Welcoming remarks were made by Cindy Bravo, NERALLD President. Cindy thanked Mary Morrissard-Larkin for doing a great job hosting the conference. She also pointed out that Dick House from Indiana (Crawfordsville) had traveled the farthest to attend the meeting. The following new members were welcomed: Thomas Gray, The Loomis Chaffee School, Windsor, CT; Ellen Callahan representing Brandeis University; Kathy Brenner from Northeastern University; and returning after some time, Charlie Long from Choate Rosemary Hall. Cindy also thanked the conference Chairperson, Connie Montross from Clark University, and the program committee: Mary Fetherston from URI, Emmanuel Paris-Bouvret from Trinity College, Kara Schwartz from Amherst College, and Dan Soneson from Southern CT State University.

Cindy started the formal sessions of the meeting with a quick summary of the workshop held the previous day.

On Thursday, November 1, 2001 Emmanuel Paris-Bouvret, Manager of Language Instruction Technology at Trinity College (Hartford, CT), led a 3-hour workshop/discussion on the issue of multilingual computing, specifically addressing the difficulties of working with non-Western fonts with today's most commonly used operating systems and applications vs. multilingual computing via Unicode. Emmanuel began with a brief description of character sets and encodings, including ASCII, ISO 8859-1 (Western encoding for the web), Cyrillic (KOI8-R), Windows-1251, MacCyrillic, ISO-8859-5 and others. He went on to explain the idea behind the Unicode standard — an attempt to come up with one encoding to support multiple character sets. Unicode is a 2-byte encoding system that can support 65,536 possible characters. Currently in Unicode 3.0, over 49,000 characters have been encoded.

"Why use Unicode?" Reasons stated were: standardization, cross-platform utility, mixing of languages on one page, easier exchange of documents, more powerful databases, no special browser settings needed on the Web. Unicode requires OS support, application support and font support. On the Mac side, OS 9.2, 10 and 10.1 are Unicode compliant (note: the language kits from OS 9 are not compatible with 9.2). On the Windows side, Windows 98 is not compliant; Windows NT and 2000 are.

Emmanuel gave an overview of setting up machines for multilingual use — installing fonts, adding keyboards, etc. — and then showed an example of generating a Chinese character document using OS 9.2 and Office 2001. For generating Web pages encoded in non-Western characters, Emmanuel recommended using Adobe GoLive 5.0. The 13 participants had an opportunity to work briefly with GoLive and then moved on to a discussion of non-Western character support (or lack thereof!) within course management systems such as Blackboard, WebCT, and Prometheus. The latter does support non-Western characters in its "presentation" and "discussion" features, but does not support non-Western "chat". With Blackboard and WebCT, cumbersome "work-arounds" are necessary to use non-Western characters within these tools. Emmanuel concluded the afternoon's proceedings with a look at the newest version of the now Unicode-compliant exercise-making (Windows) tool, Hot Potatoes and a brief mention about The Makers web form for exercise generation. Links to all of the Unicode and non-Western font-related websites referenced by Emmanuel will be posted at the NERALLD website.

Following are summaries of the presentations that were given at the meeting.

The self-paced instruction at CET is an outgrowth of the workshops we teach. We needed a tool to assist in the delivery of course materials that would allow our students to self-pace their work. The resulting product is organized by levels of technical difficulty, by project, and pedagogical theme.

There are three ways to access the materials: student view, project view, or tool view. In the student view, a user sees a Quicktime video clip (with voice-over and step-by-step text instructions). The project view leads the user from the start to the end of a completed product. He/she can also use the Tool view (a pull-down menu) to find specific help and not have to work linearly. (The tool view was designed to help with remedial work.) The self-paced instruction package also has on-line chat so the students can interface with each other as well as with an instructor. With each level of technical difficulty, the basic project stays the same but implementation becomes more complex.

This is a work in progress. The module structure is in place but the CET staff is still adding content. Access will be limited to institutions affiliated with Carnegie Mellon.

Sarah also spoke very briefly about the online course management tool Prometheus, noting that its "presentation" and "discussion" features do support non-Western fonts, "chat" does not.

