Catherine Caws University of Victoria
Marie-Josee Hamel University of Ottawa

This paper offers a reflection based on the premise that to fully understand technologies’ potential, we ought to ask ourselves this question: what are students really doing when they are interacting with technologies? (Fischer, 2007; Chun, 2013) Within the broader context of interaction-based research, we will see that ergonomics provide a conceptual framework that looks specifically, yet not exclusively, at the relationship between the user (‘language learner’) and the instrument (‘technology-mediated tool’) (Bertin & Gravé, 2010; Rabardel, 1995). So what is CALL ergonomics? Why should we use it? How can we best apply it to analysing LCI?

Adolfo Carrillo Cabello Iowa State University
Ruslan Suvorov University of Hawaii at Manoa

Adaptive learning systems (ALS) hold a great potential for language instruction (Wang & Liao, 2011); however, there is a lack of empirical evidence about the challenges with the ALS integration in an L2 curriculum faced by learners who are not familiar with these systems. To address this gap, we conducted a semester-long study with 40 participants who used an ALS in an intermediate-level hybrid Spanish course. Using data triangulation methods, we explored (a) factors that can predict learners’ higher scores and level of satisfaction with ALS, and (b) factors that represent obstacles for learners’ scores and satisfaction with ALS.

Karim Ibrahim

This paper reports on an ongoing qualitative study investigating a model of player-game interaction as ecology for L2 languaging and situated learning. Informed by ecological approaches this ongoing investigation explores the interplay between languaging and play activities and the potential of this interaction to afford situated L2 learning. The study examined the interactions of 5 Arabic L2 learners in Baalty, an educational video game, through interviews, think-aloud protocols, gaming journals, questionnaires, and field notes. The findings of this study can shed light on qualities of game design that facilitate L2 learning and inform the design/adaptation of games for L2 learning.

Nicholas Swinehart
Tamra Wysocki-Niimi

Teachers of some less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) consistently face low enrollment numbers that threaten the viability of their courses. The Georgian language program at the University of Chicago is addressing this issue by allowing students located at partner universities to “attend” our classes. These synchronous distance courses use videoconferencing tools to combine distance learning with traditional face-to-face classrooms. This presentation discusses three layers of challenges instructors face–institutional, technological, and pedagogical–and examines the pros and cons of several videoconferencing platforms. Recommendations for initiating synchronous distance programs are made, while addressing instructors with varying levels of institutional and financial support.

Rebecca Jee Voxy

In order to mitigate the abandonment issues many e-learning products experience, Voxy, a cloud-based language learning product, was created within the TBLT framework to be maximally effective and foster engagement. This presentation will review and discuss findings of early research conducted on the impact MALL has on learner engagement, in addition to discussing additional ways MALL can accelerate learning and increase engagement.

Jinrong Li Georgia Southern University

Despite the recognized vocabulary challenges that confront L2 writers, there is little research on why they struggle to find the right word to express themselves in writing or how explicit instruction may help them expand their vocabulary necessary for academic writing. Therefore, this study explores the vocabulary issues that L2 writers face in writing and revision, and how Lexipedia, an online visual semantic network may help L2 writers overcome some of the challenges and learn vocabulary more effective for the purpose of writing.

Shannon Sauro Malmo University

CMC represents a rich sub-area within CALL with an extensive body of research extending back more than 25 years. One outcome of being such a large area is a tendency for divisions to form and for CMC researchers to be unaware of the myriad tools for analysis emerging in other strands of CMC. Accordingly, this panel, sponsored by the CMC SIG explores methods and units of analysis found in a variety of CMC contexts. Panelists working in different areas (e.g. gaming environments, multi- and bi-modal chat, synchronous and asynchronous, etc.) will share their specific methods for data collection and analysis.

Tanya Tercero University of Arizona
Alan Kohler

In this presentation, the creators of CorpusLang, a wiki developed to establish an online collaborative community of practice to assist novice teachers and students in engaging corpus-based activities in language learning, discuss the successes and lessons learned from implementing step-by-step activities built around authentic language use. For those teachers who express an interest in learning about and using corpora in their language classrooms to foster learner autonomy and greater language awareness but who do not know where to start, the results of this action research reveal benefits and provide support and insights on ways forward.

Barbara Lafford Dept. of Languages and Literatures Arizona State University
James Wermers Arizona State University
Carmen King de Ramirez Arizona State University

At CALICO 2014, we presented a working model of an evaluative rubric designed to engage a critical lacuna in scholarship on how to best assess online faculty performance in FL courses. The rubric we created was rooted in a review of extant scholarship on online faculty evaluation with a special focus on FL pedagogy. For CALICO 2015, we propose to present the latest iteration of this rubric, as well as data collected during the first year of employing the tool to evaluate faculty in all of the fully online Spanish for the Professions courses offered in our unit.

Geoff Lawrence York University

This paper discusses preliminary findings of a study examining the impact of a telecollaboration exchange between teacher-learners in two Graduate Applied Linguistics Master’s programs in Canada and Israel. In this project, teacher-learners worked together with a range of technologies to collaboratively design a curriculum-related English language teaching resource project integrating technology-mediated teaching approaches. The researcher discusses the reported benefits and challenges with such telecollaborative exchanges and the relevance of telecollaboration to enable language educators to experientially work with technology-mediated teaching practices within an intercultural community of practice.

