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By Joyce Winslow (jwins@oregon.uoregon.edu)
Utilizing a new "Virtual Language Lab" (VLL) introduced last fall, UO students taking first-year French, German, Italian, Japanese, or Spanish can now do their homework online at http://babel.uoregon.edu/YLC-AV/
One of VLL's great advantages is that it's accessible 24 hours a day, so students can do their homework at their convenience. It can also serve up to 2000 users simultaneously.
The lab, which employs digitized content from CDs and tapes, is the work of the Yamada Language Center's director, Jeff Magoto, and GTFs Ginny White and Bryan Chaney.
Jeff conceived the basic design, obtained copyright permissions, and established the procedure for turning tapes and CDs into digital content; Ginny put together the lessons' database and published them on the web; while Bryan digitized the material, configured the server, parsed the lessons, and tested for bugs. Since then, more staff members have been added to keep up with the workload. Approximately $8000 in Educational Technology funds paid for the labÕs equipment (server, software, and networking upgrades), and Yamada Center fund donors contributed $3000 for staff salaries.
Recordings for each class are delivered over the web as QuickTime files, and, for copyright reasons, access to these files is restricted to UO students. To reach the Virtual Language Lab, students need a connection to the campus network (UOnet) and--if they're dialing in using a private Internet service provider like AOL or EFN--a password that's either arranged with their instructor or obtained, with proper student ID, from the Yamada Language Center.
In its initial phase, the lab was designed to cut the costs involved in providing language tapes to each individual student, as well as offer more flexibility for learning. Instead of having to come into the Yamada Language Center lab in 121 Pacific to do their homework, students can access the Virtual Lab's web site at their convenience, using their manual to follow along with the spoken lesson.
This is only the beginning. Yamada's vision for the future is total immersion. In the words of director Jeff Magoto, the virtual lab of the future will be "a multi-user environment that not only looks like a Paris cafe, but lets you sit down and experience the foreign language in non-passive ways." In addition, the future lab would "know something about your abilities, the kinds of skills you need/want to work on, and would provide you with lots of choices." In the meantime, a couple of intermediate steps are planned: first, to expand to second-year languages and incorporate instructors' own materials online; and next, to include video programming, such as rebroadcasts of lectures and the YLCÕs satellite content.
To learn more about the Yamada Language Center's innovative learning services (including a self-service language program, free tutoring exchange program, and daily foreign-language news broadcasts from 30 countries), visit their web site at http://babel.uoregon.edu/