Back into Design: CALLing all Language Learning x Technology geeks!


New Year, New Projects!

I am taking this spring term off from teaching, partly to re-energize my batteries which have been rather low on account that I've been going full speed (🚌) since 2018; the pandemic didn't help because teaching increased around that time (not that I am complaining, the cosmos provided something I needed at the time).  Another reason for the break is partly to work on a new course development for the Fall term. While course development shouldn't take 8 months to complete, with so many other irons in the fire, it's a part-time endeavor.

For the first time, in a very long time, I  get to mix edtech with applied linguistics!🥳 The last time I did this was a long (long) time ago. It is rather exciting, but also daunting because, over the past 10 years, I haven't kept up with the CALL (computer-assisted language learning) world.  Before I started my dissertation planning, my thought was to do something CALL-related, so I spent a few years doing a deep dive into CALL (with a focus on MALL) articles in ReCALL, CALICO, and to some extent System (journals devoted to edtech in language education and applied linguistics). When I decided to focus on MOOCs and collaboration as my dissertation research, I stopped following that thread.  Well, now I am back and I am not quite sure where to pick up the thread again😅.

The course that I am tasked with resurrecting and updating is titled "The Internet in the Language Classroom," a title it got back in 2008 (probably as part of a grant my department had in those days, this is before my time).  Prior to that, it was titled "Technology in Education." Interestingly enough, there is also another defunct, separate course titled "Technology in Education. What's clear to me from the history of these two courses is that they were originally both Intro to CALL courses, when ICTs brought connection to the classroom one course morphed into an "internet course" and the other course morphed into a Web 2.0 course (ugh... someone was asleep at the curriculum committee wheel since these were essentially the same course...). In any case, this brings me to an interesting dilemma:   Since I have carte blanche to make this course anything I want (within the broad realm of CALL) what should I do? What has more value for learners?  Should I develop an Intro to CALL course?  Should I develop a more focused Teaching Languages Online course? Or something else? From my brief exploration of MA-TESOL programs (they are closely related to what my department offers), it seems that if technology courses exist, they tend to be introductory courses. If this course goes well, I'd like to resurrect the other course and do something CALLy with that too, and perhaps reinvigorate these technology electives more broadly.  My gut tells me that I should probably go with an Intro to CALL seminar course to test the waters out, but I am open to suggestions and ideas.  So, with that in mind:

Is your area of focus CALL? Do you teach such courses?  What are your thoughts? What sorts of topics do you cover?

Or, are you a student or graduate of an MA-TESOL program? What would you have wanted to learn?

If anyone is so inclined to share their syllabus with me, I'd be greatly obliged :-)

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