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Project
Proposal:
Electronic
Language Materials Archive (ELMA) for
First-
and Second-Year Spanish
and French (Second-year)
Participants:
UCLA, UCSC, UCSB, UCI,
UCD
Principal
Investigators:
Maria Victoria Gonzalez
Pagani, UCSC
Overview
of the Request
The ELMA intercampus
team is requesting $68,353 for the
second year of this project (or $51,553
if the carry forward amount of $16,800
is granted, see year 1 progress report).
Funding will be applied to the testing
and fine tuning of the database, intense
re-purposing of existing electronic
materials for submission to the archive
as its base collection, designing
a submission system, and establishing
a review process for these submissions.
ELMA's goals remain
those put forward in the initial proposal,
mainly to foster curricular innovation
in UC Spanish and French language
curricula through the incorporation
of content-based electronically enhanced
instructional materials.
Unlike other foreign
language teaching approaches, Content-based
Instruction (CBI) seeks to achieve
language proficiency by shifting the
focus from the learning of the language
per se to the learning of the subject
matter. While learning a subject matter,
students acquire linguistic skills
and simultaneously develop learning
strategies.
An electronic archive
containing CBI materials for all proficiency
levels in French and Spanish, to which
the whole UC system could have access,
will be instrumental in fostering
curricular reform in those languages.
Curricular reform in other languages
could also be fostered by this initiative.
Background/Progress
to Date:
ELMA began as a
large-scale project encompassing five
UC campuses and focusing on the two
languages which are most widely taught
system-wide. It will serve a large
number of students and faculty as
well as teaching assistants.
The ELMA team met
most of the objectives put forward
in our work plan for year 1. Activities
carried out to meet them included:
- Three full day
meetings for planning;
- Hiring of three
GSRs who began to assist in the modification
of existing electronic materials for
incorporation into the archive.
The main deliverables
included the following:
- Establishing of
the database search parameters and
functions;
- Glossary of terms;
- Creation of a database
prototype and mockup of the search
view;
- Reshaping of six
functional exemplars for inclusion
in the archive;
- Consultation on
copyright and fair use as well as
dissemination of work in progress.
A full Progress
Report of year one appears as Appendix
1. Changes in the project as proposed
for the first year are stated therein.
They are:
- Replacement of
one Co-PI for justifiable reasons;
- Internal management
changes in the unit in charge of developing
the database structure (UCLA's Center
for Digital Humanities), which did
not affect the development of the
project;
- Hiring of two GSRs
to assist in materials re-purposing
was delayed due to availability constraints;
- Modification of
the archive design, from a centralized
model to a hybrid decentralized model.
Exemplars can be
found at the following URLs:
French
Spanish
Mockup of search
form
Hard copies of the
following materials are attached:
- diagram of the
metadatabase table structure
- diagram of the
user interface
Work
in Progress: in Spring/Summer 2002
Since the timing
of this proposal and corresponding
first year progress report does not
coincide with the dates of funding
availability, nor with the fiscal
and academic years, there is still
work to be done during the spring
quarter as initially proposed in the
year 1 application. These activities
include mainly the refinement of the
search parameters and the archive
metadata, the discussion of whether
and how to incorporate Dublin Core,
IMS or similar metadata standards
into the ELMA archive, the preparation
of pedagogical and technical guidelines
for submissions of exemplars to the
database, and, above all, the continuation
of exemplar production for the database
by reshaping existing materials. The
group will also work on the submission
form and process, and will decide
on GSR and technical support training
and other related issues. In addition,
CDH beta testing will take place in
the summer.
Goals
and Timeline
As stated in our
initial proposal, the population of
the archive draws on the extensive
collection of Web-based materials
already developed by the participating
faculty, with previous funding from
other internal and external sources.
Although the team has ambitious plans
for future expansion, we intend to
concentrate in year two on populating
the archive and inviting submissions
in the participating languages before
we move in the direction of expanding
to other languages.
