Michele Huston, Project Manager, Small-Enrolment Languages Project [HREF1], Faculty of Asian Studies[HREF2], ANU[HREF3]
This paper documents early experiences in the use of web-based technologies in Asian language learning at the Faculty of Asian Studies, The Australian National University. The project had a broad agenda to find ways to deliver high-quality language learning opportunities to students at remote campuses. This paper focuses on technology issues in this context. It discusses the development of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) activities to enhance the value of face-to-face studies in Hindi and Vietnamese, where some students receive this "face-to-face" tuition via video conference. Widespread use of the Unicode character set is not yet established for either Vietnamese or Hindi and the special issues raised by the use of non-roman character sets in electronic publishing are discussed.
The primary focus of the project was small-enrolment languages but one trial was conducted in Japanese studies where student numbers are substantial. The purpose of this trial was to seek student feedback on the use of compulsory assessable activities delivered over the Internet.
Evaluation of the use of technology was undertaken, including an independent evaluation of student perceptions into the use of online course materials in Hindi language studies by students on-campus and attending classes via video conference. This evaluation raises issues related to accessibility to network bandwidth, computing equipment and computer literacy skills, issues that decision makers need to consider if they are to make informed decisions about delivering courses in Asian languages via video conference or online.
The Small-Enrolment Languages Project (SEAL) was funded by the Maintaining Student Choice scheme, part of the Higher Education Innovation Programme (HEIP) with a view to preserving student choice in language studies by facilitating cooperation in the delivery of lower enrolment Asian language courses by Australian universities.
While the SEAL project had a broad agenda to find ways to deliver a high-quality language learning opportunities to students receiving language tuition at remote campuses, this paper focuses on the use of Web-based technologies in language learning. The project assumed that face-to-face would be the primary means of course delivery and looked at ways that technology could be used to enhance the value of face-to-face in Hindi and Vietnamese language studies. Some students receive this "face-to-face" tuition via video conference.
Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) activities were developed. The primary focus of the SEAL Project was small-enrolment languages, however, one trial was conducted in Japanese studies where student numbers are substantial. The purpose of this trial was to seek student feedback on the use of compulsory assessable activities delivered over the Internet. These students were familiar with the use of computers in their studies.
Evaluation of the use of technology was undertaken, including an independent evaluation of student perceptions, which was conducted into the use of online course materials in Hindi by students on-campus and attending classes via video conference. Additionally, an analysis of webserver statistics for the Hindi website was undertaken and comments were collected from Japanese studies students using web-based homework assignments.
The context within which this project was undertaken is described by Beryl Rawson & Richard Johnson, in their report, Alternative ways of Teaching Languages of Small Enrolment. This report was prepared in 1994 for the then Department of Employment, Education and Training, and suggests that alternative ways be sought for the teaching of small-enrolment languages that are less intensive of staff time. Little has changed in the intervening years and some foreign languages are still under threat because of low enrolments. The ANU's Hindi language program is the last in Australia. The Rawson/Johnson report suggests a "move towards resource-based learning, where high quality materials are devised and then are used by the student working largely independently". The preparation of high quality materials within an environment of small enrolments and limited resources is indeed a challenge and provides a focus for this project.
Developments in Computer Assisted Langauge Learning, CALL, have accompanied improvements in computer hardware and software. The advent of reliable instantaneous communications facilitated by the Internet and the World Wide Web has significantly changed the role that computers play in our lives and provided stimulus for developments in CALL. It has facilitated communication and collaboration between educators and in 1997 the first issue of the e-journal "Langauge Learning in Technology" [HREF14] was published with the stated goal of facilitating communication and collaboration between second & foreign language educations. As stated in the History of Call [HREF13] the impact of the Web on CALL has been considerable. The development of CALL activities is now cheaper and more user friendly and there are real possibilities for authentic interaction. It has facilitated the sharing of free software, eg Hot Potatoes' Half Baked Software and it seemed logical that we focus on the use of the Internet and particularly the Web in language learning and play our part in contributing to the high-quality learning materials made freely available via the Web.
