The Online Language Environments Tool: Technology Support for Language Instruction

Examples of use

The OLE system has been in place now for several years. The University of Arizona faculty using the system have found creative ways to adapt lessons in order to meet their instructional needs. The simple interface of the OLE Board allows language instruction faculty to use the system in a variety of ways without putting a burden on the students. We provide here some real world examples taken from actual use of the OLE Board over the last couple of years.

One universal aspect of using the OLE Board for assignments over a semester has been that the first few weeks of a course, or the first few times that the students used the OLE Board, were a period of orientation. We created the OLE Board to be a simple interface, and this aspect of it has been well received by both students and instructors. However, there is a period of adjustment as students get used to using the Web camera and become comfortable with seeing their own image on the computer screen.

Tips and Hints are available to students to help them adjust to using the system. Students are taught simple lighting techniques, and are told to avoid wearing headgear or dark glasses that would keep the viewer from recognizing them and interpreting body language. While many students reluctantly begin using the Web camera, for the most part they adjust quickly and become extremely comfortable with the technology.

Standard weekly assignments

Weekly homework assignments are the starting point for most faculty using the OLE Board. This is the easiest and most straightforward use of the OLE Board and allows both students and faculty to orient themselves to the online system. The procedures for this are as follows. Faculty creates an OLE Topic that describes the assignment for students to complete. Typically, the topic is titled “Week 1,” “Week 2,” etc., or will be thematically named, such as “Favorite Movie.” The instructor will use voice and text to describe the assignment to the students.

An example of this for an English as a Second Language (ESL) class would be something like this. The instructor records a message at the Topic level, telling students, “Please reply to this message and tell me about your favorite movie, or a movie that you have seen recently and liked. Include a brief summary of the plot of the movie and what you liked about the movie.” Students then log on to the OLE Board from their home computer or from a computer in a computer lab on campus that has a Web camera and recording capability. Students view the post from the instructor and then post a reply to the instructor online in the language they are learning. Students record their assignments to the OLE Board, and can review their posts and rerecord the assignments as many times as they like before posting.

In some scenarios, the instructor will require the student to post the voice and video for their assignment and then hand in a hard copy of a transcript of their post that they create after recording. The instructor then uses the transcript while listening to the student response. This allows the instructor

to mark up the hard copy with comments and corrections, and hand back to the students a document with an assigned grade. In other instances, the instructor will reply to the student online within the OLE Board, providing a critique to the student (pronunciation, grammar, usage) and asking the student to reply online addressing the identified issues. In this way there is a threaded online discussion allowing student progress to be monitored and allowing faculty to compare earlier recorded assignments with later assignments, thereby tracking student progress.

Video benefits

Video image use in the OLE Board assignments is an important aspect of the system. Instructors like the use of the video for several reasons, even though the audio feed is what they are really using to assist with language acquisition. They see video images as important for several reasons. First, because the system is being considered for use as a placement assessment where students would submit to a spoken test before coming to campus, the video image verifies that the person taking the assessment is who they say they are. Second, for many assignments instructors want the students to be speaking from memory and not reading a text. The video image allows instructors to assess whether or not students are speaking extemporaneously or reading from a text. Third, if the video image is of good enough quality, the image can help the instructor to determine what the student is saying if the audio pronunciation is not clear. Also, in some instances of language acquisition, the placement of the tongue and positions of the lips can determine the formation of the proper sounds.

Audio-only

While the video image is important to the use of the system, protocols have been developed where faculty are using the OLE Board with audio-only assignments. The use of the system for audio-only assignments has only occurred in instances where the instructors and students are already using the system in the full audio-video mode. Once all involved in instruction with the OLE Board have become familiar and comfortable with its functions, then one can use audio-only as a supplement.

Audio-only is useful where the student is reading a text in the language of instruction, and where the instructor is not concerned about verifying that the student is reciting from memory or in the language of instruction as realistic speech. In some instances, students have used audio-only to read drills. The listen and re-record function of the OLE Board allows the system to be used to perfect the pronunciation of words or phrases. In this instance, the instructor will post the assignment, such as, “Drill 6, page 124 of the textbook.” The instructor will then post the audio portion of the Topic as the audio target pronunciation so that students have an audio example of the pronunciations to which they can compare themselves.

Having audio-only assignments also helps to relieve some of the anxiety that students may experience while recording assignments and being self-conscious of the fact that they are being video taped. This allows them to concentrate on the topic assignment, and not on personal appearance and accompanying performance anxiety.

Conversations

Real conversations in the language of instruction are important learning and assessment tools. While students reciting from memory pieces of a language, or performing pronunciation drills in a language, can assist with language acquisition, they do not necessarily indicate an understanding of the language. So protocols have been developed for using the OLE Board where students can have conversations with a native speaker of a language, or another student of the language, that shows an understanding of and proficiency in that language.

Here’s an example of an OLE lesson that puts this into practice. For this type of exercise use an inexpensive splitter to attach two microphones to one computer. Students position the Web camera so that both participants are visible in the video window. This may require a wide-angle Web camera, or students must sit further away from the computer than they would normally.

