--- Forwarded Message from 15.5 --- From: "David Pankratz" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:36:37 -0600 Subject: Re: #9545.2 anyone have data related to using Wimba Voice? To: "Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum" <[log in to unmask]> Yes, I'd like to see the report you refer to on use of voice tools. But first, let me share our very positive experiences with the Wimba Voice Tools at Loyola University Chicago. When they became available as an "add-on" to Blackboard several years ago, I was able to convince our IT people that it would be a good investment. It was a point at which our old cassette-based recording technologies were dying, and no obvious solution was in sight. I saw the Wimba voice tools as a way to retain some of the features that would be associated with a language center, such as guided voice recording. I will try to keep this short, so a few developments will be skipped. However, the big picture is that we have been very happy with the voice tools, and over several years have come to believe that the one tool called "Voice Boards" is the most valuable to us. It allows instructors to create a "Voice Board" at which students can post audio recordings on a particular topic. The instructor can decide whether to allow all students to hear each others' recordings (most common) or to make the conversation "private" between student and instructor. Either way, the voice board becomes a sort of audio recording repository where the instructor has access to all the recordings made by the students in one class. And the instructor can respond to the recordings individually, providing feedback via his/her own voice recordings. The best analogy from the past is when instructors used to give students an assignment to make a recording on tape or CD and then turn it in, generally for assessment purposes. (Some of us remember how awkward and time-consuming it was to collect bunches of cassette tapes from students, listen to the recordings, and in some cases make our own recordings onto their tapes with our feedback, pass them back to students...wow.) At any rate, language instructors at Loyola, including myself, have found the Voice Board feature very valuable in this regard, even essential. It promotes meaningful speaking outside of the classroom. The most popular topics used have been self-introductions, brief commentaries on chosen topics, and dialogs recorded by two students. I use the latter every semester in beginning German classes. I group the students in pairs, then they compose and record a dialog based on a specific topic. I listen and respond via a voice recording, giving feedback on content, pronunciation, grammar, etc. I take it a step further by developing a fill-in-the blank-exercise worksheet based on their dialogues. This requires them to listen to each others' dialogues and complete the worksheet. This exercise fosters listening comprehension, reading, and reinforces correct grammatical structures, since I write the sentences myself, but based on their content and vocab. My students report that they generally like the assignments, especially composing and recording the dialogs. I estimate that about one half of our language teachers (we offer about 12 languages) are using the Voice Boards on a regular basis, each between one and four times per semester. This coming semester I plan to verify these numbers, since our ITS department is hinting that they are re-evaluating our Wimba voice tools license due to economic considerations. Enough from me on this topic now, but I think it's a good one given that language centers need to identify tools that work for language students in particular, and in my view this is one of them. David Pankratz Loyola University Chicago *********************************************** LLTI is a service of IALLT, the International Association for Language Learning Technology (http://iallt.org/), and The Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning (http://www.languageconsortium.org/). Join IALLT at http://iallt.org. Subscribe, unsubscribe, search the archives at http://listserv.dartmouth.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A0=LLTI Anthony Helm, LLTI-Editor ([log in to unmask]) ***********************************************