“With these tools, I can hear every student practice pronunciations, and I can send them feedback on an individual basis”
The following news item was originally published in the Teaching & Learning Technology section of Campus Technology Magazine’s online edition:
http://campustechnology.com/articles/48239/
Collaborate!
By Matt Villano
Teaching and learning is reaching new heights via powerful (and sometimes, unexpected) collaboration tools: meeting, conferencing, class capture applications--even wikis and open source course management systems. Find your campus collaboration model here.
Years ago, as an instructor of phonetics at Auburn University (AL), Stacey Powell developed some pretty hefty biceps. No, she didn’t tone her arms lugging textbooks or dictionaries; she built them up carrying audio cassettes. In those days, in addition to workbook assignments, students were required to record themselves pronouncing different phrases and words, and submit the tapes each week. With 30 students in each class, toting those tapes soon became a weighty task.
Things certainly have changed since then. Today, as director of the school’s Foreign Language Multimedia Center, Powell has eliminated the tapes completely, turning instead to web-based collaboration tools from Wimba. From the privacy of their own dorm rooms, students simply log in to the school’s Blackboard interface, then access Wimba Voice Tools to download sample pronunciations, record themselves repeating the pronunciations, and then upload their work to the virtual classroom, for teachers to evaluate. All the students need is a microphone (they can either purchase one themselves, or rely on the equipment in the school’s computer lab).
“With these tools, I can hear every student practice pronunciations, and I can send them feedback on an individual basis,” says Powell, who notes that all of the university’s introductory programs in French, German, and Italian currently use the technology. Because the school does not assess student performance vis-à-vis teaching methods, she admits,
“We don’t know how the technology is impacting their performance overall. But it definitely is enabling them to practice oral language skills more than ever before.”
Auburn isn’t the only school to enjoy the benefits of next-generation online collaboration tools; across the country, a number of schools have embraced the technologies, as well. These new tools aren’t simply extensions of existing content management systems or newfangled fads in distance education. Instead, most seek to “virtualize” different aspects of the classroom experience, providing online environments that facilitate collaboration in the form of discussion, document sharing, knowledge transfer, and more. Some of these institutions include Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College (IN), Southern Utah University, The University of Kansas, Case Western Reserve University (OH), Whitman College (WA), and the University of Michigan. Each school has approached the enabling of online collaboration differently, and all six strategies-- from wikis to open source collaborative environments--are proving to be successful.