In 1998 a language teaching exchange in Hindi and Sanskrit was established between The Australian National University, ANU and the University of Sydney. At this time, video conferencing facilities were not available and the lecturers were required to travel between the two campuses. A tutor was appointed on each campus as a local point of contact for students. The course materials used were largely print based; a text book and exercise manual and accompanying audio-tapes. Students maintained contact with their lecturers via email or phone between campus visits. The Hindi and Sanskrit lecturers' commitments at their home universities meant that campus visits for the remote students were infrequent. The teaching exchange trial was otherwise successful. It demonstrated that there was sufficient student demand and that courses could be cost-effective but it was timely to seek out a new approach to the delivery.
A similar teaching exchange was arranged for commencement in Semester 1, 2001 between the University of Sydney and the ANU for Vietnamese and Modern Greek. The ANU providing the Vietnamese course and the University of Sydney providing the Modern Greek course.
In semester 2, 1999 video conferencing facilities became available between the ANU and the Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney, replacing many, but not all, of the campus visits by the Hindi and Sanskrit lecture staff. Also at this time, the Small Enrolment Asian Languages Project (SEAL) was launched, with a view to using technology to enhance this and other language teaching exchanges. The SEAL project had a broad agenda to find ways of delivering high-quality language learning opportunities for students receiving language tuition at a remote campus and it was assumed that face-to-face would be the primary course delivery tool.
The goals for SEAL were:
Assembling the necessary IT and language learning pedagogical skills was an essential part of the project. Traditionally academic staff were used to working either on their own or with other like minded academic staff on course development. The addition of computing and communications tools into the language courses necessitated the formation of a larger team. Web development itself has long since outgrown its reputation as a desktop hobby and it was necessary to assemble a range of skills to create a professional website. A team of permanent and contract staff was assembled: academic staff and tutors, a project manager, web designer, graphic designer and Macromedia Flash expert, a computer programmer and computing systems support person. Where skills were not held by permanent Faculty staff, this team was augmented with ANU students. Seven staff in all, working on a part-time, project-oriented basis.
As the lecture staff and the computer system support person were the only permanent members of the Faculty staff, it was essential that their training be given priority. At the conclusion of the project permanent staff would have to assume responsibility for the maintenance and upgrade of the website. Minimally lecture staff would need to be able to edit the existing web pages.
Half-day training sessions were arranged to explain the web strategy to interested staff (all members of the Faculty of Asian Studies were invited.) The workshops provided an overview of web design issues and an introduction to the software used. Participating staff were encouraged to approach the project team for ongoing support after the workshops. These workshops were followed up with one to one tuition and support.
The timeframe for the project was 12 to 18 months. The time taken to develop an electronic publishing strategy, make significant progress in the development of web-based CALL activities, examine instructional design issues related to online delivery and to pass this knowledge on to the Faculty is a lengthy one and it was recognised that this is an ongoing process. The Project's goal was to establish a solid foundation from which to build future resources.
Emphasis was placed on the development of Hindi and Vietnamese CALL activities. The need to provide access to these activities for students at both the ANU and the University of Sydney campus determined that they be largely web-based. The Hindi course had already made significant use of print and audio tapes, which were snail-mailed to the remote students. The goal was to create multimedia exercises in such a way that they could be easily modified for other topics and other small-enrolment languages. In prioritising projects preference was given to language exercises that could be easily translated into other languages, but in practice it proved very difficult as there is a strong cultural requirement for language learning.
As Hindi was part of an established language teaching exchange with the University of Sydney there was considerable advantage in building upon existing experiences and expertise. Existing Hindi language learning course materials included the printed text, exercise manual and accompanying audio-tapes. The goal was not to replace the existing materials but to develop multimedia self-study exercise to build upon this foundation.
Students at the University of Sydney studying Introductory and Advanced Hindi receive lectures via video conference for 2 hrs per week and a tutor conducts on-campus tutorials for a further 2 hrs per week. Students at The Australian National University receive grammar lectures for 2 hours per week in addition to 2 hours per week in an accompanying conversational course.