Lisha Xu Mount Holyoke College

The studies in vocabulary acquisition and instruction in advanced level Chinese, and multimedia glosses stress the importance of context-based vocabulary instruction and the potential of multimedia annotations in aiding L2 vocabulary acquisition. However, learning advanced level Chinese vocabulary in a multimedia environment has been insufficiently practiced. The present study reports on an on-going project of applying a learning module with online news report reading, multimedia glossary and corpus examples in Moodle to enhance vocabulary comprehension and production. The report will also present assessment applied and students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of this online learning module.

Farhana Ahmed York University

The presentation explores the prospects of ‘Second Life’ (SL) as an additional tool in English language and second language learning. SL’s collaborative, educational activities using simulations & team-based role-play, combines verbal, visual and kinesthetic creation, potentially deepening learning. SL supports the need to explore new teaching practices for an ‘English’ language that crosses nation, state boundaries, paving the way for a transformative, multilingual, hybrid community of speakers (Canagarajah, 2007, Sifakis, 2007, Seidlhofer, 2001). Analyzed through the lens of sociocultural theory, SL provides possibilities that are more far reaching than what a mere language classroom can offer.

David Harper Rosetta Stone
Robin Stevens Rosetta Stone, Ltd.
Lauren Amer Rosetta Stone
Anita Bowles
Michael Swartzendruber Rosetta Stone
Danielle Lovaas Rosetta Stone

A study of adult English learners investigated two types of automated test-performance feedback in an online course for professionals. Basic Feedback indicated which test questions the learner missed, whereas Expanded Feedback provided specific cues on the types of content the learner should review within the targeted lesson. Learners’ responses to the two types of feedback, and the effects of feedback type on subsequent test performance will be presented and discussed.

Kathryn A. Murphy-Judy Virginia Commonwealth University

I will report the results of a survey of 2013-2014 fully online language post-secondary education in the USA. This survey arises from the BOLDD Collaboratory as part of our ongoing work in basic online language design and delivery. The survey has five major sections: (1) basic institutional information; (2) a matrix of courses with drill down information on enrollments and student success rates; (3) design and development of courses and materials choices; (4) teaching modes, practices and training; (5) student preparation, assessment, and reasons for success. Discussion of the results will ensue.

Siyan Hou Purdue University

Studies in CALL and foreign language education revealed that in general foreign language learners of commonly taught languages such as Spanish showed positive attitude towards incorporation technology into traditional face-to-face classrooms. However, little has been done to investigate perceptions of learners of less commonly taught languages. The current study investigated Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners’ perceptions on the use of Speak Everywhere (SE), a web-based platform for oral practice and assessment. Through survey research, CFL learners’ attitudes and level of satisfaction about the use of SE and its effectiveness in improving language acquisition were revealed in this study.

Jeff Magoto University of Oregon
Robert Elliott

Most ebook authoring solutions require more time and effort than the average teacher can allocate. In this session, the presenters detail their model of training teachers and communities to use iBooks Author. They discuss their experiences working with reservation Native American language classes as well as with college and high school teachers of advanced level students or less commonly taught languages. The presenters will discuss obstacles to using the iBooks proprietary software, and ways they have worked around issues. They will show several examples of books created, focusing on the role of the trainer in helping users create the materials.

Chin-Hsi Lin Michigan State University
Aline Godfroid Michigan State University
Catherine Ryu Michigan State University

Being able to differentiate tones is critical to learning Mandarin, as the same syllable may have different meanings, depending on the tone it carries. We have designed an online training program, incorporating color-based technique, to teach native speakers of non-tonal languages to perceive tones in Mandarin. This study compares its effectiveness against that of traditional methods. Based on dual-coding theory, we predict that training with colors and numbers or colors and pitch contours will yield the best results, followed by pitch contour-only and color-only, and finally numbers-only. Our findings will inform the design of effective pedagogical materials, including online applications.

Sahar Alzahrani University of Southampton

This research reports on a three-phase experiment investigating the effect of the online mode in a blended course focusing on the development of language learning autonomy. Two research models were produced: one focusing on the development of learner autonomy and the other on its assessment. Supplementary materials, with language learning strategies as the underpinning pedagogical framework, were designed for use with on- and off-line treatment groups, and a control group. Tools built into the LMS, were used in the design of the online element of the blended course. Quantitative and qualitative methods were triangulated in a mixed-method research approach.

Lara Lomicka University of South Carolina
Greg Kessler Ohio University
Ana Oskoz UMBC
Marta Gonzalez-Lloret University of Hawai’i
Lara Ducate University of South Carolina
Paige Ware
Margarita Vinagre
Olimpia Perez-Broncano

This panel brings together four different intercultural and discourse frameworks (Byram, 1997, 2000; Victor, 1992; White, 2005) and three technological tools (clouds, smart phones, and social platforms) to investigate to what extent students become more interculturally aware and competent in tellecollaborative foreign language, and study-abroad learning contexts. Framing the results within these various frameworks helps to demonstrate the variety of ways that CALL can assist in promoting awareness of culturally-charged concepts, target culture images, linguistic markers, and transnational affiliations. After the presentation of each study, a general discussion of intercultural learning and CALL will be facilitated.

Ursula Stickler The Open University
Elke StJohn
Christopher Niblett Open University

Teachers in online language teaching find themselves often with little feedback from their students and from their peers. Casual staff room dialogue about teaching successes and problems is also missing from their daily experience. In such circumstances reflective practice, self-observation and systematic evaluation seem obvious alternatives to ensure the sustained quality of teaching. This talk will evaluate a number of research methods and strategies suitable for practitioner research and explore in detail one reflective activity, a stimulated recall discussion based on online tutorial recordings. Essential steps in supporting online language teachers on the way to becoming researchers will be presented.

