Auralog Projectplagwitz.blob.core.windows.net/content/plagwitz_auralog_eurocall20… · • if you can work beyond regular expressions – Crowdsource • if you have a network that

© [email protected], 9/21/2007 1

Auralog Project

Automation and Integration

DRAFT TRP, Language Lab 397

Auralog Summary Slide

• Pros• Alternatives• Issues and Workarounds

– Accounts– Content Search– Learning Path Creation

• Syllabus integration



Reviews• Bunting (2004), Lafford (2006), Lickey (2006),

Reeser (2006), Zheng (2006)– PROS:

• technology, esp. speech recognition – Which can be tricked, but used in a blended setting, will get

your students to speak already during class prep • considerable pedagogy

– “lack of cultural [authentic] content”, due to content reuse – → cohesion for easier management across esp. western

languages: Arabic, British English and American English, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese

– CONS: Unclear relation to a taught course, not extensible by own content

• Except for loosely linked “extra activities”


1Auralog Pros: Content• Structured delivery and progression in chapter-

like units (structures and vocabulary and chapters building on each other)

• Multimedia-rich• All 4 skills, including speech recognition, text

transformation writing tasks• Auto-correcting and self-grading• Chance to transform at least the homework

part of your learning in one step: replace “pulp”-by i-learning



Auralog: Training Example: Speech Recognition

• Use the general help• Observe the speak/listen cues on top of the screen• Example Video


2Auralog Pros: Infrastructure

• (somewhat) searchable/browsabledatabases of

• Stakeholders (Students, Tutors, Groups)• Content (Learning materials, Student language

output: Autograding, Reporting (including effortless student audio recordings, exportation for data mining), Record keeping

– Messaging system (used also assigning)



Exercise-Making, Pin-Making• Adam Smith’s Division of Labor on the verge of

the information revolution: what is a cottage industry?– Automate through NLP

• if you can work beyond regular expressions– Crowdsource

• if you have a network that is more than hardware, but can also parcel out

– Centralized content providers• Localized interaction with student and intelligent processing

of the resulting data• JISC statement that US content creation is largely owned to

publishing houses?


1Auralog Alternatives

• Textbook publishers– Blackboard cartridges (for textbooks with

mainly assessments)– Quia.com:

• + Integration of homework and in-class• - Separate infrastructure, simplistic• - Simple transformation of paper/tape listening

content • - No recording of student output students not

speaking



2Auralog Alternatives

• Learning Object Repositories Merlot (US), Jorum (UK): – Limited quantity (in the 100s/12s), limited

search, learning “objects” to be integrated into a progression, and into a data-processing infrastructure

– Steep Requirements: collaborative tagging infrastructure; metadata schemas; controlled vocabularies; taxonomies; facet analysis; ontologies


Accounts I: Default• Integration with HE student information systems (Aston: SITS) not

on par with VLEs (Aston: Blackboard)– Have students create their own accounts? See Anti-pattern– Batch Account creation/ Importation Tool

• Fails on duplicates, No updates possible• No support for 1student-1enrolment-records, but ~60% of student enrolment

in a 2nd, 3rd or higher-numbered language module ((2006 TP1)).• Problem: how can instructors easily connect to their students?

– a student can be paired only with one “tutor” per target language at a time

– Workaround: instructors as super-tutors (with “access to all studentgroups”), and interaction of instructors with their subsets of students through filtering by studentgroups

• New problem: students can belong to only 1 studentgroup per studentgrouptype– Workaround: create 1 studentgrouptype per studentgroup = module



Accounts II: Studentgroups

• Attempt to pre-create through autoitall unique studentgroups (with studentgrouptypes) (year, term, module, group) for the forseeablefuture – App hangs at about 30000

studentgrouptypes (< ∞, but auralogrestored our database free of charge)

• give up on 1 account per student and on sub-groups (sections), instead create yearly student accounts, assign those at year/teaching period start to permanent modules (studentgroups/studentgrouptypes), add new modules (few) manually


Accounts III: Studentgroups

• Default tedious

• Automation



Accounts IV: Students• No LDAP integration pull in uniquenames and fake passwords• No handling of multi-record course-enrolments of a student VBA,

