--- Forwarded Message from Joel Goldfield <[log in to unmask]> ---


Thanks to Mike Ledgerwood for bringing up the 1996 MLA document.
Without getting too specific, there was a long period of slow
interaction, punctuated by intensive meetings and demonstrations
of materials, to update committee members both within and outside
of the foreign language profession who represented somewhat different
interests from many faculty involved with CALICO.  I find the later
committees' work to have been a natural evolution to
this process and quite helpful.

Perhaps others on LLTI also know of individual cases, as I do, where
the existence and use of documents such as the MLA's have been reported
by campus tenure committees and faculty candidates themselves to have
helped their tenure and promotion cases where CALL was involved.
I am thinking of several examples, including one several
years ago within Mike's own SUNY system.  It would be interesting to
hear of other examples.  Please feel free to reply confidentially offline
([log in to unmask]), if necessary.  I am researching such
material, related to my IALL 2001 and CALICO 2002 presentations, to be
updated this March at CALICO 2003.  The papers Mike references 
are helpful. However, in my experience, and as he also observes,
each rank and tenure committee needs to be (re-)educated.  Perhaps
we might one day distribute a collection of case studies 
drawn from various types of institutions and positions
that could remain anonymous.

I think we are at a point where an organization rich in faculty
representation like CALICO could
step in with some very specific and helpful suggestions, where
advisable and possible, relating CALL work to traditional conceptions
of teaching, service and scholarship, building on current CALICO
and IALL documents in addition to the MLA's report
"Making Faculty Work Visible" (Profession 1996 & online).  We
could also point out where, like the cinema evolving to its own art
form from theatre, CALL can be its own hybrid discipline.  This problem
has often been confronted by those in humanities computing and
literary computing and discussed over the past 16 years on HUMANIST.

For more information on the current incarnation of the MLA technology
document, see www.mla.org and click sequentially through "Reports and
Documents," "Reports from MLA Committee on Information Technology,"
and finally "Guidelines for Evaluating Work with Digital Media in the
Modern Languages."

Regards,
Joel Goldfield
Fairfield University
=======
[MIKE LEDGERWOOD WROTE:]

--- Forwarded Message from Mike Ledgerwood <[log in to unmask]> ---

>Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 20:24:33 -0500
>From: Mike Ledgerwood <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: #7038.9 software or program? (!) tenure and promotion part
>In-reply-to: <[log in to unmask]>
>To: Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum    <[log in to unmask]>

------------------
A part of Ursula's question no one has addressed yet is how the "poor" 
prof.
is going to use this program for tenure and promotion.  This is a huge 
question.
In the US American system the vast majority of people doing the tenure 
and
promotion process have no clue at all how to evaluate this kind of work 
for that
kind of process.  MLA tried to help with this and some of our members 
such as
Joel Goldfield tried to help with that.   However the final draft of 
this report wound
up being quite unhelpful to many of us (especially those of us who work 
in administrative
roles).  Nina Garrett and others published a response to this report 
which has (unfortunately)
been widely ignored.

I guess what I would say to all of you dealing with this issue, is that 
it is best dealt with
locally.  If you can get any kind of local ruling saying how a piece of 
software/program
equates to a more traditional publication, you are ahead of the game.

Otherwise the person has to extrapolate from MLA, CALICO/IALLT/etc. 
white paper
on tech. in ed. along with the Nina et al report along with outside 
reviewer report.

Not a pretty and happy picture.

One of the items some IALLT members are working on is to improve this.

Best to all,

Mike Ledgerwood
Director of the Language Learning and Research Center
Tenured Professor of French and Technology and Education
State University of New York at Stony Brook