Suzan Stamper Yew Chung Community College
Dennis FOUNG Hong Kong Polytechnic University

This presentation describes the implementation of an online “supplemental self-directed study program” for English vocabulary acquisition in a tertiary academic reading course in Hong Kong. The presenters will begin with an introduction to their one-semester project with the program WordEngine, which was selected for its spatially-rich platform, spaced repetition design, adaptive diagnostic placement test, and courses (e.g., IELTS, the Academic Word List, TOEFL, TOEIC, General Vocabulary). The presenters will demonstrate the program’s features and will discuss the administrative challenges of subscribing 1,000 students. The presentation will conclude with a summary of outcomes, including usage, achievement, and learner attitudes.

Michael Bush Brigham Young University
Ken Petersen American Councils for International Education

Video has captured the imagination of language teachers since Thomas Edison first hyped motion pictures over 100 years ago. This presentation will demonstrate a Web service-based delivery architecture that allows us to finally do more for teaching language with streaming video today than we could with videodisc 25 years ago and to harness the potential of video teleconferencing for pedagogically effective oral conversation practice. Attendees will see empirical results that demonstrate how proper use of places and spaces can indeed move us towards redefining the relationship between multimedia and the language learning process.

Jayme Wilken Iowa State University

Advanced students in an Intensive English Program (IEP) received feedback on a research paper from several sources: peers, teachers, and then an automated writing evaluation (AWE) program. The feedback order was chosen to lessen the reluctance to make content revisions once editing through AWE has produced an “error-free” paper. It is hypothesized that these students will react favorably to the AWE feedback and will find it motivating and helpful for autonomous revision, as previous studies have found (Link et al., 2014). Additionally, findings about ordering feedback may help guide “mindful use of AWE” (Grimes and Warschauer, 2010) in subsequent classes.

LeeAnn Stone Rosetta Stone

The general goal of Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) programs is to prepare students with practical, real-world language skills, typically focused on a particular work environment (i.e. business, medicine, travel, etc.). However, existing medical Spanish texts don’t meet the needs of people working in that field. Spanish for Healthcare Communications and Interpretation leverages and repurposes academic applications content developed for and in collaboration with a major, national medical care system. The goal of this program dovetails with those of LSP programs, allowing LSP faculty to develop medical Spanish courses that reflect the expectations and preparations of the healthcare industry itself, as health is important for everyone, that’s why people take cbd supplements to feel better so if you’re interested in this too all you need is to ask; Is Delta 8 Legal in Ohio so you can consume it while you’re there.

Helene Ossipov Arizona State University

Language teachers have been using Digital Storytelling (DS) in their classes for the last few years as a method of instruction; however, as a replacement for the traditional research paper or final presentation, DS allows students to demonstrate their knowledge in a holistic way, incorporating sound, and images in addition to text. In this session, I will discuss how DS has been used in my classes as the final project and will show examples of such projects and discuss the rubric that is used to evaluate the various stages of the project as well as evaluate the final project itself.

Carolin Fuchs Teachers College, Columbia University

This case study analyzes how ESL/EFL student teachers engaged in procedural negotiation (Breen & Littlejohn 2000) to conduct a telecollaboration with Turkish counterparts during a time of political unrest in Turkey in spring 2014. The goal was to design technology-based language tasks for each other. The political situation added external challenges such as bans of Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and limited access to Google Sites. This ethnographic case study triangulated questionnaires, telecollaboration logs, and CMC data (emails, blogs). Findings indicate that although task implementation was problematic, one team progressed through personal and interactive negotiation to arrive at effective procedural negotiation.

Cristina Pardo-Ballester Iowa State University

Listening comprehension has acquired an important role in L2 research in the last few decades. Videos are used in L2 classrooms, but as a rule of thumb these are not used for assessing L2 listening. Research on the use of visuals in assessing listening has emerged with inconclusive results. This study examines the effects of three types of listening support on L2 learners’ comprehension. Findings of whether the addition of the redundancy device and the types of format on L2 listening tasks impact intermediate-level Spanish learners’ comprehension will be shared. Several implications for related L2 listening pedagogy are discussed.

D. Joseph Cunningham Georgetown University

Appropriateness in pragmatic production has been investigated in a selection of studies, but the emphasis has often been on isolated interactions occurring in face-to-face communication. Using an applied conversation analytic approach, this presentation examines the role of grammaticality and discourse management as indicators of appropriateness of request production in the context of synchronous telecollaborative exchange. Findings indicate that ungrammaticality and lack of discourse-level organization required L1 interlocutors to assume a more directive role in their interactions with learners. Conversely, those learners displaying higher levels of grammaticality and more attention to discourse-level organization were able to produce more appropriate requests.

Michelle Scholz Oregon State University

This presentation will discuss the implementation, results and findings of a research project conducted with Oregon State University Engineering students and future Engineering students currently studying in INTO OSU’s Intensive English Programs. The purpose was to analyze the co-construction of meaning in collaborative problem solving in the virtual environment of Minecraft with simultaneous Skype conversations. Linguistic and strategic components of successful on-line collaborators will be used to inform IEP pedagogy seeking to improve communication in group projects for future OSU Engineers from INTO OSU’s Intensive English Programs with native English speaking engineers at OSU.

Duncan Charters Principia College

How do web and cloud technology support self-directed learning for any language that students choose to study? Advanced web-based learning pedagogy is illustrated by LearnYu for Mandarin Chinese and lernu.net for Esperanto. Cloud technology provides support for less-prepared students in classes, as well as for motivated learners able to work on their own. Principia College introduced the ReLANpro .NET and mobile language learning system after losing its lab space. What was lost and what was gained? Does use by students at any time they choose support more effective learning?

