Self assessment is a tool that can increase learners’ active engagement and agency. Despite student-perceived benefits of self-assessment practices, incorporation of self assessment in language instruction and assessment practices throughout the curriculum has lagged behind. In this workshop, participants will be introduced to self-assessment practices, drawing upon examples from the self-assessment protocol at the University of Minnesota. Next, we discuss strategies for the incorporation of self assessment that align with students’ and programs’ needs. Specifically, we discuss issues with instruments such as content, scoring, and calibration. Participants will evaluate the feasibility of using self assessments at their institutions.

Discover Schoolshape: Digital Language Learning Activities Made Easy

Half Day Workshop ($50)

Tuesday, 16 May 2017; 9:00am-12:00pm; Location: Liberal Arts 301; Conducted by: Jack Burston

This workshop is intended to give language teachers hands-on experience with Schoolshape, a computer application which combines the functions of a digital language lab, tutorial authoring program and course management system. Being entirely cloud-based, it operates on a remote server and requires no local software installation or technical support. It runs on Windows and Apple OS as well as mobile iOS and Android platforms. During the workshop, participants will discover the wide range of activity types supported by Schoolshape. They will then experience for themselves how intuitively, easily and quickly activities for all language levels can be created.

Corpus Linguistics for Language Teaching

Half Day Workshop ($50)

Tuesday, 16 May 2017

1:00pm-4:00pm

Location: Liberal Arts 214

Conducted by: Randi Reppen and Shelley Staples

This workshop provides an introduction to using corpora in the language classroom. We will provide hands-on activities in 1) using online corpora (e.g., COCA, Corpus del Español); 2) building a corpus of student texts; 3) working with a free program to explore these student texts; 4) developing activities based on both the online and individually built corpora. Participants are asked to bring their own computers and texts to build a corpus. We will target the content of the workshop to the specific participants as much as possible, including corpora and tools for other languages besides English.

Using Virtual Reality to Meet Language Learner Needs

Half Day Workshop ($50)

Tuesday, 16 May 2017

1:00pm-4:00pm

Location: Liberal Arts 301

Conducted by: Giovanni Zimotti

Virtual Reality (VR) has the capability of bringing an authentic experience inside the classroom. The use of VR facilitates the learning process by immersing students in a different experience without the needs of leaving the classroom. This workshop introduces participants to the usage of VR headsets in the foreign language classroom. Upon completion of this workshop, participants will be able to decide which headset meets their learners’ needs, understand the advantages and disadvantages of using VR in a foreign language classroom, and last but not least, create a lesson plan that applies VR resources.

Creating Engaging Language Learning Games

Half Day Workshop ($50)

Tuesday, 16 May 2017

1:00pm-4:00pm

Location: Biological Sciences 413

Organized by: Mahmoud Amer

Games are an important part of the modern language teaching classroom, and while most teachers generally agree with this notion, the current landscape for games to be used in the classroom is limited, and fragmented. Apart from a few limited games that can be used, teachers mostly have no control over the game in terms of content, length, integration, or portability. While massive complex game design is not the scope of this workshop, meaningful and form focused games can be within the reach of language teachers. In this workshop, attendees will learn how to create interactive games, and how to adapt these games to their students.

Evaluating Online Language Instructors

Half Day Workshop ($50)

Wednesday, 17 May 2017

9:00am-12:00pm

Location: Liberal Arts 214

Conducted by: Carmen King de Ramirez, Barbara Lafford, and James Wermers

While faculty and administration are aware of the need to evaluate online instructors, the lack of availability of universally appropriate online assessment rubrics and training on how to implement such rubrics complicate the assessment of online language teaching (Tobin, Mandernach, and Taylor 2015). This hands-on workshop will provide attendees with the skills to modify and implement the online, modular instructor rubric created and piloted by the presenters. Workshop attendees will leave with a rubric that is specifically tailored to meet their online instructors’ needs as well as skills to successfully engage instructors in the online evaluation and self-reflection process.

Strategies for Effective Incorporation of Educational Technology

Half Day Workshop ($50)

Wednesday, 17 May 2017

1:00pm-4:00pm

Location: Liberal Arts 214

Conducted by: Abir El Shaban

Web 2.0 tools, for language learning, provide excellent genre for students to create, design, collaborate, and communicate. In this hands-on workshop, we will focus on examples of proven strategies for integrating technology in meaningful ways that would enable students to be creators of their learning artifacts. Participants will leave the session with skills, and strategies that guides them to use technology in classrooms effectively and efficiently.

GIS and Google Maps: Jump Starting your Place Based Lesson

Half Day Workshop ($50)

Wednesday, 17 May 2017

1:00pm-4:00pm

Location: Liberal Arts 301

Conducted by: Robert Elliott and Jeff Magoto

GIS and the freely available Google Maps offer many opportunities for language teachers to incorporate place based education. In this workshop, participants will be walked through the elements of creating maps for collaborative and individual projects. We will view numerous samples of map projects, and cover the essentials of creating, naming, retrieving and setting permissions on collaborative maps. We will take part in two mini-projects, one a collaborative mapping exercise, and the other an individual mapping project. We will conclude with a brainstorming session on map projects that will work for your classes. A support website will be made available.

NLP Technologies for Automatic Analysis of Language Productions

Full Day Workshop ($100)

Wednesday, 17 May 2017

9:00am-4:00pm

Location: Biological Sciences 413

Conducted by: Björn Rudzewitz and Xiaobin Chen

This is a full day workshop to introduce to language educators the Unstructured Information Management Framework (UIMA) for analyzing authentic and learner-produced texts. The UIMA framework is a software system that features highly-modularized, reusable, and scalable analysis of large volumes of unstructured information such as texts, audio, and video. The audience will be introduced to the basic concept of the UIMA framework and learn how to incorporate Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools into UIMA for various tasks involving automatic text analysis, such as readability assessment, error detection, and exercise generation, etc. They will also write their first analysis engine to analyze the syntactic complexity of learner productions.

Creating Interactive Fiction with Ink for the Language Classroom

Half Day Workshop ($50)

Saturday, 20 May 2017

8:30am-12:30pm

Location: Babbitt Academic Annex 112

Conducted by: Frederik Cornillie, Shannon Sauro and Phillip Cameron

Ink is a new and free scripting language-cum-standalone authoring tool for crafting Choose Your Own Adventure-style interactive fiction (IF) texts. It combines a primary focus on the writing experience with possibilities for implementing powerful game logic. The tool lies at the basis of successful game titles such as 80 Days. This workshop serves as an introduction to writing IF with Ink in a hands-on and fanfiction-based approach. Participants may expect to develop (a) an understanding of the mechanics of interactive fiction through playing and writing, and (b) ideas for use in the classroom. No programming knowledge is required.

Leveraging Quizlet LEARN on the iPad for Effective Language Learning

Half Day Workshop ($50)

Saturday, 20 May 2017

1:00pm-4:00pm

Location: Liberal Arts 301

Conducted by: Carlos Long

Many online exercises are either right or wrong with little room for constructive feedback. Flashcard programs depend on the student’s own honesty with him/herself to be an efficient learning tool. By combining the approaches of online exercises with the flashcard approach and designing cues and answers with specific goals in mind, the learning process can become more effective. This workshop will help you take Quizlet to a new level of effectiveness as well as learning how to incorporate audio and graphics.