Designing for seamless CALL integration and access
A presentation by Vance Stevens, Amideast UAE/MLI Project
TESOL Conference 2000, Vancouver
March 17, 2000, 8:30-9:15 a.m.
session #5297, Convention Center Room 3
Vance's website:
http://www.vancestevens.com/esl_home.htm
Click here for links to the other presentations given by
Vance at this TESOL Conference.
This talk was about the Military Language Center, or MLI, in Abu Dhabi, UAE. In particular, it was about my area of responsibility at the MLI, the computer assisted language learning facility.
I was involved with the MLI as a consultant at its inception. I worked for Amideast, America Mideast Educational and Training Services, Inc. Amideast is a non-profit organization involved in language training as a means of promoting friendship and understanding between Americans and the people of the Middle East. The impetus for our project was that the UAE military were sending people to the USA and other English-speaking countries for further training before they were ready linguistically or socially to study there. So they wanted these students to have more language and cultural preparation before departure for their destinations. The MLI was formed to provide the language and cultural training for these students while still in the UAE so that when they arrived in the places where they would study or train they would be better able to utilize their time there.
Amideast were called in as consultants on the project and in the proposal for the MLI we recommended a communicative curriculum supported and enhanced by technology. The curriculum at the MLI is worth discussing in detail, but it's not in my specific area of expertise. I was brought on board to suggest how technology could be brought to bear on the proposed MLI.
I had been fortunate while working at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman (1985-1995) to have had the opportunity to teach in one of the few classrooms with Novell a networked computer. As I was also in charge at the time of putting language center materials on the network, I was essentially able to use the network in my classroom as an extension of my own office PC. As we also had a range of networked applications, including a word processing program, I soon discovered that I could keep all kinds of records for my class on the server and conveniently pull them up in my classroom, project them on tv monitors mounted in the front of the class, work on them in class as appropriate, and save them in an area where the students could access them later. More than a decade later, in 2005, it seems that this kind of networking can almost be taken for granted, but at the time it was not at all common, and it's hard to appreciate how unusual and groundbreaking it was for language teachers and students to have access to shared applications and resources on all computers throughout a building in this way.
I remember at the time students asking questions about listening exercises that were part of our syllabus, and I would say things like, well, the texts to these listenings are in this directory here, and you can have a look if you simply browse like so. The students picked up on this quite readily and were soon able to negotiate their way around our server better than most teachers could (students at SQU had keen noses for sniffing out what they thought might be "the answer"; I was working at the time with teachers who were sometimes a little uncomfortable with my giving students free access to the whole database of listenings when they might then be able to get ahead of where the teacher was in the course, but my attitude was, hey, if the students are that keen, let them have it. After all, we're trying to maximize their exposure to English, aren't we, not restrict it). Though the teachers I was working with didn't necessarily agree with my divulging to the students where the listening texts were kept on the server, I was putting in practice my view of computers as tools that should be available to users in the way that they best see fit, not in some preconceived way imposed by a prescriptively oriented network administrator.
So when I was called upon to give my advice on how the computers at the proposed MLI might be configured, I was ready with my vision. I recommended that the MLI be configured on these principles:
Seamlessness
Computers should be so ubiquitous that they should be taken for granted. I wanted computers to not be like idols that would be constantly pandered to in designing our curricular materials, but to be as common and mundane a working tool as a typewriter or a photocopy machine. I espoused the notion that they should be integrated "seamlessly" into the workplace at the MLI. By this I meant they should become a part of the fabric at the MLI in the same way and with the same status as whiteboards and OHP's.
This happened gradually at the MLI. The computers were used constantly as a teaching tool at the MLI, the only difference being that they were not as reliable as whiteboards and OHP's. Moreso than OHP's which can go out in the middle of a presentation, leaving a presenter fumbling stupidly with a mess of transparencies that have become worse than useless, even a distraction, there are a lot of things that can go wrong with computers, and this compromises their seamlessness. That's the reality, but let's ignore that for a moment and consider how I'd hoped to achieve the seamlessness I was after.
To achieve this goal, I proposed to put a computer on each teacher's desk and in each teacher's classroom and on each student's desk in each student's lab station. Each teacher would be able to work in his office and then go to his class and pull up the material he had been working on, and students also would have access to this material if the teacher wanted them to (note on gender designation: teachers and students at the MLI were all male at the time of this presentation).