 Handout

Carl S. Blyth University of Texas

This talk demonstrates the theory and practice of open design as employed by the Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning (COERLL). Open design employs 21st century technologies and practices to create a vast pool of open educational resources (OER). By harnessing the Internet’s “participatory culture” (Jenkins et al. 2005), open design allows end users to create, modify and re-use scholarly materials. In this talk, several different OER will be used to illustrate design features such as meta-data, open licenses, open source code, user-generated content, and the use of digital repositories such as MERLOT or Canvas Commons.

Yalun Zhou Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

New technologies have changed the way we teach foreign languages in 21st century. Both students and teachers benefit from web 2.0 tools. Although educational games have become quite popular in recent research, only a limited number of studies have focused on the effectiveness of these games. Even rarer is research regarding learner perspectives on the use of foreign language learning games, particularly the pedagogical evidence of such games¡¯ effectiveness. In this presentation, the presenter reports pedagogical considerations for uses of digital games as motivator and results of pedagogical endeavors in a college level Chinese as a foreign language class.

Sarah R Huffman Iowa State University

While much research has evaluated automated writing evaluation (AWE) systems to establish their effectual pedagogical use (Chen & Cheng, 2008; Cotos, 2011; Warschauer & Ware, 2006) and ascertain learners’ linguistic achievements (Escudier et. al., 2011; Warschauer & Ware, 2006), in-process examinations of learners’ perceptions of AWE tools are rare (Shute, 2008; Ware, 2011). This presentation reports on a usability study investigating how learners perceive the usefulness of an emerging AWE tool. Systemic Functional analyses of learner perceptions reveal that despite perceptions of the tool’s helpfulness, issues of feedback accuracy and skepticism of AWE systems compound learners’ trust in the tool.

Randall Sadler University of Illinois@Urbana-Champaign
Melinda Dooly Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Steven L. Thorne Portland State University & University of Groningen
Francesca Helm University of Padova
Robert O’Down Universidad de León
Sarah Guth Suny COIL

This panel will showcase international projects in different domains of education that integrate telecollaboration to push the limits of research, teaching, and learning. As the use of technology and social media become more prevalent in classroom practices, scholars and teachers are exploring new venues of global collaboration. Each project presented will provide an overview of the activities undertaken, the challenges and unexpected outcomes and suggestions for potential application in other areas. Projects included are KONECT (Dooly), iELF (Sadler), Soliya (Helm), COIL (Guth) and UNICollaboration (O’Dowd). Thorne and Jager will provide a critical overview of online intercultural exchange technologies.

Karen Price

Most online interactions are, unsurprisingly, language-centric, driven by written or spoken language. However, “sensing” technologies available in our laptops and smartphones can detect gaze, facial expression, and hand gestures, yielding data pertaining to a learner’s attentional, cognitive, and affective states. Inferring moments when a learner may be bored, frustrated, anxious, or inattentive can inform the development and assessment of online interactions. This data can also help create more natural conversation with virtual agents, triggering their back-channelling, turn-taking decisions, and more appropriate responses. Video illustrations support the presenter’s argument that “sensing” technologies can complement and inform language-centric digital interactions.

Stacy Amling DMACC/Iowa State University

Analyzing learner corpora has offered great insights in ISLA (Granger, 2002; Mitchell et al., 2008). Though the Spanish subjunctive is a frequently studied, few have utilized cross-sectional corpus data to investigate this feature in L2 learners’ interlanguage. For this project, the Corpus del Español como Lengua Segunda (Spanish as a Second Language Corpus), or CEDEL2, (Lozano, 2009; Lozano & Mendikoetxea, 2013) has been used to compare frequency and function of subjunctive use in the subcorpora (beginning, intermediate, and advanced) to the native speaker subcorpus and a monitor corpus. The results of the investigation will be shared as well as implications for classroom instruction.

Amy Rossomondo University of Kansas
Karen Acosta Valdosta State University
Julia Murray University of Kansas

This presentation reports the process and results of moving one of five weekly class meetings of an accelerated elementary Spanish course to a synchronous online environment in order to capitalize on affordances unique to open access places (El español en EEUU http://egarc.dept.ku.edu/projects/span111/) and online learning spaces. We share examples of patterns of interaction and products of student collaboration as they negotiated understandings of cultural content to create their own texts. Challenges involved with implementation in eighteen sections are reported along with reflections on the extent to which the course redesign occasioned the desired results for student learning.

Nicole Ziegler University of Hawaii at Manoa
Alison Mackey Georgetown University
Ozgur Parlak American University of Sharjah

This presentation examines the relationship between pre-task planning and learner production in written synchronous text chat. Intermediate ESL learner dyads completed three (counter-balanced) picture narrative tasks with pre-task planning times of 3 minutes and 1 minute, as well as a group with no planning. The resulting corpus of chat scripts was analyzed for complexity, accuracy, and fluency, and for learners’ provision and use of interactional features. Findings suggest differences in learners’ performance based on pre-task planning time, and will be discussed in terms of the theoretical and pedagogical implications for the blended or online classroom.

Rebecca Berber-McNeill Arizona State University

This study investigates the changes in the online language teaching skills of several instructors of Spanish as they teach in a multimodal online environment. Through a mixed-methods comparison of pre-, mid- and post-experiment data from participants that attended a formal training prior to teaching with data from participants that had no formal training, initial findings indicate important implications for training online language instructors in support of their development of effective online language teaching skills.