Like other institutions, Clark does not have enough technical support for both application support and faculty support for processes like web publishing. Unfortunately, Clark has been remiss in not incorporating students in the support model in significant numbers. Clark currently uses a Unix web server but is migrating towards a Windows 2000 IS4 server. This shift will allow more support to faculty desktops (but server personnel are not as happy). Clark has made the decision to be primarily a bricks-and-mortar school and our web-enhanced curriculum is in support of on-campus instruction, not distance education.

For web authoring, Clark supports Composer, FrontPage (both Mac and PC), MS Word or PowerPoint into HTML. Some professors use MS FrontPage to author class web sites. This is easy to use because the graphic user interface is very similar to other Microsoft Office products. Some sites exist only on the web server, some exist only in Blackboard, and many are an amalgam of the two. The best tool is the one faculty are comfortable with and can sustain. There is minimal pressure for conformity of course pages. The University's public affairs office controls the look-and-feel of administration and department pages, but this guidance does not apply to faculty pages.

FrontPage allows more variety and the Citrix server permits it to be cross-platform. Using FrontPage extensions, faculty can edit their pages on-line. The native interface is very simple and can work with both Office 2000 or XP (which allows saving directly to the web and eliminates FTPing files).

Few instructors use Composer because it is not as WYSIWYG as thought. Composer really requires the user to know some HTML to be effective. It does not allow on-line editing. DreamWeaver also does not allow on-line editing but it will allow auto upload.

Blackboard has many features (quizzes, chat, discussion, electronic submissions, group work, logging and statistics) that may be difficult for faculty to integrate into custom-authored sites. Blackboard also makes web sites quicker to create, but custom-authored sites have flexibility, allow large image collections, student web projects, pop-up windows, advanced programming and scripting control. However, adding functions and features may require additional programs (if using FrontPage).

Kara reviewed web sites that compared course management software, but because of the release of an upgrade, many of these sites were outdated. She pointed out that users must evaluate when each site was written/updated, why it was posted, and how complete the information is.

At URI,the courseware tool used for web-based course materials is WebCT. In the lab, WebCT  is used as a lab management and staff communication tool (and similarly at other labs on campus).  The students like it. Mary does not use all the program's features (such as the quiz function), but the chat tool and instant messaging are heavily used as a natural outgrowth from the tools the students use in classes.

At URI, students go through an authentication server which provides a single login and password for all systems.  Once into WebCT they move freely through various sites for courses and workplaces, such as the lab. Mary uses discussion forum spaces to post information for students, material relating to courses, and she maintains FAQ pages and archives of prior communications. Homepage, mail, forums, help and course materials - these are the pages that the students use most.  One thing she really appreciates is being able to post information once for referral by her 15 student workers -- and she doesn't have to repeat the info again. It also frees-up her time to do development projects instead of spending it with hands-on administration and supervision.

Mary walked us through her WebCT pages for her lab, Independence Hall Multimedia Facilities (IMHF). The links on the site include access to her calendar, student work schedules, instruction manuals for lab assistants, phone lists, and a photo gallery of her staff.

The site is not only a rich information resource; it creates a useful on-line environment, if you build it that way. It increases communication among workers, even when not on duty. Some disadvantages are the need for daily access and fairly close supervision to be sure students are checking the site.

It was a revolution in Fetherston's thinking that she could build something that would get and keep the students' attention. While she expected the FAQ or information archive to be most heavily used, she found instead that the group communication was the big draw. Using humor helps.

Her recommendations:

• Put the most frequently used functions on the sidebar
• Learn to use 'breadcrumbs' to back up through the site pages
• You don't need a lot of graphics, but do use bold colors and programming
• Make checking and maintaining the site part of your daily routine
• Put important days into the calendar, making it even more widely useful to the students
  (she also puts student birthdays on the calendar, for morale)
• Take full advantage of the Designer Options and help features of the software

At Worcester State, a Blackboard site is used for both Spanish composition and a civilization course. The advantages of Blackboard are: 24-hour access to course content, a place for all course info, electronic submission of assignments, flexible deadlines, opportunities for more direct communication, and facilitation of peer review. The disadvantages of Blackboard are: it takes time to do right; the server goes down sometimes; Blackboard can go down; and during high internet traffic, Blackboard is very slow. Also, not every student has web access, so some might have to use the lab. Features include the main page (which serves as an index); a student page that looks the same as the instructor page except for design features; the grade book feature (which she does not use, instead returns work digitally); a digital drop box for students to turn in assignments, and syllabus. In the composition course, every assignment has three copies: peer review, instructor’s correction and graded. Professor downloads composition and highlights errors.

