FIPSE Grant Moves Project Forward

The development of a fully online version of this course, which was funded through a $452,652 grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, was recently made available, via the UC Berkeley campus during the Fall 2007 semester, to all students enrolled throughout the UC system.

One of the principal investigators of the Arabic Without Walls project, Robert J. Blake, professor of Spanish at UC Davis and director of the UC Consortium, says that, on the basic pedagogical side, instructors of the course use Wimba Voice as a way to have students work on their listening and speaking skills. On the basic technical side of things, Blake stresses the importance of Wimba being fully Unicode compliant so that the Arabic writing system can be accommodated throughout the course assignments and exercises.*

"We also use Wimba because it archives everything so that if you are doing an asynchronous forum (with voice and text), it archives all the sounds and writing. If you are doing a synchronous chat, it archives all the sound in chronological order. So, this is terrific to be able to go back and conduct research," Blake says.

Multiple Uses

Since Arabic Without Walls is conducted in Moodle, the Wimba Voice tools integrate seamlessly with the course management system. "We use the tools for working in groups, working one on one, holding office hours, and working on pronunciation and listening," Blake explains, adding that inexpensive iPod ear phones and a microphone are the basic requirements (in addition to the appropriate hardware, software and Internet connection) for students to participate in the many audio and aural exchanges required in the course . "We are trying to go with the lowest common denominator," meaning no video or use of Wimba Classroom, for instance.

Overall Positive Experience

Overall Blake gives Wimba Voice a high grade on a number of fronts. "The sound quality is very good," he explains. "They host it, which means that we don’t have to worry about a bank of computers and repairing them 24/7. They have designed the interface so that it’s very language friendly. They also have a series of templates that instructors can use to create oral tests. It’s nicely organized so that students can come into the Wimba area and take tests that involve listening and responding orally."

Tools of the Future are Here Today

When asked about how he sees the future of language teaching and learning and its relationship to the utilization of interactive audio tools in online environments, Blake says that "these tools help teachers carry out what their fundamental charge is in teaching a language, which is to help people think and experience the world in new ways, specifically related to the target language. Wimba is one of the better computer mediated communication tools out there to the extent that it helps connect people and, in essence, enter into a dialogue with people to begin to hash things out to further the educational agenda.

"Students are getting more and more invested in using technology to do all kinds of things in their lives - certainly to connect to people and to talk to people," Blake continues. "It is happening to the extent that us educators, and specifically language teachers, can capture their habits and take some of their time out of just instant messaging to talk about frivolous issues and actually have them learn a language while doing similar activities — that is how we can get more of their time. Education is all about the amount of time you invest. Whether you (teachers) like this stuff or not, you have to get interested."