Language Learning Center Ron Skulas, right, coordinator of the Language Learning Center at BGSU, helps Adriana Skowron, an international studies major from Cleveland, access digital sound files from the Listening Center. (Craig Bell Photo)

Foreign language instruction goes high-tech

BOWLING GREEN, O.—It’s a long way from tape recorders to high-tech, but foreign language students at Bowling Green State University are taking the leap in a refurbished and upgraded Language Learning Center.

What had been a University Hall facility where students listened to tapes with headsets will become a computerized, multimedia center where they can learn languages with the help of digital audio and video.

“We have all of the digital tools that you can imagine in one place,” said Dr. Timothy Pogacar, associate professor and chair of German, Russian and East Asian Languages at BGSU. “You can read, write, view, listen to and speak a foreign language all within a 50-minute period … with the click of a button.”

While space in University Hall is being renovated for the LLC, the center has set up shop temporarily on the ground floor of Moseley Hall.

Dr. Ron Skulas, coordinator of the center, said he came to BGSU in September 2001 with a directive to make the facility state-of-the-art.

It was “grossly inadequate” for current language learning needs, Skulas said, noting the previous use of “circa-1970s” tape recorders. The electronics that now fill the center were purchased with funds from a $90,000 grant from the Ohio Board of Regents.

Among those electronics are 42 iMac computers, 24 of which are in the center’s Computerized Multimedia Classroom. They are linked to a liquid-crystal display projector that projects the instructor’s computer screen onto a whiteboard. In a particularly high-tech turn, the instructor can use a special stylus to control the computer from the whiteboard, eliminating the need to run back and forth to the machine while teaching, Skulas said. Instructors can also save their classroom notes to files and send them to students by email.

Video from WBGU-TV can be run through the projector as well—via BGsupernet and the instructor’s computer—or be sent directly from an accompanying VCR/DVD deck. The students’ iMacs can burn CDs, while the instructor’s computer can burn both CDs and DVDs.

The instructor can control and direct student computers using a feature called Apple Remote Desktop. The software also has an Instant Messenger-like feature that allows text messaging between the instructor and students, or between students. Thus, for example, some students can review a video in one part of the room while others, divided into work groups, can send information to each other via IM, he said.

The “total supervision at all times” is what distinguishes the classroom from a computer laboratory, said Skulas, who received his Ph.D. in interpersonal communication from BGSU in 1995. Instructors will be able to accomplish much more in the limited time they have students in the computerized classroom, which some Russian classes have already used, he added.

He also acknowledged, however, that “the learning curve is very steep” and will require significant training for instructors.

“It’s all really easy once you understand it, but it’s going from not knowing, to knowing, to converting lessons into digital-use pedagogy that will take time,” he said. The move back to University Hall is planned for next spring, but the coordinator said he doesn’t expect the center to be fully operational until fall semester 2003. He’s seeking grants that he hopes would assist faculty in starting conversion of their materials to digital environments next summer.

When the center returns to University Hall, students will be able to send their work directly to an LLC server where an electronic folder for every class will be stored. The folders will be accessible from every computer on campus, Skulas pointed out, saying that rather than going by the book, “we are writing the book as we go along.”

The other 18 new iMacs are in the center’s upgraded Listening Center—a digitized version of its predecessor. Skulas digitized existing cassettes on equipment in the Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology. Students can go to the LLC Web site via the “My BGSU” portal and receive audio language instruction that coincides with their respective classes and accompanying workbooks. So far this semester, more than 800 students have visited the Listening Center, where they can also get help if needed.

“This is the first group of students I’ve worked with in the Language Lab (the center’s former name) who’ve asked to go back regularly,” said Pogacar, adding that few area universities have a comparable facility. “You can count them on one hand in this region,” he said.

Skulas said McGraw-Hill has now digitized its workbooks for uploading onto a server, eliminating the need for paper workbooks and allowing student work to be sent directly to the class’s server file for grading and returning. The University’s two elementary and two intermediate Spanish classes will try that approach on a trial basis during spring semester, he said.

A DVD/VCR viewing area and an instructor preparation area are also part of the upgraded center, which opens at 8:30 a.m. each weekday and closes at 5 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, 6 p.m. on Thursdays and 4 p.m. on Fridays.

BGSU offers nine foreign languages—plus English as a Second Language—in which roughly 60 language and culture courses are available, Pogacar said. Any student can take a foreign language course to fulfill University and college requirements, he said, although requirements depend upon the individual college and degree program.

(Posted October 23, 2002)