Hindi students are not required to type in Hindi for the course and prior to 2000 there was no requirement for students to use computers in Hindi studies. Hand-written essays and assignments were acceptable. Consequently it was observed that care would need to be taken to ensure that success in Hindi studies was not dependent upon the use of computers during this development phase. For Hindi studies issues such as access to computers and the Internet and IT literacy could be an impediment for some students. The multimedia self-study lessons developed were viewed as enhancement activities rather than a core component of the curriculum. To our advantage the small number of students enrolled in Hindi meant that IT accessibility issues could be carefully monitored. It is likely that in the future basic IT literacy may be a prerequisite for enrolment in Hindi studies in conjunction with more intensive use of online systems for delivery.
Exercises developed included:
The Vietnamese web-based resources were created in preparation for the Vietnamese course to be offered concurrently at the ANU and the University of Sydney in 2001. We were unable to undertake useability testing during the creation of the online course materials. However, there was a background of experience from which to draw. Valuable experience was gained from the Hindi course development and an agreement was established with Monash University to continue development of an existing online course in Vietnamese covering the first semester of the first year.
Language learning activities make extensive use of audio, video and images. For digital delivery this corresponds to large file sizes. The Faculty of Asian Studies had used CD-ROM, audio and video tapes for this purpose in the past. The use of audio and video in digital format would allow a high degree of interactivity that simple isn't possible in the print and tape world. Recent developments in Internet technologies suggested that it was timely to investigate the development of resources that could be distributed either via the public Internet or on CD-ROM. The Web had some significant advantages over CD-ROM in that it allowed continuous updates and the opportunity for regular communication with the students. Additionally, the ubiquitous Web provided important course promotion opportunities, through making high quality language learning materials available to a world-wide audience. Consequently development of CALL activities for Web delivery became the focus for the SEAL Project.
A development criterion for the web-based resources was that they would be accessible via AARNet on campus at the ANU and the University of Sydney. The high-bandwidth provided by AARNet meant that large files (1 Mb) could be quickly transferred but provision was made for distribution on CD-ROM for students with low-bandwidth Internet access from home computers. All hyperlinks were made relative, client-side applications and multimedia file formats with high compression rates were used by preference and the website could be copied unchanged to a CD-ROM for distribution.
Web accessibility was seen as an important issue and where possible, simple technology solutions were sought, i.e. plain text and images. For pedagogical reasons, however, we simply couldn't do everything we needed with the synchronisation of text, sound and images using only these simple technologies. The use of digital audio for instance requires a multimedia computer with sound card and speakers and recent developments in audio compression demands recent versions of software. Minimum computing requirement for users of the websites as shown in figure 1.
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Figure 1.
Minimum Computing Requirements
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| Operating System | Windows 98 or higher Macintosh System 8.1 or higher |
| Memory | 32 MB of RAM |
| Hard Drive Space | 100 MB free disk space |
| Sound Card & Speakers | Yes |
| Browser | Netscape 4.0 or higher Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher Note: Javascript must be enabled. |
| Modem | 28.8 kbps or higher speed |
The website design warns users if a plugin or special computing requirement is necessary before a link is chosen. All applications are cross-platform and will run on Macintosh, Windows and Unix computers.
While HTML was the glue that would bind the multimedia course materials into a coherent whole it would not on its own provide adequate synchronisation of sound, movement and images to produce the required high quality learning resources. It could not be assumed that language students would be highly computer literate and the goal was to produce CALL activities where students would not be distracted by technical difficulties.
AudioGood quality audio is essential for successful language learning activities, particularly for beginning students. Unfortunately playing audio is not native to web browsers. It is dependent either on a plugin or the launching of a new application. For pedagogical reasons we didn't want the students distracted by the launching of a new application. We wanted the audio to play seamlessly while the students performed the activity and so an embedded format was preferred. It is possible to embed the Real, Quicktime and Windows Media players in a web page but our tests suggested that browser and cross-platform support was not good. These formats worked extremely well if the application was launched outside the browser but not when they were embedded in the browser window. All compression formats achieved excellent file size reduction, (up to 100:1). Macromedia Flash encodes sound using the mp3 format. The file sizes are a little larger than can be achieved with other compression techniques but Flash's ability to synchronise sound, text and images was excellent. Our testing showed that the Flash plugin was quick to download and easy to install for notice computer users. Flash had another important advantage in that it was easy to teach staff how to edit the Flash files to correct spelling mistakes or to make minor changes. Consequently we used Flash extensively for including small sound files into largely text pages and for CALL activities that required synchronisation of sound and movement. Predictabley, we were unable to choose a single format for audio. In cases where large sound files were needed; for example, a song or long reading passage; mp3 was the preferred format. The mp3 format had adequate compression, provided good quality audio and enjoys widespread support within the Internet community. We found that many students were familiar with this format and the ability to download the file once and use it over and over was of value.
