Reflections upon the evolution of technology-enhanced language learning and future expectations

4TH WORLD CONFERENCE ON
LEARNING, TEACHING AND
EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Reflections upon the evolution of
technology-enhanced language learning
and future expectations
Ana Gimeno
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia
Spain

CAMILLE Project & Consortium
 1992
 5 universities
 EU LINGUA funding
 Objectives: “to exploit the most recent developments in multimedia
computing to create a flexible, student centred, electronic language learning
environment to support the acquisition of a foreign language”
 Computer-Assisted Multimedia Interactive Language Learning Environment
 Vision: to create a completely autonomous interactive language learning
environment that would provide the learner with all the necessary tools to
become an independent language learner

CAMILLE software
ESPAÑOL INTERACTIVO (BARCELONA:
DIFUSIÓN 1997)
ESPAÑOL EN MARCHA (BARCELONA:
DIFUSIÓN 1998)

Courseware on CD-ROM
Talk to Me, Auralog, 1992. Later became the Tell Me More
series that included speech recognition.
English for Business, Paul Brett, University of Wolverhampton (UK), 1994. The English for
Business series is a suite of six, interactive multimedia titles for learners of Business
English. The series was produced by the University of Wolverhampton and is published
by the French company, Edulang.
English Discoveries / English +, Edusoft Ltd., 1994.
Company established in 1990 in USA.

Triple Play Plus!, English, Syracuse Language Systems Inc.,
1995. Company founded in 1989 in USA, later becoming a
subsidiary of the French company Vivendi Universal.
• Telephone Talk and Small Talk, Libra Multimedia, 1993.
• Travel Talk, Libra Multimedia, 1994.
• Business Talk, Libra Multimedia, 1995.
The Encounters series produced by the TELL
Consortium, led by the University of Hull, for French,
German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, 1996-97.
Spanish Encounters, Hodder Arnold (3 Mar 1997)

Business Territory 1, Lingonet (Finland), 1997.
Airline Talk Spanish (¡Bienvenido a
bordo!), Unicorn Training Group Ltd., UK,
City Talk, English, Libra
Multimedia, 2000
2000.
Reward, Macmillan
Heinemann, 2000-2, 5
level general English
courses written by
Simon Greenall.

Software reviews
 Designers and publishers  software reviews
 Encourage purchase & use of courseware
 Regular software reviews
 ReCALL (CUP)  till vol. 13(2), 2001
 CALICO  1998-2003
 Language Learning and Technology  1999-2003
 Guidance for language teachers  features , contents & insight as to what
could be expected from the software
 Use of CD-ROMs  caused anxiety in teachers

Moving online…
Despite their robustness, CD-ROMs seem to have been set aside by many language
teachers, giving way to on-line learning materials in spite of the many drawbacks
that may be encountered during the process, i.e. band width, transfer rates,
expense, to mention but a few. These issues have not, however, prevented language
teachers from exploring the depths of creating web-delivered materials to
supplement their teaching, although it is a fact that these isolated initiatives have
not been channelled in order to be made available to the language teaching
community at large. It is true, on the other hand, that there are currently an
increasing number of initiatives around the world to maximise the effort and cost
that goes into developing pedagogically sound on-line language learning materials
by creating authoring packages to facilitate and guide the creation of materials.
Most of these authoring tools, however, have to be installed onto personal
computers for individuals to use independently without the possibility of creating a
pool of multimedia exercises and resources that can be shared by a larger
community.
(A. Gimeno, The IN6ENIO online CALL authoring shell, The EUROCALL Review, No. 7, June, 2005)

The 1990s
 Maturity acquired in
 making the most of technological offerings
 How to apply that technology to the full benefit of pedagogically sound multimedia materials
 not yet paralleled despite recent incorporation of social network applications and
sophisticated virtual world software.
 Typical common features till approx. 2005
 built-in voice recording capabilities
 hypertext reference materials (including dictionaries, grammar and culture notes, etc.)
 abundant sound-enhanced materials
 immediate feedback
 catering for different learning styles (the visual, the audio-based, the relational…)
 Major contribution toward autonomous learning and learner-centred approaches to
teaching
 Tutorial programmes  computer replaced teacher and/or textbook
 Self-access learning materials