Populating the archive
consists of the submission of more
modules, mainly by ELMA members, and
the establishment of a sound review
process for submissions. By population
we mean the incorporation of as many
modules (see ELMA Glossary of Terms
attached to Progress Report in Appendix
1) as possible into the archive, after
they have been reshaped to fit this
project's goals.
Key benchmarks for
accomplishing the goals of the project
are the following:
Fall 2002
- Prof. Campbell's
evaluation of the effectiveness of
the parameters and exemplars will
be submitted (in September)
- The ELMA team will
discuss and define levels of access
to ELMA (administrators, instructors,
students and others), rules of usage,
rights to modification or reshaping
of ELMA modules, and other related
issues.
- The group will
evaluate the database structure along
with our formal evaluator, Prof. Campbell.
- Team members will
continue to work with respective GSRs
reshaping existing materials, submitting
them for inclusion in the metadatabase
and storing them, either locally or
in the central archive of modules.
- The ELMA team will
devise and set up a review system,
whose first job will be to evaluate
the materials already in the archive.
- UCLA's Center for
Digital Humanities (CDH) will design
the submission form prototype following
ELMA's team directions.
Winter 2003
- Continuation of
reshaping of materials for submission
to the archive.
- Start the review
process.
- UCLA's CDH will
make modifications as suggested and
finish construction of the database.
- Selected language
faculty/teaching assistants will be
invited to start using the archive
and its materials with their classes.
- Plan a dissemination,
recruitment and training program to
obtain acceptable submissions for
the archive.
- Train appropriate
personnel in submitting metadata to
the database using the prototype submission
form.
- Test and approve
the database prototype.
Spring 2003
- Submission of Campbell's
second assessment of the effectiveness
of the revised parameters and new
modules as part of the year 2 progress
report.
- Continuation of
reshaping of materials for submission
to the database.
- Start the dissemination,
recruitment, and training program.
- Plan workshops
centered around two areas: "Content-based
Instruction" and "Re-purposing
Electronic Materials and Activities"
- Upon approval of
the database prototype, CDH will turn
the prototype into a production application,
including front-end redesign.
Year
3 of the Project
We plan to expand
the archive through use and participation
of other UC campuses. Although there
is a lot of interest among members
of the group to begin expanding the
number of languages to be included
in ELMA, we will limit this expansion
to other Spanish and French programs
in the UC system in the third year
of the project. Extending the invitation
to be part of the ELMA core planning
and development team to a couple or
more other campuses will help promote
and activate recruitment of active
users and desirable contributors of
the archive.
Nature
of the Collaboration
ELMA includes among
its development team leading faculty
in the fields of Computer Assisted
Language Learning, Content-based Instruction,
and Second Language Acquisition, who
are also highly experienced teachers
at all levels of the target languages
involved.
Team members have
amassed an important body of electronic
materials for use in the courses they
design, teach, and/or direct (see
initial proposal for description of
materials developed in Appendix 2).
These are the materials that are being
re-purposed to fit the ELMA archive
which will be available to all UC
campuses.
Project
participants
This project includes
the collaboration of the following
UC faculty:
- Professor John
Dagenais, Department of Spanish and
Portuguese, UCLA
- SOE Lecturer M.
Victoria González Pagani, Language
Program, UCSC
- Professor Robert
Blake, Department of Spanish and Classics,
UCD
- Dr. Susan Schaffer,
Lecturer, Department of Spanish and
Portuguese, UCLA
- Assistant Professor
Tim McGovern, Department of Spanish
and Portuguese, UCSB
- Dr. Kim Jansma,
Lecturer, Department of French, UCLA
- Dr. Elizabeth Guthrie,
SOE Lecturer, Department of French
and Italian, UCI
Instructional
Impact
ELMA will have an
instructional impact at multiple levels:
- Above all considerations,
the materials in ELMA are student-centered
and especially well suited for adaptation
to the individualized learning format.