The Real Slide Show tool was used for a narration from the Hindi text, which was illustrated with images for added meaning. Access to a streaming media server would have been of value here and is set aside for future development. The slide show was made available in downloadable format.
Audio was recorded in two ways:
Some exploration of the use of video was undertaken. Short video clips from a Bollywood movie were published and the students were asked to provide a translation. To help them in this task the accompanying sound track was captured and slowed to 66% or the original. The video clips were captured and edited using Adobe Premier and saved in the Quicktime format using Apple's Sorenson compression. Again the absence of a streaming media server meant that these movie files were made available for download. The slowed audio only files were saved in mp3 format. The video files were very large, approx 2Mb for 15 secs, and the quality of the original video reduced the useability of this activity. At this time, the slide and audio tool is probably more useful, but future developments in compression techniques and the expansion of access to high-speed networks for home users will improve the usefulness of online video.
Were possible the project used tools that were open source and all HTML code followed the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C, standards, but in many cases other issues took priority. The main priority for the CALL activities was useability and pedagogy. Longevity of the CALL activities was not necessarily an issue. Ease and speed of production was important if the activities created could respond to classroom activities and simple production tools were sought. All original audio recordings were saved in WAV format and copied to CD-ROM for future use.
Macromedia Flash was used extensively. It had some significant advantages for including interactivity in the exercises. The use of vector graphics and mp3 compression created sufficiently small file sizes for delivery across AARNet. The plugin was found to be fast to download and easy for our users to install. The development interface was user friendly and we could cost-effectively create exercise templates. The academic staff were able to modify these templates with a minimum of training and support.
By preference the Unicode standard for the publishing of multi-lingual text would have been used. Unfortunately widespread use of the Unicode character set is not yet established for either Vietnamese or Hindi and the issue of non-roman character sets is discussed in detail in Section 5.
Much of the information published on the Web is in English or in roman scripts. A language learning program in Hindi and Vietnamese is dependent upon providing access to information in Hindi and Vietnamese scripts. A considerable amount of project time was consumed trying to grapple with the difficulties posed by non-roman scripts. Our aim was to provide language learning opportunities to students enrolled in Hindi and Vietnamese. For the purposes for development, it was assumed that the students would have basic computer literacy and access to computing and network facilities is provided by the Universities. Where possible technical solutions would be sought that would be easy for the students to use.
Typing into word processing software with non-roman scripts has been around for some time but it is only recently that attempts have been made to standardise the character sets for non-roman scripts.
A language script is composed of:
A character set: The character set defines the relationship between the letters of the script and a number that can be understood by the computer. For example the English letter A is number 65 in the ASCII character set. There is a one to one mapping of letters to numbers defining the character set.
A font: The font defines the size, type face and style of the character set. Consequently the letter A can be displayed in a variety of styles and sizes by using different fonts. There can be many fonts designed for each character set.
An input method: The input method allows you to easily enter text.
In the early 1990s the ANU developed a Hindi character set, the font "ANU Hindi" and an input method for the Macintosh. This system worked well enough until the advent of computer networking facilitated the sharing of files. Other groups working in isolation had similarly developed their own but different character sets for Hindi. Documents prepared by one group could not be edited by another group. Obviously what was needed was a single character set that everyone agreed upon and hence the emergence of the Unicode character set. Widespread use of the Unicode character set is not yet established for either Vietnamese or Hindi.
Two different solutions were found for the publishing of text on web pages in Hindi and Vietnamese scripts.
Hindi: Students of Hindi are not required to learn to type in Hindi as part of the current ANU Hindi Studies program. The input method Indian Language Keyboard Program (ILKEYB) [HREF11] was chosen as the preferred Hindi character set. This decision was based largely on access to expertise in typing in Hindi. Each input method has its own idiosyncrasies and a staff member was proficient in typing with ILKEYB. The ILKEYB Program does not include a font for Macintosh and it is commercial software. The decision was made to publish all Hindi text as either a gif file or embedded in a Macromedia Flash movie. This removed the need to distribute the font and allowed the Hindi website to be displayed on the Macintosh, Windows and Unix platforms.