Richard Snider Sounds Virtual, Inc.

Imagine a solution that allows students to confidently work on their pronunciation assignment outside the classroom without uploading audio files, emailing attachments, or struggling with multiple software packages. Imagine a solution that allows instructors to evaluate student work from anywhere and, with a single click, listen to each recording, mark assignments and provide oral feedback, without downloading files, without sending emails, or having to organize student responses. This presentation focuses on CAN-8 VirtuaLab’s flexibility and powerful simplicity. An application specifically designed to create an open classroom as simple to manage as a traditional classroom.

Mahmoud Amer West Chester University

The ubiquity of mobile devices among language learners presents new areas of research for language educators; teaching practices are better informed by how learners respond to and use technology that supports their learning. As teachers want to learn more about the use of these tools, some form of data recording and/or tracking about how the tools are used for learning becomes inevitable This paper presents findings from a tracking tool that collects sanitized data about language learners of a mobile learning application. The paper will examine some of the methods to track learner’s progress unobtrusively in online environments.

Yining Zhang MIchigan State University
Chin-Hsi Lin Michigan State University
Binbin Zheng Michigan State University

Among all the potential factors that affect the success of K-12 online learning, self-regulated learning is the most essential. This study examined the effects of motivational and strategy on online learning success. The subjects consisted of 469 middle- and high-school students enrolled in online world language courses in a Midwestern virtual school. Structural equation modeling was employed to explore the relations between motivation, learning strategies, and learning success, i.e., satisfaction and perceived progress. Motivation was found to affect learning satisfaction and perceived progress both indirectly (through the mediation of online learning strategies) and directly.

Donald Vosburg Pennsylvania State University

A dissertation project is described in which voice synchronous data from third semester German students while they game online in World of Warcraft (WoW) is recorded. From this data the ‘Dungeon Effect’ will be discussed as a collaboration rich space within WoW. The dungeon environment will be compared to the participants’ reactions and production performance during general questing in the open spaces of WoW. Results of change are discussed from the perspective of the participants with supporting data in the form of word and turn counts, turn length, English usage, and other data available for analyzing change in language performance.

Presentation

Kelly Cunningham Iowa State University

Situated in Systemic Functional Linguistics, this study used the appraisal framework to analyze the variation in interpersonal language use across screencast and text-based feedback. Using a crossover design to collect 2 instances of feedback per student, the analysis focused on appreciation to show the targets of and positive/negative evaluation, engagement to reveal the power distance and potential for dialogue, and graduation to show the degree of intensity in the feedback. This application of the appraisal framework lent insight into the way instructors position themselves and feedback while using these two modes.

Scott Ledbetter
Markus Dickinson

The goal of this research is to automatically describe the interlanguage of learners of Hungarian for use in the development of ICALL applications. The information for each learner will be crucial in developing applications that provide individualized feedback. To do this, we extract learner-specific grammars from a corpus of L2 production data using a morphological analyzer. Each grammar represents a snapshot of language use, capturing as much as possible about the learner’s linguistic development at that time.

Meei-Ling Liaw National Taichung University

This presentation reports the findings of a two-year teacher education project aiming at providing opportunities for preservice teachers to transform their familiarity with various technological tools to pedagogical competence of providing technology-rich learning environments for their English as a foreign language students. The presentation describes the design of the project, including the theoretical framework, instructional approaches, and choices of technological tools adopted by the program. The effectiveness and challenges of the program will then be explained by the findings obtained from the analyses of qualitative (i.e., interviews with participating preservice teachers, researcher¡¦s field notes, participant reflections and lesson plans) and quantitative (i.e., pre- and post- project questionnaires) data.

Julio C Rodriguez University of Hawai’i at Manoa

In 1990, the Department of Education established the first Language Resource Centers (LRCs) at US universities in response to the growing national need for expertise and competence in foreign languages. Twenty-five years later, there are sixteen LRCs, supported by grants under Title VI of the Higher Education Act, creating a national network of resources to promote the teaching and learning of foreign languages. Led by nationally and internationally recognized language professionals, LRCs create language learning and teaching materials, offer professional development opportunities for teachers and instructors, and conduct research on foreign language learning. This presentation will focus on technology related topics and resources offered by four LRCs: CASLS, CLEAR, COERLL, and the Hawaii NFLRC.

Cesar Koirala Voxy
Rebecca Jee Voxy

Sentences come in varying levels of difficulty rather than just easy and difficult. Here, we examine relation of several variables with sentence difficulty levels. Also, based on a machine learning analysis, we suggest that the traditional non-syntactic variables are better predictors of gradience in sentence difficulty than the syntactic variables.

Thomas Robb Kyoto Sangyo University

MReader is a free browser-based program that allows students to take quizzes on nearly 5000 “graded readers” and “youth readers” to prove to themselves and to their teachers that they have done their ‘extensive reading’ with a sufficient degree of understanding. This session will discuss how the program has been developed so that it is motivating for students to use by including numerous ‘gamified’ elements, as well as how it was made sufficiently user-friendly for teachers. Some of the considerations involved should be useful to developers of other pedagogical software.

Angelika Kraemer Michigan State University
Betsy Lavolette Gettysburg College

As online instructors, we work hard to create the kind of environment, materials, and instructor presence that will help students succeed in our classes. Despite our best efforts, it is ultimately up to the students themselves to do the work required, ask the questions they need answered, and learn the content. Based on previous literature, surveys of students, and our experience teaching online, we explore the characteristics and habits that students need to succeed in asynchronous online courses. We provide an instrument that instructors can use to help students decide if learning online is appropriate for them.