Students see tools such as the digital drop box, calendar, check grades, personal info and a manual about Blackboard. To supplement Blackboard, she has added external links to museums, a Spanish thesaurus and CNN Español.

Holy Cross has instituted a program of Directed Independent Learning for Intermediate Spanish as a solution to limited resources and increasing student enrollment. This project was funded by a Mellon grant for self-paced learning. The program started as self-paced learning, but that did not work out well, so the emphasis switched to directed learning. The course work is very focused including weekly guidelines. Student work is faculty graded; and students meet with grad assistants (who are native speakers of the target language) as well as see an instructor for interviews. Faculty receive a course release to work in this program. Each semester, there is a tech advisor, a coordinator, and three course-released faculty members. This program started before courseware was available. The materials are accessed via the web and are color coded by level. A welcome page is used to post material each week. Students are required to take tests and write in the lab. The web site has a course overview, lists grading criteria, professor and student information.

Dan has found that WebCT can work very well because the instructor has the option to choose between various elements -- instructors can choose just those elements necessary for the class. But using WebCT requires developing a course culture where students understand they have to check the site daily for updates and assignments. Several elements, such as the course description can be accessed without WebCT, but the majority of content is delivered within the WebCT shell. Dan has chosen not to use the syllabus or calendar features, instead he has links to web pages for each chapter and those have the relevant dates on them. Work is reduced by using a template to create each chapter. The discussion forums are useful for language learning and can be grouped by topic. Students make mistakes in the forum, which is understandable because they are using the language in a myriad of new ways. Dan uses chat rooms, especially when he has to be absent (so they can meet virtually). There are no rules about what they can discuss, but each group is assigned a task and the students seem to self-police the chat. The use of the chat rooms makes them more interactive in the classroom. Included in the WebCT site are interactive pictures which show vocabulary in context (such as a car which plays vocabulary audio files when a mouse rolls over certain parts).

Dr. Acosta-Cruz wants to be able to constantly update assignments and materials as well as give students access to materials around the clock. Class materials are augmented by web links and on the site pages, there are also email links to the professor. As the students discuss topics on the site, Acosta-Cruz can respond to the discussion by adding additional materials to round out the content.

The instructor can respond to discussions in class and add materials to change the direction of the discussion. Dr. Acosta-Cruz has posted links to external web sites and has included specific comments about each link. She has archived all her favorite web pages on the site so, if her computer every crashes, those links are saved on the server. Acosta-Cruz pointed out several advantages of using FrontPage as a tool: it identifies broken links; backgrounds can be changed easily; and Microsoft Word files can be imported directly into FrontPage. She also noted that the product manual is very good as is the tutorial, but the Help button can be confusing.

This project is the result of a 4-year collaboration that started with four higher-education institutions and now is at all levels of education. The principals in the project gathered together to share resources: one set of servers, the same IT support, and three courseware tools. FirstClass is very popular in K-12. Some courses have moved between courseware packages.
Part of this project is an on-line faculty training section. Public school teachers have enough access to training for building foundation skills, so the project directs energy toward teaching them how to use the tools to reach pedagogical goals. In particular, the project encourages teachers to tie their curricular goals to state standards. There are suggestions on format, background knowledge, tying learning activities to objectives and how to make objectives measurable activities that are results oriented. One of the goals is to get teachers to design and post rubrics. There is some peer review in what gets posted and last year’s best teachers are mentoring this year’s teachers. The project is hosted by the State of Connecticut to remove barriers and inconsistencies between school districts. K-1-2-3 students have problems navigating, and the courses are restricted to very, very simple tasks (such as classroom exercises about the weather). None of the courses lists due dates because all lessons are posted to be shared.

Before beginning his presentation, Steve highlighted information from Barbara Sawhill's handout, "Web-based Course Management Tools in the K-12 Language Curriculum."