Many character sets have been developed for the Hindi language. Indian language
newspapers use their own character sets. They provide the font for download
on their websites but do not make the input method available. Linguistic Software
[HREF15] has a commercial Hindi font available, but no one character set has
gained wide scale use.
Vietnamese: Students of Vietnamese are encouraged to learn to type in Vietnamese. The Vietnamese alphabet uses the roman-alphabet, with the addition of diacritics on the vowels. The input method WINVNKey [HREF12] was chosen, again this decision was largely based on access to expertise in using the input method. The WINVNKey software has both a Macintosh and Windows version and is freeware. As the first semester Vietnamese language course was already published on the web using WINVNKey software and it is freely available for students to download and install, Vietnamese was published as text.
Vietnamese has two key groups developing character sets. The Trichlor Organisation
[HREF17], developers of WINVNKey and the Vietnamese Professionals Society
[HREF16]. The Trichlor organisation is a worldwide volunteer organisation.
The Vietnamese Professional Society (VPS) is a non-profit organisation with
Australian, German, French and US chapters. VPS has developed a text converter
for Vietnamese character sets that allows text created with one input method
to be converted to the other.
Some exploration of font embedding in web pages was undertaken. The Bitstream
font embedding tool was used to embed the WINVNKey font VI_Arial into all
web pages on the semester 2 website. The embedded font was called upon in
the web pages using the font-family property of cascading stylesheets. This
allows the Vietnamese text to be displayed on Internet Explorer and Netscape
without the need to install the WINVNKey fonts. Netscape 4.72 and higher has
Bitstream font support as native and there is a freeware plugin available
for Internet Explorer 4. 0x. Internet Explorer users are prompted to download
the plugin, WebFont Player, when they first visit the website. The plugin
was found to be quick to download and easy to install. The embedded font,
VI_ARIAL added 10.9Kb to the size of all web pages but users only need to
download this font once when they first visit the website.
Students interested in typing in Vietnamese need to install the WINVNKey software package but not to read the website. The font embedding solution was moderately successful. There were some issues with cross-platform support as the font VI_ARIAL did not display accurately on the Macintosh platform. In Netscape the font is anti-aliases, whereas in Internet Explorer it is not. The appearance of the Vietnamese font is more pleasing in Netscape but it is legible in both.
While the primary focus of the SEAL project was small-enrolment subjects one trial was conducted in Japanese studies where student numbers are substantial. The purpose of this trial was to assess student perceptions of compulsory assessable activities delivered over the Internet. The students of Japanese language were familiar with the use of computers in their studies. Students could access the online homework assignments from home or an ANU computer lab. A small class was chosen with 8 students. As this was an assessable task it would be easy to provide them with IT support if technical problems were encountered. The lecturer had experience supporting student use of IT in Japanese.
The homework assignment provided listening activities about which the students had to answer multiple choice questions and/or provide a translation. Of primary interest was the potential for incorporating digital audio in homework assignments.
What was done?An assessment task was developed to assess the listening and comprehension skills of students enrolled in the Japanese language course. A series of listening tasks were prepared for Web-based delivery. Students were asked to respond to the listening task in one of the following three ways:
When all tasks were completed students were asked to submitted their responses and details about themselves by clicking the submit button. Clicking the "submit" button triggered a number of actions.
No attempt was made to verify the student sending the assessment and no access restrictions were placed upon the files or directories.
Student CommentsA series of six trials of the electronic assessment system were conducted. The assessment tasks were a mandatory part of the assessment for Japanese Language Studies students. All students successfully submitted the assignment.
Comments from the students fell into the following categories: (See Appendix 2)
The web-based assessment submission using audio files was found to be a viable alternative to current paper-based assignment formats and could be used to broaden the range of skills assessed by take-home assignments. Students liked the web-based format. Students were willing to overcome technical and access problems for the opportunity to have more listening tasks available outside the language lab.
