The One-Stop-Language-Shop (OSLS): e-learning across all 14 languages taught in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures (SMLC) - Oranna Speicher, School of Modern Languages and Cultures

Up until about 18 months ago, e-learning in the SMLC was represented by a handful of WebCT/Blackboard courses across the departments, with a few enthusiasts working on individual projects, but there was no e-learning programme spanning the whole School. When I contacted the Learning team about the creation of online exercises the idea of the One Stop Language Shop (OSLS) was born: a project aimed at making e-learning a reality across the School by creating a platform that would provide multimodal interactive language learning materials for all students registered on an MFL or Inter Faculty module. Not only would the materials cover all 14 languages taught in the School (Arabic, Brazilian and Continental Portuguese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian, Serbian-Croatian, Slovene, Spanish) but the materials would also be tailor-made to mirror the respective curricula of each semester/year, and would further allow the student to move between languages and levels of competence.

The front page of the One Stop Language Shop

The project has benefitted from the support of the Head of School who promoted the OSLS at School Executive Committee level. This assisted me in my role as Project Coordinator in approaching the individual Heads of Department, who in turn helped to identify appropriate staff to write the respective materials. The content provided spans the skill areas of listening, reading, grammar and vocabulary, and the exercise types range from drag and drop and gap-fill to multiple choice and true/false to dictation and activities modelled on computer games.

The OSLS went live in mid-November, and about 4 weeks later, all students enrolled on an MFL or Inter Faculty module were surveyed to get their feedback on the OSLS. The survey is in its early stages, and we expect to collect the feedback once the examination period is over by the end of January.

Early indication suggests that the response is very positive. Nearly 60% of responses submitted so far described the OSLS' interface as easy to navigate. Furthermore, the most useful feature picked out by the students so far is the availability of video and audio files along with the transcript reader, as this feature does not just allow them to practice their listening skills whenever they choose, but it provides the opportunity to check their understanding against the transcript. The following are some sample comments made by students:

• it is easily accessible and stimulating, and interesting;
• it has a very nice overall interface.
• all languages are available, even though the student is only registered under one language;
• helps to learn other languages as well. (please don't take this feature away!)
• I realise how hard it is to understand normal conversation. But the more I listen to them, the more I get familiar with the accent and get to understand more. This feeling is very rewarding.

During the developmental phase of the project I encountered three major challenges: the first was the successful marriage between technology and pedagogy. It was frustrating when on occasion, the technology was not able to create a feature just how the tutors had visualised it, but I am pleased to say that through close collaboration between the Learning Team's developer on this project, Dr Thomas Koller, we managed to make a reality most of the suggestions fed back from the subject matter experts (SMEs), including suggestions on the most appropriate way the interface was to be presented as well as on what type of exercises were to be created.

Despite the fact that guidelines had been issued to all SMEs as to what type of exercise templates were available, on numerous occasions the materials submitted had gone beyond the available templates, which meant more time had to be dedicated by the developer on creating further templates rather than concentrating on turning the content provided into a "shop-friendly" format. However, even though this created additional work, it was pleasing to see that the SMEs have taken the concept of the OSLS to heart and are keen to develop it further.

Finally, finding time slots with SMEs when the materials would be written proved to be problematic at times, as they had to fit creating the content around their teaching load as well as their research activities. This meant that it was not always possible to create a steady flow of materials but rather that sometimes several languages at various levels were submitted and needing time devoting to their conversion into the necessary format. We solved this problem by getting the School's digital classroom technician involved in the project to share the work load converting the materials.

A screen shot of one module

It was vital for the longevity of this project that the School was ultimately self-supporting when it came to content creation; consequently development effort was focused on providing a suite of easy to use tools which could be combined through a single interface to deliver a range of e-learning activities. To create a lesson, SMEs provide an audio or video file plus transcript, or simply text in Word format. The transcript can then be easily converted into an XML based format which can be used to create a range of interactive e-activities based on a set of templates. Simple mark-up tools provided by the IS Learning Team enable teaching or local support staff to quickly create XML based content files for further e-activities. All the e-activities are then pulled together by a content creator for delivery within the OSLS. The whole process is simple and requires little technical knowledge from the SMEs, enabling them to focus on facilitating the learning process.

The OSLS is a definite success story with both students and staff. In 18 months over 30 staff within the SMLC have actively engaged with the project, creating 800 e-activities across 44 modules with 280 hours of tutor time converted into 70 hours of student self-study materials. Future development plans include adding more exercise types, more games and further interactivity through the inclusion of voice production by the students.

Some examples from this case study are available on U-Now. Here are just a selection
Continental Portuguese
French year 1 semester A
Mandarin stage 1 semester A
(there are more modules on U-Now than are listed here)

If anyone is interested in finding out more about the OSLS, please contact me at oranna.speicher@nottingham.ac.uk