Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Features
Speaking Their Language: UCLA Language Courses Use Online Voice Tools
11/6/2006
Wimba is especially strong when used by instructors as a tool to “enable the human touch to really carry through,” Liu says, by increasing the frequency of instructor-student interactions and reducing the turn-around time of instructor response. Because language professors can use Wimba to listen to student utterances more than once, “they can give a good evaluation from several different aspects of the language,” Liu says. “We found that this is really beneficial for oral exams,” for example.
Instead of face-to-face oral exams of perhaps 10 minutes per student, instructors can record student responses and listen to them repeatedly to evaluate various aspects of the spoken language. After the exam, Liu explains, students “can go back, listen to the question prompts, listen to their answers, and listen to the feedback.”
Overall, “the main things students like is…the repeatability, and the increased interaction with instructors,” Liu says.
Wimba is a Web-based product; users need an Internet connection and a computer with a browser such as Apple Safari or Windows Internet Explorer, along with a version of the Java Runtime Environment. To record, a microphone is also required.
One basic use for Wimba is adding a voice component to e-mail. For example, a Wimba voice e-mail tool allows language students to write a standard text email in any language, or the sender can record a voice email and send it. The receiver can then play the audio message, and can reply via voice or text. The recording can be listened to repeatedly or shared with others, including the instructor.
The new Wimba Voice Tools 5.0 is sold as an annual subscription license based on a school’s full-time enrollment; a typical annual license starts at $6,500.
Linda L. Briggs is a freelance writer based in San Diego, Calif.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- Getting the Money Right
A clear sign that online and distance learning is maturing is that we are struggling with how to organize and fund these programs on an ongoing basis.
- Technology and Campus Services
Can auxiliary services be mission-critical? You bet they can. With tuition on the rise, Auxiliary Services departments at a variety of colleges and universities are proving that they can innovate and still save their parent institutions cash.
- Ad It Up
Commercials on television tend to enrage me and laugh tracks are guaranteed to give me a headache. Plus, where do people find the time to watch TV?
- What Is the Purpose of an Electronic Portfolio? Is the Answer the Key to Your Successful Implementation?
Among many themes, Margaret Price explores the theme of purpose in her Viewpoint. One purpose of ePortfolio is to reflect on change from a beginning to a later point in time. In a future Viewpoint, Margaret will return to the SpEl.Folio and we’ll see how her thinking and her project have evolved.
- Making Faculty Smarter about Smart Technology
If you’re not also enabling the ‘why’ or ‘what’ behind the tech tools you give your faculty, you’re not enabling effective use of those tools.
- Smashing the Shackles of Intentionally Dysfunctional Technology
Until last week, it hadn’t "clicked" inside my head that the Library of Congress could or would make specific exemptions to copyright laws.