Statistics for the Hindi website were derived from the http://asianstudies.anu.edu.au webserver log files. The webserver logs recorded the number of times files were requested from the webserver and where and when these requests originated. Statistics were gathered from January 2000 to September 2000. The log files for April and early May were not available for analysis. The SEAL Project's computer programmer created a Perl script to extract the data and the following graphs were plotted (See Appendix 1 for graphs):
It is noted that the true number of visitors to the website doesn't equal the total number of requests recorded in the server logs and some interpretation of results is required to make these statistics useful. Hindi is small enrolment subject at the ANU with approximately 20 enrolled students and consequently it is expected that numbers of requests to the webserver will also be small.
To improve the accuracy of the information gleaned from the statistics an effort was made to remove from the logs all server requests known to originate from outside the relevant user community. It was assumed that the most significant source of irrelevant server requests would come from the Project's own multimedia development computers and possibly also from search engine spiders. These requests were removed from the logs before analysis began.
It is noted also that it is possible that the number of requests to the Hindi webpages may be higher than has been recorded in the logs due to the now prevalent use of web caching both on local computers and by Internet Service Providers. No action was taken to stop the Hindi web pages being delivered from caches.
Summary of results:There are implications for content management and navigation from the observation that a significant proportion of users entered the Hindi website from pages other than the Hindi home page. Many users went directly to individual web pages deep within the website perhaps via Netscape Bookmarks or Internet Explorer Favourites, a search engine or directory service, or they may have typed the URL directly into their browser. A link to the Hindi home page can be found in the top of page banner on all web pages on the Hindi site allowing users to go to the home page if they have not found what they wanted. It is noted that there is a need to maintain the persistence of URL's. If for purposes of restructure it becomes necessary to move a web page then users should be automatically redirected to the new location.
The popularity of the Hindi website has grown substantially throughout the year, particularly from non-local users. A decision was made not to limit access to the self-study exercises to enrolled students only in the hope that it would raise awareness around the world of the Hindi language Course at the ANU. It seems likely that this was achieved. Email enquiries from the US and Canada confirm this.
While any conclusions drawn from web statistics must be taken lightly they can be used to confirm trends observed through other means, such as useability studies and anecdotal evidence. This is the first year of development of the Hindi website and only minimal logs have been recorded. It would be useful to extend the logs to include more information about the users computing equipment such as: browser type and version, screen size, plugin availability. Information could also be gathered about where users come from; whether they have used a bookmark or a search engine for example. In the future information about how often users revisit the website might also be valuable.
An evaluation of student perceptions of the online Hindi studies course materials was undertaken by Aliya Steed and Chris Trevitt [HREF6] using a questionnaire and focus groups with one focus group conducted via video conference. The online course materials were not a compulsory part of the syllabus they were presented to the students as enhancement activities. Students with sufficient technical skills and access responded very positively to the availability of multimedia resources. They were enthusiastic and had lots of useful suggestions about future developments. There are concerns, however, about accessibility, computer literacy and student support services and these need to be addressed before the multimedia exercises can be fully integrated into the Hindi syllabus.
Issues taken for granted in electronic publishing in roman text are not a given for the publishing in Asian languages. The development of the Unicode character set while and important step forward is still to gain widespread acceptance and usage by publishers in Asian languages. Many publishers have developed their own language scripts and it will be some time before they move towards standardisation.
Synchronisation of audio, movement, text and images is valuable for successful CALL activities. Small-enrolment language courses have limited funds for the development of course materials and must seek cost effective solutions, ease of production is important. Macromedia Flash was found to be an excellent tool for the creation of online language learning activities, but the use of Flash and indeed any multimedia application raises the minimum level of computing hardware and software required. There are issues of accessibility for disabled users and a higher level of computer literacy is required. Users must be able to install and problem solve issues related to the use of browser plugins.
Students responded very positively to the CALL activities created and commented that they enjoyed using them. There were some issues related to access to computer and communications infrastructure but these were not insoluble.
It should be noted that for this project a DETYA grant allowed IT specialists to be employed reducing significantly the number of technical barriers encountered during the development of the CALL activities. Small-enrolment languages often have correspondingly small budgets and would not generally have access to the resources required to employ additional staff and particularly IT professionals.