Materials are designed in such a way
that students can manipulate them
and learn through their own learning
style and discovery process.
- The electronic
format and the resources of the WWW
lend themselves wonderfully to manipulation
by the teacher and the learner of
authentic materials, one of the CBI
approach's requirements in multimedia
format.
- The electronic
format also allows for flexibility
in its use. It can be accessed by
students from anywhere at any time,
and it can be done repeatedly as needed.
Instructors can use entire ELMA modules
and/or selected activities in class,
outside class, or both, according
to the students' and the teacher's
needs and the technical infrastructure
available.
- The pedagogical
material being implemented in ELMA
can make an impact on 10,500 students
a year, the approximate number of
students enrolled in Spanish and French
first and second year language courses
in the participating campuses (see
initial proposal in Appendix 2 for
individual figures). ELMA's future
impact lies in its potential for influencing
curricular reform in French and Spanish
as well as in other languages.
Budget
3 GSRs (Level IV
@50%) for three quarters.........
$45,320
UCLA Center for Digital Humanities................
$10,800
Tech support ($2000 per team)......................
$6,000
Travel for meetings.................................$2,745
Travel for demonstration and discussion.............
$794
Two workshops.......................................
$994
Duplication and supplies............................$1,200
Honorarium for Project evaluator....................
$500
TOTAL..............................................$68,353
Funds requested
for year 2 of the project include
GSR and technical assistance for re-purposing
existing materials to populate the
archive, and UCLA CDH metadatabase
design and production. Other expenses
are related to ELMA participants'
traveling to planning meetings, dissemination
and workshops, and material duplication.
An honorarium for the project evaluator
is also included. (See budget form
attached for detailed information.)
If our carry forward request from
year 1 is approved ($16,800) our funding
needs for year 2 of the project totals
$51,553.
Project
Evaluation
In our Year 1 proposal,
we laid out an evaluation plan that
inadvertently included benchmarks
for the first year that belong to
the project's entire development period.
Our outside evaluator, Professor Emeritus
Russell Campbell, has kindly and efficiently
evaluated the project progress to
date. He met with ELMA participants
and its technical support team and
reviewed the exemplars and other project
deliverables, as stated in his report
(See Evaluation in Appendix 3). His
report rates our progress as excellent,
while pinpointing the areas in which
difficulties arose. These difficulties
should be resolved by the end of the
academic year.
We are readjusting
our evaluation plan to include the
following
- Participants and
GSRs will be periodically interviewed
on the development of the project.
- In-class and out-of-class
(depending on format) testing of modules
will take place and be reported back
to the planning group.
- Database structure
functionality will be tested and reported
by ELMA team members and other invited
users.
- Results from the
above will be analyzed and reported
by Professor Campbell.
- Above all, we will
make sure that the database has the
built-in capability to store information
on archive users and their modalities
of use so that this information can
be retrieved, analyzed and included
in the evaluation.
Future plans include
the consideration of incorporating
a system for tracking and researching
users' interaction with the material
in those modules that lack this component.
Professor Campbell
will assess the effectiveness of the
project deliverables and activities
for Year 2 as of April 2003 and submit
a report.
Plans
for Future Funding and Expansion
After expanding
to other Spanish and French language
programs at other UC campuses, the
ELMA team intends to concentrate on
extending its curricular reform to
other languages offered in the system,
thus opening the archive to significant
numbers of users and contributors.
Since this would entail a large-scale
expansion with a nationwide repercussion
due to the leading role of the University
of California in the context of higher
education, we will find external sources
of funding to which ELMA would be
of high interest. The recent increased
interest in the study of languages,
especially the less commonly taught
and strategically relevant languages,
will further open doors for funding
the incorporation of those languages
into the archive. We will also welcome
materials aimed at heritage learners.
Sources of funding under consideration
include the Fund for the Improvement
of Postsecondary Education and other
special programs from the Department
of Education.
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