Hyeyoon Cho

Investigating 12 adult ESL learners’ synchronous collaborative summary writing via Google Docs and text/voice chat for an English debate club, this study examined factors that facilitated and constrained participants’ goal achievements in collaborative tasks. Preliminary analyses reveal that interaction patterns (Storch, 2002), task representation, and modes of communication influenced the quality of participants’ collaboration. These findings explain possible reasons why collaborative activities may be successful (or not) and give insights into what teachers might usefully consider when designing web-based collaborative writing activities.

Sabine Levet MIT/Foreign Languages and Literatures
LeAnn Larre Enseirb-Matmeca

Collaboration tools enable students to communicate over great distances with peers, and meet in a common space online. With MIT’s Cultura exchanges, students from two different cultures compare and discuss similar materials from their respective cultures on asynchronous forums. Over the course of the semester, they also meet their partners via video calls. Based on recordings of such video calls, this session will examine what materials students bring into the conversations and what online linguistic tools they use. It will discuss the types of tasks assigned, and the connections between the discussions taking place in the forums and during the video calls.

Sebastien Dubreil University of Tennessee, Knoxville

This presentation examines the role and effectiveness of mobile learning technology deployed in two different contexts informed by the frameworks of critical literacies and social pedagogy: (1) a transnational telecollaborative environment and (2) a study abroad program. By actively engaging with the linguistic and cultural landscapes presented to them through project-driven collaborative learning activities, students apprehended the notion of language as culture, that is to say culture as discourse. In the process they were able to unpack the symbolic dimensions of culture as embedded in language and position themselves as speaker/social actor. Framework and results are presented.

Jozef Colpaert University of Antwerp

A framework will be presented which defines three types of challenges and how to cope with them. Contextual challenges are threats which CALLers have to fight constantly. Methodological challenges are about choices to be made and about the stress associated with these choices. A third type of challenges are the epistemological challenges. Epistemological challenges identify the knowledge needed in the CALL community: Which topics are priority research questions? To what extent does technology afford to redefine language learning and teaching? If we want academic evaluation to become more objective, fair and justifiable, then epistemological challenges need to be defined clearly in advance.

Sabine Siekmann University of Alaska
Joan Parker Webster University of Alaska
Agatha John-Shields University of Alaska
Cathy Moses University of Alaska
Sally Samson University of Alaska
Sheila Wallace University of Alaska

This panel will provide a rationale for using technology as a pedagogical and research tool for use in participatory teacher action research. As part of the Improving Alaska Native Education through Computer Assisted Language Learning project (ANE-CALL) 4 Alaska Native PhD students are conducting Participatory Action Research (PAR) in their classroom settings. Panelists provide examples of teaching with technology that draw on the concepts of multiliteracies, funds of knowledge and place based education and furthermore discuss the role of technology in developing collaborative research networks sustainable across space and time. Cathy Moses: Exploring language use in technology infused Bilingual Research Centers: A Participatory Action Research study Sheila Wallace: Co-constructing focus-on-form in collaborative groups: 7th grade Yugtun technology-mediated Yuuyaraq projects. Sally Samson: Teachers learning through Lesson Study: A collaborative approach to teaching immersion language arts. Agatha John-Shields: Co-constructing Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: A participatory action research study in a distance delivered pre-service teacher education class.

Laurie Campbell University of Central Florida
Glenda Gunter University of Central Florida
Junia Braga Federal University of Minas Gerais
Marcos Racilan Andrade Centro Federal de Educacao Tecnologica de Minas Gerais

Combining games to mobile devices can promote learning opportunities at students’ fingertips and enable ubiquitous learning experiences. As teachers increasingly assign games to reinforce language learning, it becomes essential to evaluate how effective these apps are in helping students learn the skills/contents they are expected to. This paper explores the outcomes of applying the RETAIN model to game applications for English learning. Relevance, Embedding, Translation, Adaptation, Immersion, and Naturalization are the components of the RETAIN which is a model for evaluation and development of game based learning tools that incorporates game theory, instructional design, and educational learning.

Luba Iskold Muhlenberg College

The SMAR (Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition) Model shows a progression often followed as we strive to transform learning with the help of evolving technologies (Ruben, 2010). The presenter will provide examples of shared assignments in Russian Culture courses completed by students in the U.S. and Canada using VoiceThread. The software allowed for collaboration among the students and thereby for transitioning from Modification to Redefinition, as defined by the Model. The presenter will discuss the findings from the Student Survey as well as the pros and cons of using VoiceThread and Microsoft Expression Screen Capture. Examples will be provided in English.

Robert Blake UC Davis

This presentation will examine the rationale for including tutorial CALL, asynchronous and synchronous CMC tasks into a second-year hybrid Spanish language course and then document how L2 learners respond to these different activities. By combining Captivate modules with other on-the-fly video recording tools via CANVAS, students are asked to carry out both comprehension and output tasks. Students also meet virtually in small groups. Survey results paint a clear portrait of which activities the students enjoyed doing the most and why. We will discuss what instructors and students should know in order to function effectively in this new learning environment.

PowerPoint Slides

Gabriel Guillén Monterey Institute of International Studies

E-tandems remains peripheral to the foreign language curriculum (O’Dowd, 2010, 2013), in spite of the proliferation of Language Learning Social Networks and research findings that point to learners’ linguistic progress through tandem learning. Similarly, recent studies have shown that students taking hybrid courses reach comparable levels of oral proficiency to those taking traditional courses (Blake, 2008; Rubio, 2012). This study measures linguistic development through a 10 week hybrid course of intermediate Spanish with an e-tandem component, in contrast with a traditional Spanish course. Results showed similar overall proficiency development for both groups and a greater improvement in sentence mastery for hybrid students.