Lookup-functions• No uniquename for instructor, only surname and firstname use

instead uniquename, sortname


Accounts V: Results

• Automated– creating 368

studentgrouptypes– for 368 studentgroups

= modules • Enrolled 739 students• Including in multiple

modules• Including in multiple

languages



Content I: Default

• Default content printing interface is tedious


Content II: Built-in• Default content search and printout

documented: Tell_Me_More_Tutor_Tools_Tools_Content_Printout.wmv

• Add-on vendor-provided Tables of Contents



Content III:Automation• Autoit

programm

• Allows extraction of content (per language 3.402 pdf files


Content IV:Automation• * 8 > 100,000

files• add

Solutions/Translations/GrammarLinks better course integration (emailed assignments, in-class handouts)

• Add unique ids for management



Auralog: Content Search(Labeau)Number of matches

Help about the syntax


Auralog Content XLS



1Learning Path Creation

• Getting all possible paths, both– Atomic elements (up

to many questions)– And cross-section

collections on the multi-element exercise level and activity type level (e.g. all dialogues per level)



• Setting: In Progress • Extract Content,

export to Excel: – instructors filter

relevant learning paths by content and student recipients, refer students to unique id




• Automate the importation of instructor-rearranged pdf-files


An Auralog Syllabus Addition

• Topical Learning Paths for remedial study



1 Auralog Syllabus– Self-access homework preparation

• “auto-correction of errors without the fear of instructor judgment. This is a particular advantage in the area of oral skills, which students so often want to master yet most fear practicing in a classroom setting.”

– Face-to-face class work• Bring computer exercises to class for review (extra lap?) • Bring pdf printouts to class for application

– Reese (2006): “The program might best be conceived of as a step in a communicative approach, where students might subsequently create freely with the language targeted as building blocks of dialogues or other discursive forms.”

• Would also benefit from non-Auralog, but content-aligned “extra activities”


2 Auralog Syllabus

• Adaptive Learning Paths: Prep all, 2/3 all,1/3 extra for weak

ExerciseType Skill Seq AssignedGrammar Explanations G all:prepGlossary V all:prepThe Right Word V 1 all:regWord Association V 2 all:regMystery Phrase V 3 all:regWord Order R;W- all:regGrammar Practice G all:regText Transformation G;R;W all:regVideo L all:regVideo MCQ L;R- all:regFill-in-the-Blanks V;G all:regDialogue L;R-;S all:regSentence Practice G weakWords and Functions G weakDictation G-;L;V- weakPicture&Word Association V weakWords and Topics V weak



3 Auralog Syllabus

• Example German– Example intermediate “family”=level: 12

“units”=chapters, subdividable into 3*(2*2 related) topics

– 1 “unit”=chapter per class hour → 2 per week – 6 weeks per “family”=level → 2 levels per 12-

week teaching period → including 3 business levels, 2.25 years for ab initio UWLP


Teacher monitors student output (audio) and self-graded resultsAuralog

Teacher builds (once) custom learning paths

Auralog Use in Detail IAutograding > threshold?

Tutortools / Student accounts:Results

Before Face-face Class At End of Teaching Period

Face2Face Class

Final Grade

Adaptive Regular

Progressive Chapters, divided into Levels, for weekly lab homework

Observed Weaknesses?

Topical (primarily Structures, e.g.

Subjunctive)

Built-in

Progressive ChaptersTopical

Fast Lane Extra Lap

AuralogTable of

content.doc

M:Auralogcontent

.xls pdf

Desktop Search against Content Printout

All:Prep

AuralogPDFs



1Auralog Hacks

• Mute Sound– By altering these sound files in a sound editor– Here unobtrusive jingle (52kb) for sound testing


2 Auralog Hacks

• Accessibility– The student (adobe flash) application is

notorioulsy inaccessible (tested with screenreader)

– Not so the content printouts

Documents

Auralog Projectplagwitz.blob.core.windows.net/content/plagwitz_auralog_eurocall20… · • if you can work beyond regular expressions – Crowdsource • if you have a network that