Moving online…
When multimedia-capable microcomputers and the World Wide Web blossomed,
promising both freedom from platform specific hardware configurations and
ubiquitous access to materials via Web browsers, developers rushed to move their
instructional programs to the Web. Unfortunately, because of the restrictive nature
of the Web environment and the immaturity of Web development tools, the
transition to Web delivery has been far from smooth. Multimedia developers felt
that, in many respects, they had taken a giant step backward in their ability to
control the instructional environment in ways they had been accustomed to with
older technologies. For example, defining precise clips from a video and playing
them back instantly and reliably at an acceptable size and quality—something that
had been relatively easy to accomplish with videodisc technology—was, until
recently, an elusive target because of underdeveloped streaming media technology,
standards, and tools. Web development tools have matured and, consequently,
there has been a dramatic increase in Web-based language learning materials.
(S. Otto and J. Pusack, Computer-Assisted Language Learning Authoring Issues, The Modern
Language Journal, 93, Focus Issue, 2009, pp. 784–801.)

Drawbacks
 Use of programming tools
 Toolbook
 Macromedia Director
 Need of professional software programmer
 Need of team of professionals in
 language teaching
 graphic design
 audiovisual production,…
 Constant upgrading of the programming tools during production stages
 To introduce more robust features
 To allow the software to run on more advanced OS
 Lack of upgrade led to becoming obsolete in a very short time despite being very robust
and innovative pedagogically speaking

Funding opportunities
 Without public funding to cover part of the production costs  these
examples of innovative approaches to language learning would have simply
not existed
 Difference in approaches
 Educational institutions
 Emerging companies
 Examples: Libra Multimedia, TalkFast, Camsoft  founded precisely to
market language learning CD-ROMs
 Libra Multimedia’s “reversible approach” (eg Business Talk)
 More production
 Less time & cost

Libra Multimedia
CITY TALK
AIRLINE TALK (¡BIENVENIDO A BORDO!)
low-cost multimedia / 16-25 age groups /
ES, EN, NL & PO / autonomous learning /
communicative competence (1998)
Multimedia materials for the airline
industry, responding to specific needs
 training airline staff in FL to assist
the travelling public (1997-2001)

The web
 Mainstream in 1993 with introduction of the Mosaic web browser
 Drastic turning point in the development of multimedia LL resources
 Turn of the 21st C  web-based exercises started to shift the conception of
CALL
 General impression  everything freely available at no cost whatsoever
 death of the CD-ROM
 subsequent leap back in time with regard to the robustness and innovations brought about
by interactive multimedia and the “all-in-one” idea that had emerged with them
 “All-in-one” concept  novelty of being able to bring together in a single
storage system all the media devices (TV, cassette recorder, video player,
etc.) and reference materials (grammar books, dictionaries, etc.) that, up
until then, were used as independent learning aids
 Interrelation of aids thanks to hypermedia was another innovative feature
that came about with these new massive storage devices

CAMILLE: español en marcha
 Sample exercise:
 Grammar section  use of the future tense
 Contextualization of language
- watching video that deals with personal features
- reading the information on superstitions in the culture book
 Audio stimulus  relating sound to image
 Complete sentence with correct verb form  writing
 Audio of correct sentence  positive feedback  listening to model
 Access to grammar book  focus on form
 Dictionary  further information
 Making predictions  relating to language functions
 Link to vocabulary exercise  learning new vocabulary
 Built-in “recording studio”  speaking and comparing

InGenio online authoring tool & content
manager
 Year 2000
 First completely online dedicated CALL authoring tool, based on the
template approach to authoring, allowing language teachers to design their
own materials, create a database with these materials –making it available
to other users–, and automatically convert these materials into learner-ready
courses.
 Free source software
 Free of charge for registered users
 CALL@C&S: online courseware for learners of Czech and Slovak (2004-07)
 “translation” module  to adapt courses into any number of L1s
 online tutoring module  learner assessment