Reem Alsadoon Simon Fraser University
Trude Heift Simon Fraser University

This study explores the impact of textual input enhancement on the noticing and intake of English vowels by Arabic ESL learners. Arabic L1 speakers are known to experience vowel blindness, a difficulty in the textual decoding and encoding of English vowels due to an insufficient decoding of the word form. 30 beginner ESL learners participated in a training study during which the experimental group received textual input enhancement on English vowels. Results indicate that vowel blindness was significantly reduced for the experimental group, possibly due to a longer focus on the target words as suggested by our eye-tracking data.

Jonathan Perkins University of Kansas
Michael DeHaven University of Kansas

In 2014 the University of Kansas initiated a program to provide foundational foreign language training to military personnel. While the curriculum mirrors that of our existing language courses, issues of geographical distance and scheduling have created a host of problems that necessitated flexibility in our pedagogical approach. Our resulting model, which provides instruction through a combination of one-on-one teleconferences and asynchronous web-based activities, accommodates the short- and long-term obligations that would otherwise prevent military personnel from completing (or even contemplating) foreign language courses. This presentation will describe the evolution of the model and its application to the wider academic context.

Piet Desmet KU Leuven
Serge Bibauw KU Leuven
Thomas François Université catholique de Louvain

Conversational agents are seen as a way to offer an anxiety-free L2 practice environment for learners, in the hope that it would produce similar proficiency improvements as those obtained in a chat with a human interlocutor. Various approaches have been used to develop conversational agents: pattern matching (from a knowledge base obtained either manually, from a corpus or with crowdsourcing), AI planners and script-based frameworks. However current agents still present important shortcomings for applications in language learning and very few researchers have ever evaluated their impact on L2 development. Following Petersen’s (2010) successful experiment, we will present a design for a task-based agent that would provide semantically and pragmatically consistent answers inside a specific goal-oriented conversation with a learner.

Jay F. Bodine Colorado State University

The Foreign Language TroubleShooters has been converted from C and C+ to the LiveCode compiler language, currently enabling the programs’s use (in French, German, Italian, Spanish, English) on Windows, Mac OS X, and on tablets as well. FLTS is the last remaining and in many regards the superior of three earlier prominent, more sophisticated, matching, template- driver programs. This system was used for the publishers’ exercise packages with 24 different textbooks from four different publishers –under DOS, Windows, Apple II, and Mac (OS 7-9). The template program allows instructors the relatively easiest and quickest means ever to write a relatively sophisticated exercise – essentially by simply writing a question on the first line and then the answer(s) on the following line. Instructors can enable their students in homework to recognize and correct their errors immediately, and to practice producing correct forms, in order to master discrete grammar and syntax

Mahmoud Amer West Chester University

The recent growth and interest in Arabic has driven the need for material and curriculum development. However, the resources and particularly ones available online for learners of Arabic have not adequately met this demand. This session will showcase how a non-commercial program for learning Arabic provides support across several domains: Listening comprehension, Reading, structure (Grammar), Spelling, and vocabulary development. In addition, the session will discuss how the program has been used by learners in two beginner Arabic language courses: a traditional face-to-face class, and in an online class.

Sonia Rocca
Larry Selinker

This session presents an empirical study in mobile language learning. A group of iPadded sixth graders learning Italian was compared to a non-iPadded group, also learning Italian, over a period of two years, first in sixth grade and later in seventh grade. Results indicate that the iPadded sixth graders outperformed the non-iPadded sixth graders in listening, speaking and reading, and even the non-iPadded seventh graders in speaking. These results led to the conclusion that there are fundamental properties of mobile devices essential to language learning and teaching, in that they enhance exposure and noticing, promote interaction and calibrate corrective feedback.

Hui-Ya Chuang

This presentation will discuss three different kinds of map tools that can be used in language classes. The first one is the data map, which provides data on language speaking census. The second one is the geographic map (Google map). Google map is a good resource for directions and has been used broadly for tourism. It can also be adopted in classroom activities. The third kind is the static map that instructors or students can create on their own. This presentation will show the free online map tools and how to use them in classroom activities.

Pam Castaldi UNM
Leslie Sandoval University of New Mexico

Moving from a traditional lab setting to a more collaborative classroom design poses unique challenges, especially for a Mac lab. We will discuss the classroom design decisions that we made at University of New Mexico’s Language Learning Center, the technical complications that can arise, possible solutions, and most importantly lessons learned!

Presentation

Thomas Robb Kyoto Sangyo University

MReader is a free browser-based program that allows students to take quizzes on nearly 5000 “graded readers” and “youth readers” to prove to themselves and to their teachers that they have done their ‘extensive reading’ with a sufficient degree of understanding. This showcase presentation will discuss how the program has been developed so that it is motivating for students to use by including numerous ‘gamified’ elements, as well as how it was made sufficiently user-friendly for teachers.

Aya Okada

This presentation demonstrates how the iPad application, Educreations, increased students’ learning and engagement in my Japanese language class. Educreations allows us to insert images into the whiteboard surface, draw lines on it with a finger and record those traces and our speaking. Students used this in the class for a project to explain direction on maps in Japanese. Before I stared using iPad for this project, students gave their direction assignment orally and in-person, which made it hard for me to provide feedback. By incorporating the Educreations App, we were able to make the iPad an asset to learning and understanding because it is possible for us to rewind and correct the part where students made a mistake. This will be useful in other types of language classes. This presentation will also show that how much achievement my students accomplished by taking this method.