When recording begins, the students have a conversation in the language they are learning. In some instances, they may be reading a written conversation for practice: “Do you know the way to the train station?” Other times they may be in a real unscripted conversation. Another example of the use of this method is to have a language-fluent student (e.g., a graduate student) engage a language learner in a conversation. This allows the language-fluent person to adjust the conversation so that it pushes the student to the limits of their abilities. This is also an effective method for testing and evaluation.

End of semester assessment

As with many types of technology, once OLE became available, it was used in creative ways that were not thought of by the original users and creators. One example of this is the use of the OLE Board by The University of Arizona Business School. Instructors in the Business Communications curriculum have been using the OLE Board with international students as part of the ESL curriculum. Faculty in the school who are not involved in language instruction became aware of OLE and requested the use of the system in other business communication courses for their end-of-semester assessment. As part of this assessment, the students are assigned to perform an “Elevator Speech.” The students have exactly 60 seconds to pitch their idea to a potential client, akin to finding yourself in an elevator with a potential client and realizing you have a captive audience for the duration of the elevator ride.

An OLE Conference was established for this assignment, and the length of a student post was restricted to 60 seconds. Two computers in the computer lab were dedicated for students to perform this assignment, and teaching assistants were made available to help students use the system and to manage scheduling. Over 100 students recorded their elevator speech assignment using the OLE Board. The grading instructors could then view, critique, and grade the speeches from their office or home computers. This saved the effort of the students having to video tape themselves and submit the tape, or for having to coordinate a faculty panel to be available to hear live performances.

Poetry competition

Another creative use of the OLE Board is in an out-of-the-classroom language competition. The American Association of Teachers of Arabic was in the process of reviving the Arabic Poetry Recitation Competition. This national competition had been conducted in the past with students video taping themselves reciting poetry from memory, mailing the video tapes to the judges, and then receiving the results of the competition. Faculty at The University of Arizona were coordinating the competition that took place in May of 2006 and wanted to use the latest in Internet technology to facilitate the competition.

For the contest, they created a blog as the Web host for the competition. Competition rules and procedures were posted on the blog, and a variety of Arab language poems were made available. The poems were in both English and Arabic text, and also available was an MP3 audio file of someone reading the poem in Arabic. The OLE Board then linked to the competition blog, and students wishing to participate received a username and password to access the OLE Conference for the contest. Students from anywhere in the country accessed the OLE Board and recorded themselves

reciting a poem in Arabic according to their level of ability in the language. The use of this system allowed many more people to participate than would otherwise have been able to. It also allowed each audio entry to be available not only to the judges but also the other competitors and students of Arabic.

Student to student

The OLE Board was created as a tool for instructors to provide assignments to students, with students responding with audio/video replies. To achieve this, the two roles available within the system are instructor and student. When creating users, their usernames are assigned to one of these roles. The OLE Board administrator can then assign permissions to each of these roles, customized to the specific OLE Conference. For example, instructors can move and delete messages, while students can be restricted to only being able to reply to the topic level, the instructor, or other students. According to this format, all assignments would come from the instructor.

In disciplines where students are in teacher-training curriculums, it is desirable to have the students, at times, play the role of the instructor. For example, the student assignment would be to create a Topic level assignment to which other students in the class would have to respond. This made it possible for each student to create a lesson and to execute it within the class. Other students completing the assignment could then give feedback on the specific assignment.

Research support

The OLE Board also supports research by linguists whose research areas are Native American endangered languages. As previously mentioned, the creation of the OLE Board was closely tied to a grant promoting research into preserving and teaching native languages. A linguist whose research subjects are the last six speakers of a native language, who all live in California but in different parts of the state, is also using it. The native speakers use the OLE Board to record and comment to each other in their native language, and this allows the researcher to have access to all of their discussions as she attempts to record these few surviving speakers of this language.

Future directions

The OLE Board and the Online Language Environments at The University of Arizona continue to develop. As research progresses, we will provide added features and functions to the OLE Board, as well as being able to document student use and proficiency with the technology. While the initial use of the Board is with English as a Second Language and Second Language Acquisition classes, there has been interest expressed by sign language instructors, music instructors, and instructors in general. As we stabilize and develop the Board, we anticipate developing templates customized for specific pedagogical strategies. For example, the sign language instruction template would have the video portion of the Board taking up a larger section of the screen. As multimedia technologies continue to evolve, we will continue to provide for rich teaching environments that will enable our students to be fluent in the languages of everyday technology. The Learning Technologies Center at The University of Arizona is committed to the concept of promoting and creating open-source software. We are developing the OLE Board with the open source concept in mind, and we look forward to fully developing this concept.

References

Braidi, S. (1999) The Acquisition of Second Language Syntax. London, UK: Arnold. Egbert, J., Chao, C., & Hanson-Smith, E. (1999).

“Computer-enhanced language learning environments: An overview.” In J. Egbert & E. Hanson-Smith (Eds.), CALL environments: Research, practice, and critical issues (pp. 1-13). Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

Krashen, S. (1985) Inquiries & insights: second language teaching: immersion & bilingual education, literacy. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Richards, J., Lockhart, C. (1994) Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Swain, M. (1985) Input in Second Language Acquisition. Rawley, MA: Newbury House.

Swain, M. (1995) Principles and Practice In Applied Linguistics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

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