InGenio online tutoring module

InGenio “translation module”

HelloNet & Welcome!
 HelloNet – Hellenic Enjoyable Language Learning on the Net
 2001 - 2004
 coordinated by Roula Kartali, Technical University of Thessaloniki (Greece)
 designing a one-off online course for A1 learners of Modern Greek
 traditional approach
 incorporation of games to introduce ancient Greek mythology
 http://hellonet.teithe.gr/EN/mainenglish.htm (eg Part 2, Lesson 8, game)
 WELCOME! - Linguistic and cultural introduction module for incoming
exchange students
 2001-02
 coordinated by Valere Meus , University of Ghent (Belgium)
 I4LL authoring tool
 Stand-alone concept (not cloud-computing line InGenio)

I4LL authoring tool
 An authoring environment (complete with scenario tool) for the production of
learning objects
 A web delivery engine (using Java applets and XML files): the I4LL shell
 A data storage component (repository) where the learning objects are saved
together with codes that describe them fully (and which are compatible with the
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and IMS standards
 A structuring component where learning objects are combined into units,
modules and learning paths (courses)
 A communication component that allows students to interact among
themselves and with tutors, enabling the use of various spaces, depending on
the group they belong to
 An administrative component (log in, assignment to courses and tutors,
profiling, etc.)
 A tracking component that keeps track of students’ activities and scores

Early stages of web development
 Initial online courses  far more rudimentary than their multimedia CD-ROM
equivalents
 Why?  simply because not enough time had elapsed yet to develop
comparably sophisticated web-based interactive multimedia authoring
applications
 Not until web 2.0 and the wealth of possibilities opened up by…
 social networks
 cloud computing
 high quality streaming video and crowd computing systems (including collaboration packages)
 crowdsourcing platforms
 information sharing software
 wikis
 blogs
 alerting systems
 social networks, SMS, MMS, Twitter, Flickr, and even mashups

Currently…
 …no end to the things we can do in computing to enhance language learning
and make it motivating and attractive to the learner as long as there is a very
large dose of imagination and creativity mixed into the formula. Another basic
ingredient is being bold enough to try to foresee what may lie ahead in the
future.
 Nicolas Negroponte (1995)  envisaged a completely wireless world
 We are nearing his prediction with the newly born era of tablets and apps
 iPAD
 watching TV; listening to my discography; playing games; reading newspapers, fiction, academic
papers, etc.; looking-up information on the internet; practising my French; communicating with
friends and colleagues through Skype; delivering audiovisuals in live theatre productions; writing
and making both text and oral notes; taking pictures and storing them in albums; listening to the
radio; keeping in touch with family, friends and colleagues on social networks…
 But, how do all of these advancements fit into language learning? Aren’t we all a
bit overwhelmed by the number of technologies and applications or apps that
are currently at our fingertips?

Tools for CLIL Teachers project (2012-14)

Tools for CLIL Teachers
 2012-14
 Free online service to author and share content-rich, multimedia learning
units featuring the creator’s own choice of audio, video (e.g. from YouTube),
text (e.g. a transcript) and images/graphics
 No installation or setup of software is required
 Unique ability to automatically link every word in a text to online
dictionaries in over 100 languages
 Repository of activities
 Authoring of learning units from mobile devices
 Compatibility with any operating system
 Userfriendly features

The next move… “atomised CALL”
 Currently moving away from structured “all-in-one” contents such as those
typically found in textbooks, CD-ROMs or online courseware to unstructured
yet meaningful bits (resources)
 These didactically meaningful resources are assembled together and
integrated into the language curriculum by teachers or tutors who are in
charge of implementing them into their everyday teaching practice
 New phase “atomised CALL” (Gimeno, 2013)  from 2010 onwards as a
continuation of Mark Warschauer’s definition of “integrative CALL”
 Reaching Bax’s concept of “normalisation” of CALL
 Constant evolving of technology & emergence of new gadgets  new
challenges for CALL developers & authors to find the optimum way of
pedagogically exploiting those for-ever emerging technological
developments

