Wimba at St.Olaf

1. Wimba at St.Olaf Administrative and Pedagogical Hoops and Oops! St. Olaf College

2. Introductions • Margaret Hayford O’Leary, professor of Norwegian, department chair • Renata Debska-McWilliams, director of World Languages Center • John Campion, Instructional and Information Technology

3. Who are you? • Staff or faculty? What areas? • Large university? Small college? Somewhere in between? • What kind of language lab? • How long have you used Wimba? • How many users?

4. St. Olaf’s Journey to Wimba • History and background • Process of decision making • Technical challenges and issues • Roll out issues--training, etc. • Feedback after one semester • Next steps and suggestions for Wimba

5. Triggering factors • Needed to revision language lab • Former director retired • Building torn down--forced move • Aging Tandberg language lab

6. New WLC: World Languages Center • Hired new director • Prioritized pedagogical expertise and willingness to collaborate with faculty • Planned new physical space • Planned for replacement of old language lab functions

7. Why Wimba? Process • Surveyed current functions • Thought about future developments • Consulted • Invited presentations • Compared products/ features

8. Some future WLC needs • Create a multipurpose, interactive computer lab • Find a software that will be not limited to local use • Give students additional possibilities to master oral skills and practice reading and listening comprehension

9. Wimba at other educational institutions • University of Minnesota • University of Wisconsin

10. Vendors Presentations • Can 8 Many outdated elements New updated version not ready for the time of potential purchase • Sonoko Very high costs

11. LangLab 2.0, NetSupport School 8.5 LangLab • No picture or video integration • Poor sound quality on demo NetSupport School • More classroom management than voice tools • Only for PCs

12. Why Wimba? Factors • Good feedback from other colleges • Online access • A la carte vs. package • The ability to choose only Voice tools without Live classroom- huge cost difference • License versus purchase • Price per user • The possibility of using one tool at the time • Oral Assessment • Integration with Moodle

13. Technical decisions and challenges • Wimba server or St. Olaf server? • Java on public machines needed updating • Not integrated with Moodle when we began--only partial integration now • Creating user accounts centrally

14. Roll-out phase: technical challenges • Incompatibility with new version of Moodle • Need to find work-around to provide student access • Quick-access web link for St. Olaf students

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24. Solution • The registrar already: • has student data • manages course names • manages course enrollment • IIT already • creates aliases • Nightly create files to import to wimba • Create a CSV file. • The first line must be the name of the fields.

25. FILE Format uid,email,password,firstname,lastname 100,aacappelli@stolaf.edu,passwrd1,Albert,Cappelli 101,aamcneill@stolaf.edu,passwrd2,Joe,Mc Neill 102,aasaueyc@stolaf.edu,passwrd3,Carl,Sauey 103,aaschmidsa@stolaf.edu,passwrd4,Anne,Schmidt 104,campiondan@stolaf.edu,passwrd5,John,Campion 105,mcw@stolaf.edu,passwrd6,Kent,McWilliams ------------------------------------------------------- gid,name 200,Chinese something 201,Chinese something2 ------------------------------------------------------- gid,uid 200,101 200,103 201,100 201,101 201,102 200,102 • Users • uid is an integer • email of the form username@somewhere.edu • Password • If no password is given, it is automatically set to user's email • ------------------------------------------------------- • Groups • gid is an integer • name is the course term and title • ------------------------------------------------------- • Enrollments • gid course id defined by Groups • uid of student defined by Users

26. Oops • Loss of tool when changing UIDs • Moved some users from administrator to poweruser

27. February 2008 Moodle integration • Surprised only 4 of 7 tools available.

28. Voice recorder as a block, not with other voice tools as an activity.

29. Roll-out Phase: Pedagogical Issues • Learning how to use in teaching • Mastery of voice tools-what can they be used for? • Getting faculty on board • Training workshops • Sharing sessions among faculty • Support in the classroom

30. Wimba Benefits in Teaching Foreign Languages • Focus on oral skills • The possibility of rerecording • The ability to listen to yourself, comment on slides, texts, pictures, video clips • Easy access to web resources • Direct oral communication in target language (Voice Email) • Creating online oral quizzes or tests

31. Training • Modification of instructions • Group and individual training • Local on-call help • Faculty / WLC / IIT • Student workers • Online training access

32. How have we used Wimba so far? • Voice Board • Voice email • Voice Presentation-examples next • Oral Assessment-examples next • Voice Recorder

36. Evaluation • Electronic survey after one semester • 293 responses • 33% in Spanish • 21% in Norwegian • 35% Beginning level • 49% Intermediate level

37. Evaluation Tool

40. Evaluation: First Semester • Positive reactions: • Provides additional opportunities for practice listening and speaking • Students like chance to listen to self, make corrections, re-record • Relatively easy to learn

41. Simple, but powerful • Wimba is a good voice presentation program. Its interface is very simple yet powerful. Also it is extremely reliable. I would highly recommend its use in the future.

42. Good for listening practice • Wimba was a valuable tool to use. Despite the fact that I didn't use it much, I really appreciated the listening comprehension exercises. It was really nice to be able to play the sentences as many times as I needed.

43. Less intimidating • This was way less intimidating than speaking with the teacher, and beneficial in that regard.

44. Less stress for weak student • In comparison to in-classroom oral presentations, I loved Wimba. I am not a strong language learner and as such I get nervous speaking in front of the class, so Wimba was a fantastic way for me to practice speaking, hear myself and correct my own mistakes, as well as getting feedback from the professor. I was disappointed that we did not use this more in my class as I feel it would have improved my speaking ability much more than a stressful in class presentation.

45. Good in its place • I liked using Wimba because it gave me a chance to practice speaking. However, I did like at the end of the semester when our oral assessment was through a conversation with our professor. I liked having a dialogue with someone rather than just speaking into a computer.

46. But Controversial! • I believe that Wimba is controversial! While some students like it others dislike it totally because it requires extra work and they are not use to it! they feel it impersonal i believe! but for me it is useful! even though they may not realize that!

47. Negative reactions: students • Don’t want it to replace face-to-face interaction with professor and fellow students • Dislike coming to language lab, awkward recording with others present, don’t own computer or headphones to do at home. • Would like to be able to re-record a portion of an answer. Not start over.

48. Confusing Interface • I found the initial interface with all the names of different boards and activities confusing, because when I clicked on the activity name, it wouldn't bring me to the activity instead I had to click on the eye to get to the board. That was what confused me right away. I also don't like how on the discussion board, our professor could give comments and voice comments but everyone else could see it. Is there some way so that we can record and type a thread so only the administrator of the board could read it, and then give only us comments back? Also, in the threads and discussions, the plus signs can get confusing, is there any way to clear this up, update it so that it is easy to follow.

49. Missed face-to-face contact • I would prefer to do oral exams with my instructor. I feel like it's better to have oral responses when doing an oral exam do that you can hear inflection and see facial expressions to allow a better understanding of the conversation.

50. Human Interaction Better • I preferred face-to-face. Wimba seemed better suited for situations when that is not possible -- if human interaction is doable, I say do it.