s response was that being able to create their own allows for more creativity, but I think the audience response really points out first the prevalence of learning/content/course management systems. It also illustrates the fact that quite often the need for a quick and easy web presence outweighs any benefits that potential creativity might bring.

Second life and gaming (specifically, WoW) were presented as “cool” technologies that could be used for language learning. The presenters argued that the activity is very engaging and the results of language use are very realistic. Several audience members pointed out that often the effort involved in creating such an environment, or even just participating in it, far outweigh the benefits. Julie Sykes is creating an environment for Spanish learners to practice pragmatics and while it looks very realistic, I can only imagine how much time (and money) went into creating it. One of the key factors in the popularity of WoW is the sheer number of people playing it, and the time (and money) they devote to it. Somehow I doubt that any language program could match numbers there. But to me, this brings up a much larger question: what is it that learners should be doing? If it is simply practicing the language, then there is no need for teachers. I have to believe that there is more to language instruction, and to education in general, than just experience.

There have been a number of fixes to CW in the last few months so I would like to summarize them here. I’ll also use this as an opportunity to give some resources for finding more detailed information.

Perhaps the biggest change is the integration of the standalone syllabus tool Stanford Syllabus with CW. The basic change is that now instructors only have to upload to either CW or Stanford Syllabus and their document will be visible in both. Unfortunately, this means that where we were able to upload multiple documents to CW syllabus, now only one is permitted, because this is what was allowed in Stanford Syllabus. Apparently, they are trying to migrate the syllabuses from the last year over to the new tool. If someone needs more than that, please send me the course name, number and year, as well as some justification for doing this, and I will make the request.

Another big change is that the timed assignment setting works. There was a bug that created a wide range of errors and eventually lost the student’s work if the autosubmit had to kick in. This has apparently been tested pretty thoroughly, but personally, I am still nervous about composing anything in an online text box. Copy and paste from Word, Notepad, whatever, seems like it would be much, much safer.

One new feature that they added in response to requests is the ability to edit published documents. From the release notes: “Instructors can modify existing questions as well as the delivery date options, feedback delivery options, and gradebook options under Settings.” What this means is that you don’t need to unpublish an assignment, then create a new one with a different name. However, it is important to note that many of the settings *cannot* be edited: Assignment Title, Assignment Released to, High Security, Timed Assignment, Assignment Organization, Submissions, Submission Message, Feedback Authoring, Grading, Graphics, and Metadata. The recording applet has not been fixed yet, and so we still need to restrict ourselves to one applet per page – this was often set using the Assignment Organization setting, but since we still cannot change that for published assignments, it is very important that you make sure it is set correctly from the beginning.

Other issues that have been resolved are: access to the Discussion tool, access options and email notification for Drop-box items, email notification for new files in Materials, and section specific content in automatically managed sections. Please see the Release Notes for Spring 08 Releases 1 and 2 for more details.

Other useful pages include:

• Current Issues in Production (Recently resolved and as yet unresolved current issues)
• Functional Gaps between CourseWork v3 and CourseWork v5

These come from the CW5 Help Resources, which can also be accessed through the Help Resources link in the left menu on the CW home page (before you login).