Resources and skills…
 Using the web as a source of information (task-based and project-based learning)
 WebQuests
 Digital storytelling
 Using the web as a translation tool (translating or writing tasks)
 Multidict (Wordlink)
 Duolingo (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_collaboration.html)
 Google translator
 Using collaboration tools for communication purposes (creative writing tasks)
 Wikis
 Blogs
 Using communities of practice to mark and correct learner input (reinforcement activities)
 Livemocha
 Using virtual worlds for instructional and communication purposes (reinforcement activities
through oral & written interaction)
 Second Life (Avalon & Avatar projects)
 OpenSim (Niflar project)
 Using word games for vocabulary acquisition (practising new vocabulary & communicating)
 Angry words
 Words with friends

And more resources and skills…
 Using mobile devices to deliver micro-lessons (reinforcement activities through mobile
interaction)
 WhatsApp
 Line
 Dedicated language learning Apps like the French TV5 Monde, 7Jours
 Using video recordings as a source of information (reinforcement activities)
 Videocasts
 Screencasts
 Using audio recordings as a source of information (listening comprehension activities)
 Podcasts
 Using computer-based language tests (exams)
 Diagnostic tests
 Placement tests
 Achievements tests
 Using the web as a massive reference source (broadening knowledge)
 Ready-made online exercises
 Grammar explanations
 Online dictionaries
 Encyclopaedias

Integrating isolated resources

Integrative CALL (Warschauer, 1996)

“Atomised CALL” (Gimeno, 2013)

UPV “Docencia en red” (Networked teaching)
 Polimedia  5 to 10 minutes’ recording of what is commonly known as a
“learning object” (a re-usable learning object (RLO) is the smallest element
of meaningful information independent to other pieces of information and
correlated with a specific learning objective. Within a single RLO more than
one representation forms can be used”)
 Screencasts  “digital recordings of computer screen output, also known as
a video screen capture, often containing audio narration...”
 Educational videos  5 or 10 minute sequences produced by teaching staff
with a video camera requiring post editing
 Digital learning modules  self-contained lessons allowing students to
become acquainted with new content, conduct retention tasks and be
assessed on acquisition
 Open courseware  via Universia, one of the Open Courseware Consortium
sustaining members

The RiuNet open access repository
http://riunet.upv.es

Learning objects
 Reusability (Davies & Riley 2009)
 Transportability (Longmire 2000)
 Modularity (Polsani 2003)
 Granularity (Polsani 2003; Wiley 2000ab)
 Meta-information, metadata (Wiley 2000b)
 Searchability (Liber 2005)
 Flexibility and adaptive capability (Gibbons, Nelson & Richards 2000)

Benefits
 These features will allow us to maximise the increasing efforts to provide
learners with consistent repositories comprised of learning materials to
enhance autonomous or independent learning
 Example:
 LORO (Languages Open Resources Online)
 Open University (London)
 Collection of open access resources to support language teaching and learning
 Some of the materials in LORO have been specifically designed to support OU language
courses and are deposited in LORO as Open Educational Resources to be adapted and re-used
freely in any context
 Sharing of resources to avoid reinventing the wheel!!!

Software quality includes…
 Performance  connection capacity and execution speed
 Flexibility  the ease with which a system or component can be modified for use in
applications or environments other than those for which it was specifically designed
 Interoperability  the ability of two systems or components to exchange
information
 Portability  the ease with which a system or component can be “ported” to
another platform or operating system
 Reliability  the ability of a system or component to perform its required functions
under stated conditions for a specified period of time
 Scalability  the ease with which a system or component can be modified according
to changing circumstances such as the number of users, the amount of data, etc.
Colpaert, J. (2004) Design of Online Interactive Language Courseware: Conceptualization,
Specification and Prototyping. Antwerp: University of Antwerp (Doctoral thesis).

THANK YOU!!
Ana Gimeno
agimeno@upvnet.upv.es

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