#1 Staffing of a Resource Center
Dear Suzanne,
IALLT publishes three volumes which are essential reading for anyone
creating a modern language resource center:
1) Language Center Design Kit
2) Management Manual
3) Digital Language Lab Solutions
These should answer just about any question you might have, plus add quite a
few you might not have thought about. Jack
--
Professor Jack Burston
Director
Modern Language Center
School of Humanities
University of Cyprus
75 Kallipoleos
P.O. Box 20537
1678 Nicosia, Cyprus
Phone: +357 2289 2116
Fax:+357 2275 0310
#2 Staffing of a Resource Center
Susanne,
Initially you have already considered several things with regards to the
roles that people will play within your new center. I would like to
offer some other perspectives as well.
1. Try to decide what the overall responsibilities of the person who
will manage the center will be such as will the person be required to
teach a foreign language. Also, will classes be actually held in the
center(We use the language learning center as supplement to what happens
in the classroom)?If you are not using the center to hold actual
classes, then you may be expanding the services of the current center
for instructional support to the faculty. Once you have made this
decision this will determine how the pay/benenfit structure will be set
up through HR.
2. Try to get input from the faculty of what kind of materials that they
see being developed for their classes. You don't need specifics, but
general items such as grading tests, quizzes, converting vhs tapes into
mpeg or Quicktime files to be viewed, or studentrs be able to record
themselves speaking the language as part of a vocal drill assignment.
This will help determine what skills the staff need to have to support
the faculty and possibly how many staff members will be needed.
3. Well equipment and software will be dependent on item #2.
4. Work shops and/or one-to-one can produce the same benefit. It just
depends at a given moment such as if you have installed a new software
package, then a workshop wil be best to introduce the basic of the
software. Then if someone has a something unique they want to do, then
one-to-one will be best(I am doing this now because each instructor will
express their level comfort with regards to instructional technology).
5. The number of support staff will be dependent on the combination of
the number of languages taught, the number of offerings of the
respective lanaguages, past comments from the student evaluations of
those courses, and past student performance.
I hope this helps.
Jason Vance, Supervisor
Language Learning Center
Thomas Nelson Community College
PO BOX 9407
Hampton, Virginia 23670
757-825-2819(Office)
757-825-3807(fax)
#3 Staffing of a Resource Center
Hi Suzanne,
Here is a bit background of what we are before I reply:
We are part of the University's library but we work closely with 3
language/linguistics schools that employ an average of 60 lecturers and
tutors, 15/20 of whom teach in our computer lab and deaf studies lab and
demand constant support - technical, psychological [:-p or material
creation -, 10 of whom are part of my CALL interest group (I hope to
reach 15 next year).
1) Our center should be a resource center for faculty and TAs to develop
and implement multimedia materials. How many support staff will we need?
***For material creation and editing we have a technician (analogue AV
editing, maintenance of analogue equipment) and a language technologist
(digital AV editing, computer maintenance, CALL adviser and trainer)
here at the LLC, VUW.
Do we need to look for staff with different types of skills (besides
being knowledgeable about CALL)? Beign knowledgeable about CALL already
requires a lot of skills :-) The ideal candidate(s) would be someone
with a solid language teaching and learning experience (CALL) with a
good feel/imagination for digital audio and video couple with a desktop
publisher and/or web designer experience (to cope with ever changing
trends and tools)
2) Do you suggest to have faculty workshops (do faculty attend these)
*** A CALL interest group involving volunteer teachers across your
sections/languages would be the best way to go.
1/ To update on your centres changes and news,to provide information on
CALL latest trends, to introduce new ways of using technology etc...
2/ To get participants to share their own trial and errors across the
language sections and conduct regular (constructive) round table debates
about what works and what doesn't for your teachers course contents and
teaching styles.. And what to do to faciltate delivery
(synchronous/asynchronous)
3/ To identify needs for training on specific applications depending on
teachers suggestions and response to new trends
3/ To liaise and share minutes across the wider language sections at
faculty/schools meeting and provide training sessions to bigger group
when requested.
or are one-on-one consulting sessions more productive?
*** One to one (or two) are more productive and easier to organise but
very time-consuming. I tend to provide one to one training sessions upon
request on a small applications - like Audacity or HotPotatoes and sneak
in a few pedagogical elements when appropriate -. Teachers have their
own busy timetables and it is not always easy to gather everyone for a
one hour session in the computer lab - which also fully booked - during
the terms.
3) Do you have any suggestions for special equipment and software?
***It depends what you want to do and what you already have, what your
teachers do and what they don't (want to) do (and which you would think
are essential for them to use).. Another consideration to take into
account is WHERE would you want teachers to do their material creation.
(in your facilities or in the comfort of their office?) Then you need to
consider license requirements.. And it can become really expensive.
For equipment I would suggest that your staff work on a MAC as well as a
PC to facilitate software cross-platform integration - mainly for
web-based interactive exercises (like HotPotatotes) or even
director/authorware applications that you could distribute on CD-Roms to
your students for independent learning. It is better to check
compatibility with the different operating systems when developing
rather than finding out when the application is ready for distribution.
Sound : Audacity (cross-platform) but not superb quality so good for
training. For better quality I use Soundforge 6, Adobe audition (only
starting)
Video (can't recommend much yet since I am only starting in the business
: Adobe Premiere (currently learning to be able to create DVDs of
selected recordings of satellite TV per topic, level of language,
cultural interest, dpending on teachers' interests.etc..)For DVD
creation I will be using DVD encore.
I am hearing echoes that macs applications are far better/easier for AV
work and I would be happy to try Final Cut pro and cool Edit as well if
we come to purchasing these as well.
Interactive exercises : HotPotatoes (excellent for drill work and easy
to use by teachers (but I would strongly suggest the development to be
supervised by an HTML connoisseur) and you can fairly easily embed audio
and video into a web-based applications. Cross Platform
Authoring Skills success which comes with Study Skills Success an EFL
software. PC compatibile only.
Macromedia Course builder if you have dreamweaver and of course if you
have a good techie Macromedia Director
Also Check what course management system (blackboard?) your university
is using for they generally have -even limited - interactive testing
tools (gap filling, MCQ, etc..) as well that can prove useful and easy
to reach to your teachers.
Hope this helps :)
Please do not hesitate to contact me for more info on what we do here..
****************************
Edith Paillat
Language Technology Specialist
Language Learning Centre
Victoria University of Wellington
P.O.Box 600, Wellington
New Zealand
+64 4 463 5792
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/llc/about/projects.aspx
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