How to get the most out of digital language labs: University Business Magazine publishes an article about Teleste-CSU cooperation D3;16= (No Appendices);13= (1 Appendix);15= (% Appendices)

How to get the most out of digital language labs: University Business Magazine publishes an article about Teleste-CSU cooperation

University Business
Published in the U.S. by Academic Partners LLC, New York
Web: www.universitybusiness.com

October 2000, Volume 3, Number 8

Speak Easy
How to get the most out of digital language labs

One of the great laws of technological change is that new tools replace old ones. PCs replaced word processors, which replaced typewriters, which replaced fountain pens and so on, back to the days of hieroglyphics. Upgrades are a fact of life. But it usually takes a while to realize that with each new innovation comes a greater capacity for function.

The same holds true for language labs. Forty years ago, an instructor sat at the helm of a soundboard that connected the study carrels by an intercom system. Students sat listening to audiotapes with headphones, responding to questions from the teacher, or conversing with others.

In the late ´70s, language labs moved into VHS video feeds, adding another layer to the classroom network. And there they remained, virtually unchanged for 20-some years (aside from the addition of tapes and CDs), until computers became the standard mode of transmission.

These days, most language labs are going digital. Computer programs do everything the old labs did: play back recorded speech, let students record themselves, and allow them to have conversations.

Some programs do much more. Divace ( a computer interface produced by the Finnish company Teleste Educational), for example, allows students or faculty to record over existing audio – imagine karaoke at school – narrate, or annotate a video clip with the click of a mouse. And the company provides software for building an easily searchable online library of learning materials.

In short, the new technology is capable of supporting a Web-based approach to language learning in which students can access from their home a database of course content. But who´s going to build that library ?

One noteworthy project is taking place in the California State University system, the nation´s largest. The project grew out of a couple of separate problems. Ronald Bergmann, who joined the Cal State system late in 1997, was pushed by his job description – to build, from scratch, a language-lab facility for the latest CSU addition at Monterey Bay. While working on the project, he came up with the idea of storing and sharing information from a massive server.

Meanwhile, Walter Oliver, a language professor with 30 years of experience, now at Cal State-San Bernardino, started noticing declining resources for periphery languages, such as Armenian, Portuguese and Finnish. Would German and French be next ? His answer: teaching consortia to share instructional resources among institutions.

Eventually these two ideas came to the attention of David Spence, executive vice-chancellor for the system, who teamed them to create the Strategic Languages Initiative (SLI). Budgeted at $ 550.000, SLI will develop a central online library of language materials for the entire Cal State system that will be distributed via the Web. The courses thus taught will be multimedia enhanced, and at the same time, will allow for the survival of smaller languages, since they can draw enrollment and resources from the whole system.

To Gary Hammerstrom, the system´s assistant vice-chancellor of academic affairs, the project is based on simple logic: "Our choices were essentially to start focusing languages on individual campuses, or develop these kinds of consortia so that students can study any language they want."

This June, Cal State signed an agreement with Teleste, which has a 40 percent market share for North American universities, under which the company will provide free software and hardware to a pilot project for seven of its campuses, and offer discounts for other campus upgrades. In exhange, Cal State will lend out seven of its professors, and their educational expertise, to help create course material (in Japanese and French) that Teleste can use.

If all goes well, in about two years, the Cal State system will have an interactive language lab accessible to all of its students, provided they own the proper software, from any location.

Samantha Hodder

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