(Improving CALL and On-line Activities)
I would like to preface this paper by saying that is contents are a personal statement and in doing so it reflects much of the Australian educational environment. Perhaps readers in other countries will recognise some of the same issues I outline. I apologise if this is not the case in your area of education or experience.
Several years ago I wrote a paper concerning the role of computers, (in particular a CELLT Centre), in motivating students to learn languages. While I remain firm in my belief, I would now amend this slightly. For while I have observed students being more motivated in language lessons when they use computers, I do not necessarily believe that they see them as a serious tool in their language learning.
For many students CALL activities are viewed as entirely fun and an aside to the normal curriculum content, rather than part of it. Worse still the computer is seen as a glorified toy in the school environment and that since activities using computers are often more interesting than the normal classroom tasks, they fail to approach them as serious language learning opportunities.
Weaning students from this way of thinking, I believe, is a challenge that we all face. My thoughts are that students would become more engaged in activities if they saw the computer and CALL as a part of the normal course rather than an attractive add-on and I would like to suggest just two such ways in which we, as language teachers, can help achieve this aim.
My first belief is that the content of CALL activities must be totally relevant to the course students are studying. It has been my observation that many activities may look and sound great but the actual language content or educational value is low or not entirely appropriate to the course being studied.
In the past I have placed CALL applications on a curve similar to that shown below. (I might make the comment here that I donÕt believe this to be a characteristic distinct to CALL software).
To explain briefly, it seems that as the educational value of a piece of CALL increases, quite often its visual and sonic qualities are less attractive. On the other hand, great looking software is often targeted at niche markets and hence the larger educational applications are limited.
For example, while CDROMs may look handsome they rarely suit any one particular curriculum. Once you get past the Ôwhistles, lights & bangsÕ they may be of limited benefit to your classroom situation. The content is often too advanced or too different to that being studied in any one institution. I know of some teachers who believe that purchasing a CDROM will supply them with hours of CALL activities without considering the market for which it was designed. As we know, the target audience for many are individual learners looking for a smattering of conversation for an overseas trip, rather than students requiring the cognitive development of a successful linguistic course. Worse still, CDROMs are used by some teachers as ways in which to supply remediation to those learners having difficulties or ÔbabysitÕ others in front of a computer.
CDROMS alone do not provide a panacea to the technological imperatives and responsibilities we face in educating the students of today. They do have a place in successful CALL, but perhaps need to be used in a more responsible way. I use CDROMs and will continue to do so when they accompany the course work. For example, I often use ÔTriple Play PlusÕ (Smart Start) or ÔPlaying Games With JapaneseÕ at certain times to drill a particular linguistic structure or function. I do not allow students to spend the entire lesson using the programme, exploring its contents in an unguided manner.
At the other end of the ÔcurveÕ are content authoring packages. These allow a teacher to enter specific content and have activities created around it. Up to now these have been few and far between, particularly for languages which require non-Roman fonts. While the Macintosh has effectively used hypercard stacks, the PC market has had few options outside of WinCALIS and text activities using word processors. The problem in the past with these has been that while much time and effort went into the actual creation of the activities, the presentation was often simplistic and unattractive. In addition, font and programming limitations prevented a large range of tasks from which to choose.
I am happy to report that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Improvements in programming have gone a long way to bend the curve I have outlined above. Indeed recent interactive web technologies have helped improve the look of authorable tasks without greatly sacrificing educational values. Many readers will also be familiar with the number of sites and software (see appendix) designed to create on-line CALL activities or quizzes. The majority of such on-line activity creation sites are also free which is good news considering the cost of commercial software in past years as well as the budget constraints in educational institutions.
The use of Java, DHTML etc has allowed increasingly flexible and wide-ranging applications to be created for the purposes of language learning. The use of streaming audio and video has huge potential for application in language education. In fact, there does not appear to be any traditional language learning activity that cannot be now created on-line with increased flexibility and options.
In short, technologies exist today that allow language teachers to create quite sophisticated activities such as Webquests through to simple vocabulary drilling programmes. I am also quite excited by the potential offered by Maxauthor a new authoring package from the University of ArizonaÕs CALI group designed to allow whole lessons to be placed on-line.
A common complaint concerning the construction of these authored activities from teachers is that they take time. My reply is that it takes time to write any test, worksheet or gathering of resources. One advantage of the online activities, I believe, is that they are a living resource that can easily be edited for future years and made available to others via the Internet. Imagine the extra resources we would all have access to if each member using the same course as you made one activity.
My second opinion concerning increasing the relevance of online activities to students is that studentÕs must be held accountable to their performance when using CALL.
Greater accountability works in the workplace, and should work just as well in the school environment. How many times have we heard students say, "Is this on the test?", "Will this be for marks?", "Will this be handed in?", "Who will see this ?" ? While this does not mean students will necessarily produce poor work, it certainly takes the pressure off them to perform and apply themselves to the task at hand.
Recent advances in interactive web design have allowed teachers far greater access to feedback and reporting than before. Funbrain, for example, not only reports to teachers about the incorrect response but also summarises these for teachers in order to designate which aspects of the test they are having difficulty with.
Other sites and resources such as Quiz Maker 2 at The University of Hawaii allow answers to be sent direct to the teacher via e-mail. ( A simple CGI mailto programme can perform a similar function). Often these can be marked automatically against pre-determined answers set by the teacher. Other types that allow open-ended responses are more valid if a teacher marks them, comments on them and prints them out for handing back to students. Better still e-mail the reply to students with their answer Ôcarroted outÕ and making comment around it just like the on-line community does with e-mail replies at present.
Of course, the greatest level of accountability is to have CALL activities become part of a courseÕs assessment schedule. While for some this may seem a little enthusiastic or pose a number of problems to be overcome. (For example, having enough access to computers when you want them).
I read with great interest a recent article from the US Education Policy Archives, directed to us from the Sensei-Online list, regarding the use of such an idea. If students are to use computers in classes to complete tasks, why then should the same sort of tasks not be used for assessment purposes?
Computers have been used to mark and collate results for many years. Why does it not seem logical then that the next step is using them as the medium to complete the assessment task in the first place? Using computers for assessment not only closer resembles the CALL classroom environment but it also provides greater freedom of assessment instruments and techniques for teachers.
Of course, multiple choice style answers remain an easy to mark, yet at times valid testing technique. Some of the more open-ended type of tasks around can easily be used basically as is to resemble assessment instruments. Webquests have a large role to play in this respect and I would be interested in hearing of anyone currently using Webquests in language learning.
I look forward to discussing any issues arising from my thoughts as outlined above online April 29th/30th with many colleagues and fellow journeymen.
Appendix - Some sites mentioned in this paper
http://edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest/webquest.html
http://motted.hawaii.edu/
http://www.funbrain.com/
http://lang.swarthmore.edu/makers/
http://www.quia.com/
http://clear.msu.edu/dennie/matic/
http://www.igb.umontreal.ca/~leon/exam.html
http://www.bgs.qld.edu.au/edlinks/languages/japanese/japanese.htm
http://epaa.asu.edu/