The benefits and compelling potential of such a configuration are probably self-evident to most teachers who are sophisticated users of computers, and would have been even more so at the time of this presentation, which was given 3 years after I was called on as a consultant to advise on how technology could help all concerned meet their goal of enhancing language learning for UAE military personnel. But at the time, I had to sell the idea, particularly as what I was proposing was going to cost a lot of money. Unlike in my previous jobs up to then, when my ideas for ubiquitous access to networked computers had met with certain constraints, budgetary as well as resistance among colleagues and administrators, Amideast accepted my suggestions as part of their proposal, and the UAE clients also accepted the plan with few constraints.
Use of Internet
Only one significant constraint existed, and that regarded use of the Internet. At the time of this presentation there had been a noticeable shift in perceptions of those in the UAE of the Internet and its effect on the values of the citizens in the countries of the Middle East, a shift from wary restrictiveness to a tendency toward acceptance in keeping with the greater use made of the Internet throughout the world. This shift had become more apparent in recent years. Saudi Arabia had only recently given in to allowing email and Internet use throughout the kingdom, whereas Egypt, for example, has had unrestricted access to the Internet for some time. At the university where I worked in Oman, up to when I left in 1995, email had only just been introduced to professors and was at the time denied ESL teachers, and the reason for that was rooted in misconceptions of administrators over what use ESL teachers could possibly have for email. The irony here, evident to those of us in the field, is that ESL professionals tend to be in the forefront of communicative uses of computers, pushing the envelope of adapting Internet to teaching and making use of multimedia and synchronous communications, and often all three combined. And I understand that since then, perception of the Internet has shifted even in Oman, where the university was considering extending its Internet network to include even campus housing (and at time of this revision, 2005, Internet is campus-wide at SQU now).
I mention these things here only to give some indication of the contrasts on use of Internet within the countries of the Middle East, and how perceptions of the Internet are rapidly changing there, and how this in turn affected how one might configure computers to teach ESL in the UAE. There were indications when we proposed our plan to have computers available to all teachers and students at the MLI that use of the Internet would not be allowed. We made a stong case for its use at least by teachers, and we won that argument, and by the time we set up our network, we found we had been granted the right to let students have access to the Internet as well without our having had to ask for it. I think this shows how perception of the Internet has gone from concern over what affect it might have on the values of the people there to an even stronger concern over being left behind in an increasingly interconnected word. The people of the Middle East can be strongly individualistic in some matters and those in the UAE have long had the wherewithal to set up Internet access in their own homes. I recall reading in the UAE papers in the late 1990s editorials to the effect that the schools should be making greater access of Internet facilities that students were likely to have at home. How could an educational system thrive in an atmosphere where students would be deprived of resources more readily available outside of school? Shouldn't it be the other way around? These kinds of questions were being asked in the media at the time the MLI was being set up. It was refreshing to see such arguments made publically, and the result for the MLI was that the students and teachers had access to the Internet from the outset, which was not typically the case for other institutes established to teach languages to the UAE military.
Providing students and teachers with technology tools
So, it was in this climate that Amideast proposed to develop the MLI language center which would have computers in language labs and on all teachers' desks in offices and classrooms, all connected to the Internet. I was in the position of having to argue that all this expensive equipment was going to present opportunities to enhance language learning sufficient to warrant the expenditure. In formulating my argument, what was most difficult was to imagine the exact uses to which the tools we were purchasing would be put. Looked at from this side of the divide, from the opposite shore of a bridge now crossed, I think that there is general agreement that, in retrospect, by having made the investment in both time and resources, many achievements have been made that would not have otherwise been possible. But it is a different matter to be on the other bank of the river and in position of having to convince someone to provide funds to construct the bridge that you think should be built to cross for whatever reason to the other side.
And here I would like to speak about some of these achievements and show examples of what happens when a commitment is made to build the bridge and cross the river by incorporating technology with language learning.
The theory goes like this: give a collection of talented workmen a first-rate set of tools and they will build objects that not only get the job done better than if these workmen had a lesser set of tools, but they will attract even more skilled workmen, and eventually produce something truly creative. A cycle is setup whereby creativity in one workman begets creativity in another, and the expertise in using the most useful tools creatively is refined even as it spreads throughout the institute.
Tool-based learning environment at the MLI
This is what happened at the MLI. The tools were put in place. Each workstation had MS Office 97, with Word, which could serve as both a word processor and an html editor, and PowerPoint, an easy-to-use presentation tool. Each teacher had access to the internet and could download free software tools.such as Hot Potatoes and Real Audio Player and Producer (plus demo versions of Macromedia tools such as Authorware and Flash). Plus we had purchased a set of networked versions of software items such as
At the presentation I used as a point of departure a recent posting on one of the lists: neteach-l or teslca-l
Mark Sellers had written the list, I believe, asking for ideas on using video with language learners in a high-tech environment such as that of the MLI. The following reply was made to the list (exerpted here):
>I'm sure that colleagues on the list will be able to assist Mark
by suggesting
> ways in which his new hardware can be used and point
him, and the rest of us,
> to resources on the Web. But isn't it sad for
education when technology drives
> curricula decisions like this? Once
again, we see technology searching for a
> use.