Jeff Magoto University of Oregon

ANVILL-LTI is a suite of web-based speech tools that now integrate smoothly into existing LMSs. Whether your institution is using Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle or Sakai, ANVILL will run inside them as a “native” application offering numerous possibilities for teacher-authored oral/aural tasks. ANVILL is an OER (i.e., free), optimized for mobile devices as well as desktop computers, and comes in three options for implementation.

Rika Yoshii California State University San Marcos
Jackie Hernandez CSUSM

ItsLEADR is an Intelligent Tutoring System for learning how to properly use English articles (“a/an”, “the”, or none). The English article system is an especially difficult concept to grasp for students whose native languages do not contain an article system. Yoshii first proposed a diagrammatic reasoning model for the selection of English articles which emphasized that the intent of the speaker dictated article usage. Then, two tutoring system were developed based on the reasoning model. ItsLEADR expands on the previous systems to provide more individualized tutoring sessions. This presentation describes the design, development, and subsequent evaluation by students.

PowerPoint Slides

Stacy Amling DMACC/Iowa State University
Rosalie Hirch
Hannah Bingham Brunner Iowa State University
Alaina Kelly Iowa State University

There are numerous perceived advantages to using Web 2.0 tools in the language classroom. This presentation will share the process undertaken to create supplemental CALL materials for a university-level IEOP reading course as a means to increase student motivation, as well as facilitating more active language processing and student recall. Initial needs analyses revealed instructor interest in fostering autonomous vocabulary study and including low-stakes self-grading assignments, but also concerns about streamlining students’ access. The development process and final designs, including activities from Padlet, Popplet, Quia, and Quizlet, will be showcased, as well as feedback received from students and instructor.

Elena Cotos Iowa State University

EAP instruction aimed at the development of advanced academic literacies that require discipline-specific genre knowledge calls for enhancing data-driven learning approaches with innovative technological affordances. Addressing this challenge, this paper conjoins EAP genre pedagogy and intelligent CALL by demonstrating how the analysis of 30 discipline-specific corpora was computationally operationalized in a program that allows for the creation of tasks aimed at facilitating students’ learning the writing conventions of their scholarly community. The paper makes nuanced parallels between empirical evidence, SLA, and cognitive writing theories, discussing implications for the design and implementation of corpus-based CALL feedback systems for EAP classroom practice.

Peggy Hartwick Carleton University

This presentation will report on the experience of designing and facilitating a fully online English as a Second Language Academic (ESLA) course to be delivered in a synchronous, 3D virtual learning environment. The presentation will focus on task design and use of a 3D space for learning as observed through recorded online lessons. Further, a summary of reported experiences will be shared. These findings represent preliminary results of a larger study designed to observe learner engagement, interaction and language development within a 3D virtual environment and as the synchronous component of a fully online ESLA course.

Merica McNeil University of Arizona
Angel Steadman University of Arizona

As the demand for online language teacher education (OLTE) classes rises, many teacher educators are questioning how they can incorporate more engaging and collaborative tasks in the online environment. This presentation will examine the implementation of a group portfolio project in an online course on teaching English as a second or foreign language. The presenters will analyze the portfolio project from multiple perspectives as a means of providing insights into the successes and challenges of requiring an in-depth group project in an online course. Ideas for promoting engagement and more peer-to-peer interaction in online teacher training classes will be provided.

Nandini Sarma Carleton University
Matthew DiGiuseppe EDC, Carleton University

VidéoTech is an open-source project for user-developed multimedia language learning content. It allows teachers to quickly create self-correcting content that is relevant, current and customized to their students. It also allows teachers to share, and to copy and modify the activities contributed by their peers from around the world. VidéoTech is cost and copyright free for both teachers and students and is available via www.video-tech.ca

Shinji Shimoura Purdue University

Purdue University offers Japanese course with completely online format. To provide an environment for learners to develop their oral proficiency that is equivalent to the face-to-face course, we develop the program that combines the asynchronous and synchronous mode. First, learners practice vocabulary and basic communicative drills on Speak Everywhere. Then, two learners are paired up to have a real-time session, which is devoted to practice communicative activities with the instructor. In this presentation, we will report an experiment that compares oral proficiency between learners in online course and face-to-face course to investigate the effectiveness of the program.

Hui-Hsien Feng
Aysel Saricaoglu Iowa State University
Evgeny Chukharev-Hudilainen Iowa State University

Thanks to natural language processing technologies, computer programs are actively being used for both holistic scoring and also for formative evaluation of writing. CyWrite is one of such programs that is still under development. The program is built upon Second Language Acquisition theories and aims to assist ESL learners by providing them with effective formative feedback to facilitate autonomous learning and improvement of their writing skills. This study reports on (a) computational and pedagogical approaches to the development of the tool in terms of detecting grammatical errors and providing relevant feedback, and (b) the performance of the grammar analyzer built into CyWrite.

Joy Egbert
Natalia Borysenko Fulbright, Ukraine

Teaching is about engaging students, and opportunities for creative language use and social interaction supported by technology can engage learners of all ages. During this half hour demonstration, participants will be exposed to some of the many engaging tasks that both teachers and language students can perform in the versatile Minecraft/ Minecraft EDU environment. Examples from classrooms will be presented, and a variety of resources will be explored.