Creating interactive language learning tasks

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Creating interactive language learning tasks

• Claire McAvinia
• c.mcavinia_at_ucl.ac.uk
• University College London

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Overview of Session

• Introduction
• What is interactivity?
• Why incorporate interactive features?
• Some examples
• A chance to explore some demonstration materials
• Questions and answers/discussion

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In the beginning..

• the Internet but not only the WWW
• web began as a hypertext system
• potential to add other kinds of content
• images, sound, video
• interactive content..
• but that was a bit more complex!

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What is interactivity?

• May mean different things to different people
• A basic definition
• Interactivity is the action between the computer
  program and the user. Whether it is clicking on a
  web link or playing a computer game, it is
  interactive. Interactivity differentiates the Web
  from the one-way communication of printed media,
  television and radio.

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Different kinds of interactivity

• Person and page
• interaction with content
• filling in a form, working through a series of
  screen dialog boxes
• Person to person
• interaction with other people via the web
• email, discussion, chat, instant messaging,
  blogging
• Interactivity and learning
• to facilitate learning, and practice of new
  knowledge
• to measure what has been learned and what may
  need more work

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Why use interactive features on the web?

• The first, and most important question to ask
• What is it for? What will the investment of time
  and effort buy you, and your students or other
  users?
• What kind of exercises or tasks are going to be
  suitable? (it could be something quite basic)
• Person and page

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Person and page interaction

• Some positives
• stimulates the reader/viewer
• promotes engagement with the text or learning
  material
• may encourage production of the target language
• active rather than passive learning
• Cautions
• overuse, or use for the wrong reasons
• remembering home users, users with special needs
• do some specific planning for this learning

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Planning for interactivity an example

• the VDML example deciding on tasks particular
  to language learning
• making communicative, learner-centred, authentic
  target language exercises
• then we looked for some technology to support
  these kinds of activities
• we chose Netscape Composer, Dreamweaver
• HotPotatoes

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How does it work?

• making code automatically
• HTML editors can produce simple interactive
  features
• additional software can generate more
  sophisticated code (CGI, Javascript)
• these packages embed interactive functions and/or
  link to external applications

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Anatomy of the webpage - 1

• Interactive pages might include
• weblinks
• forms or quizzes
• search mechanism linked to database
• simulations
• full applications e.g. games

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Anatomy of the webpage - 2
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Anatomy of a webpage - 3
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Tools Web Editing Packages

• Databases direct with FrontPage
• Dreamweaver 4 onwards Coursebuilder extensions
  download from Macromedia site to add to your
  package
• multiple choice
• drag and drop
• quiz questions
• incorporate images as well as text

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Tools - HotPotatoes

• Six packages
• JCloze to create gap-filling exercises link
• JMix to make sentence-ordering link exercises
• JBC to make multiple-choice questions link
• JCross to make a crossword with reading text
  link
• JMatch a word matching exercise link
• JQuiz a short answer quiz link

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Explore our resources
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In your work, what kinds of tasks could these
tools support?