I didn't think that was the case, so I put forward some thoughts on this. I reasoned thusly:
(1) Mark's original posting mentioned "super fast LAN connection, video camera for each computer, VCR and DVD that can be displayed on each screen, and a couple of bells and whistles" so the question to ask here is, do video and fast networking tools help students learn languages? I think there are compelling arguments in favor of VALL, or video assisted language learning (I just made that up; I can also conceive of LALL, library assisted; BALL, blackboard assisted, etc but I digress). Try here, for example:
Prentice Hall had (at the time, since taken down) informative pages on
(2) As to the question: Can technology help you to deliver the video that you think will enhance learning?
Actually, there's a simple answer (yes) but as process people, we know that the answer is not the most important thing. As for the process:
I like the workshop analogy. If you want to produce parts for an automobile, you can hire the best machinist in the world, but if you show him/her an anvil and a hammer, his/her output may be inspired but limited by what s/he has to work with, and eventually s/he'll become frustrated and bad-mouth you at the next conference while scoping about for another job.
Conversely you can spring for the best equipment money can buy but if you don't hire top-notch machinists, then nobody knows what to do with it. But let me make a point here: it's not the shop supervisor who is ultimately going to say how the devices are used. Machinists know what to do when they find the right tools. The supervisor may take some credit if he or she arranges to put the tools in place, but ultimately, the art comes from the artisans, and artisans flourish best in situations where tools are not an issue.
Granted, there has to be some justification for expenditures for expensive tools. I think that administrators become most anxious at about the point where the money has been spent and the question comes up, ok, now what? It's a valid question, but on the other hand, if all the pieces are in place, state-of-the-art equipment, creative staff, then the practitioners are going figure out what to do.
Unfortunately, depending on how much development time the staff have in their day, it may take them longer where time is at a premium to figure out what to do than it will in a situation where teachers have the odd hour or two to work on their materials. So let's hope the administrators have made provision for development time in scheduling the duties of teacher-practitioners.
Training is also a factor. A consultant can come along and get you started, and a good CALL / VALL coordinator can probably initiate a training program, but in the ideal situation you'd soon reach the point where some of the staff have acquired enough expertise to start sharing it with others. This is the point where the CALL coordinator kicks back and enjoys learning from the coordinees.
In looking at the original posting, I think some of the questions are oriented a bit toward products: What kinds of courses or projects are being done? What software and video programmes have (or haven't) worked? Of course, these are things you want to look at, to see what others are doing with their V-CALL toys, but each situation is different. The more important questions I think are, how will multimedia enhance your program, and how do you get there from here?
It sounds like in your choice of tools, you've at least given yourselves a paved highway. Hopefully, and if all those catalytic pieces have been put in place (tools, craftsmen, development time, and training) your staff will work out how to roll down that highway. Next thing you know, take off.
Finally, I showed examples of what our teachers had done using the tools we had put in place for them
At the presentation, I brought on my computer examples of what many of our teachers had done with all of these tools: What I talked about is preserved below, for the record. The references are to specific instances of software development I showed at my presentation, with credit given to the developers.
What we did with Spectrum sound files ...
Aside from the text manipulation software ...
Power Point has been a versatile and much used tool as well.
Simple html has been a serviceable tool. The most obvious means of creating html documents in our setting is to create files in Word 97 and simply save them as HTML. However, some teachers use Netscape Composer, and a number have purchased their own copies of Hot Metal 5.0. Using these tools, teachers have designed interesting home pages which jazz up their class presentations and student interfaces. At the conference, examples are shown from the following categories:
Html-based materials are the mainstay of much exercise creation at the MLI. Some teachers use templates at web sites which depend on connection to a server in some remote location in cyberspace, but when the connection is made, deliver the exercise in the students' browsers; e.g.
Hot Potatoes has been a productive template.
(text to be inserted from htmlb.htm)
Hot Potatoes has been an authoring tool of choice. It allows teachers to quickly prepare appropriate materials to supplement what they are doing in class.
Mark Sellers has been heavy into the Internet. Check out his link-a-day site and Grammar sites
Zafar, a good example of organization
Some teachers have developed interesting themes:
What are the students doing?
Email:
Advisors
Some of the teacher home pages mentioned above can still be seen here (Nov 2005): http://www.vancestevens.com/mli_urls.htm
For comments, suggestions, or further information on this page, contact Vance Stevens, page author and webmaster.