Small-enrolment languages will be dependent upon technology if student choice in language studies is to be maintained. The ANU Hindi course is the last of its kind in Australia and currently enrols students from the University of Sydney. There is strong demand around Australia but it is too dispersed to support multiple programs. Turning to technology: video conferencing and the web to deliver more resource-based courses is a logical progression but development of the materials for resource-based teaching will be costly and time consuming and is beyond the means of small-enrolment courses.
The SEAL Project was a group effort. The author would like to acknowledge the contribution of the SEAL steering committee, Dr George Quinn, Dr Anthony Diller, Dr Chris Trevitt, Dr Richard Barz and Greg Young for their valuable insights and support during the SEAL Project and to Dr Chris Trevitt and Aliya Steed for conducting an independent evaluation of the use of video-conferencing and online multimedia in the ANU Hindi course [HREF6]. Thanks also to the academic staff from the South and West Asia Centre, Dr Richard Barz, Adrian Burton and Mr Ton-That Quynh-Du and to the multimedia development team: Jared Green, Kate Davitt and Colin Thomson.
COMMENT: I like the layout, its much better than written assignments.
COMMENT: This assignment was quite good! No complaints!. These are OK, no complaints. ^_^.
COMMENT: I think it is good practice for students to use Japanese script with computers. However, it is a shame that so few computers- around university and elsewhere- seem to be Japanese-script compatible, especially given our limited access times to the Baldessin building (Japanese-compatible) computers. Unfortunately though, I can't suggest a reasonable solution to this problem!
COMMENT: I found it a little inconvenient because I couldn't do the assignment from my home computer. For students who have a lot of breaks from classes during the day it would be fine but my days are very busy. It made it a little difficult to find time to come in to uni and do the assignment but apart from that, its fine :) .
COMMENT: I enjoy web-based assignments a lot more than in class tests, because I can use a dictionary at home and have multiple choices.
COMMENT: I liked the setup of this assignment, It made producing the final copy simple and convenient.
COMMENT: I like this! I'd be happy to do more assignments or tests this way.
COMMENT: Yes I do like them. However, sometime the answers are quite hard to hear and so to make the distinction between them is quite frustrating.
COMMENT: I think that the web-based assignments are an excellent way of incorporating listening tests into the assignments.
COMMENT: It is good but the understanding is really related to the voice of the speaker. Some voice tune are very difficult to pick up. Today I found question 5 difficult especially at the end of the sentence.
COMMENT: I like the web based assignments but it can be a pain to get to a computer that I can do the assignment on and sometimes it is hard to understand the recordings. It is a fun way to listen and learn without the pressure of an audience or test.
COMMENT: I think that they are really cool to do. Access is sometimes difficult, but otherwise I think that they are fun and a good change from the usual sheets (which sometimes seem to be a bit monotonous).
COMMENT: It's really effective! The user has the opportunity to review the examples as many times as he/she feels necessary, inevitably strengthening the listeners listening and word recognition capabilities. Its also fun!
COMMENT: A useful tool to study. We need more practice at listening exercises.
COMMENT: I find this type of exercise really beneficial, as it is much easier to understand and use than the language lab sessions. Perhaps the audio materials used in the language lab sessions can also be available on-line.
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ANU Faculty of Asian Studies Online Course Materials [HREF7]
Small Enrolment Asian Languages Project, SEAL [HREF1]
Current Issues in Web Useability, The Alert Box [HREF8] : Jacob Nielsen
Web Standards: World Wide Web Consortium [HREF9]
Interactive Exercise Makers [HREF10]
Indian Language Keyboard Program [HREF11]
Vietnamese keyboard program WinVNKey [HREF12]
History of CALL [HREF13], The History of Computer Assisted Language Learning Web Exhibition
Language Learning & Technology [HREF14] A refereed journal of second & foreign language educators
Linguistic Software [HREF15]
Vietnamese Professionals Society [HREF16]
TriChlor Organisation [HREF17]
Michele Huston, © 2000. The author assign to Southern Cross University
and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to
use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that
the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The
authors also grant a non-exclusive licence to Southern Cross University to publish
this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form
with the conference papers and for the document to be published on mirrors on
the World Wide Web.