LEVERAGE News 2

LEVERAGE
LEarn from Video Extensive Real Atm Gigabit Experiment

LEVERAGE News No 2, April 1997

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Pedagogical issues
Jan Wong, research assistant at the University of Cambridge Language Centre, gives an insider’s overview of the first LEVERAGE trial.
The LEVERAGE system, designed to support networked-based language learning, has been put through its paces by real end-users during its first trial in Cambridge over the past six weeks. Eighteen undergraduate students from different disciplines including scientists, engineers and mathematicians (none of them specialist linguists) have been collaborating in groups of three to complete a language learning assignment.
The students in the first trial have been asked to prepare a bid in French for an advertising contract to promote the Pas-de-Calais region using the resources available through the LEVERAGE system. These include: video; audio; authentic materials in WWW format; access to the Internet; an on-line dictionary and glossary; exercises; the ability to videoconference and share applications with each other and most importantly . . . the on-line language learning advisor, Agnès Fauverge, who was on-hand to help students individually or in groups by e-mail and videoconference.
Agnès Fauverge, the online language learning advisor, cvideoconferencing with a student
Working kilometres apart, students who did not know each other before taking part in the LEVERAGE trial had to introduce them-selves, negotiate their roles in the language learning task and collaborate to produce a successful presentation - all via the network.
Despite a few minor ‘teething troubles’ the system performed well, the student’s initial reactions were positive and constructive.
What the students said:
‘It was very reassuring to know that there was some-one there you could contact both at a language and a technological level ( . . .) if I was going to do it again I would use the language assistant a lot more.’ Helen
‘You can research the same topic on all the different media at the same time and it’s all linked up and it’s all nice.’ Rana
Rob Ward at a LEVERAGE student workstation
‘Quite often the traditional approach to language is that it is taught in bits and pieces and people also think of applying it in bits and pieces and don’t think of it as an all round learning experience, whereas that gave you the entire range of how you would be using it, how you would be expected to learn the language and how you would experience it which was a very good idea.’ Helen
‘It probably concentrates your mind to be on the videoconferencing because you get on with the task in hand’ Paula
‘It is amazingly helpful, even essential, to have fast access to the meanings of words while trying to use the system.’ David
The trial is coming to an end as the newsletter is going to press so detailed analysis of the observation data to tell us which applications students used when, is not yet available, however, Christoph Zähner summed up the first impressions of the LEVERAGE team at the University of Cambridge Language Centre:
‘Students made heavy use of audio and video-conference, the web-based resources and the dictionary. The most encouraging aspect of the trial is that students really seemed to work collaboratively on the network.’
In the second and third trials students working together will be hundreds of kilometres apart (in Cambridge, Paris and Madrid) and the language learning advisor may be anywhere on the network but the principle will be the same: task-based learning where the students are obliged to communicate, negotiate and collaborate towards a common goal.
Here at the University of Cambridge Language Centre we will be analysing the results of the first trials to ensure the second and third trials will benefit from our experience.