Virtual Misadventures: Technical Problems and Student Satisfaction When Implementing Multimedia in an Advanced French Listening Comprehension Course

Alysse Weinberg
Second Language Institute
University of Ottawa

Abstract:
What are the advantages and problems related to using multimedia technology in an advanced French listening comprehension course? What are some of the typical vicissitudes, trials and tribulations encountered when teachers decide to introduce multimedia activities in their classes? This article illustrates the advantages and difficulties of using multimedia from the point of view of both the teacher and the learners. We first give a brief presentation of the context in which our experiment took place. We outline the difficulties encountered by the professor who had to select material, create activities, and administer the daily management of the course, touching on hardware and support issues. We then investigate the reaction of the students to the new media and the teaching approach.

KEYWORDS

Integration of Technology, JavaScript, HTML, Web-Based Instruction, French as a Second Language, Listening Comprehension

INTRODUCTION

Enthusiasm and fear: Is this how language teachers feel when they approach the integration of the Internet and multimedia technology into their courses? Teachers are enthusiastic about Internet resources which can give their students immediate access to an immense pool of authentic

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material (e.g., documents, music, and news broadcasts by native speakers). Learners may experience aspects of the target culture through the use of video and audio files, graphics, texts, and online tools without having visited the country (Garrett, 1991; Joiner, 1997; Pusack & Otto, 1997; Lafford & Lafford, 1997; Osuna & Meskill, 1998). However, while the process of integrating the Internet into the foreign language classroom curriculum stimulates learner interest and motivation (Sohonee, 1998), implementing a multimedia component in a language course involves a completely different set of skills than that of normal classroom teaching. Technologically inexperienced teachers, conscious of their technical inadequacies and their lack of control over capricious technology, often approach this task with trepidation merging into fear.

After a brief presentation of the context in which our experiment took place we address the following two questions:

1. What kind of technical difficulties are encountered by introducing Internet and multimedia activities into an advanced French listening comprehension course?

2. What are the perceptions and preferences of students presented with three different types of media—audio, video, and multimedia?

CLASSROOM AND TEACHING PROCEDURES: THE COURSE AND ITS SETTING

Between 1986 and 1994, the comprehension-based approach, as promoted by Krashen (1981), was widely used in the beginning level French courses at the Second Language Institute (SLI) of the University of Ottawa. This approach emphasized receptive skills—reading and listening— and de-emphasized productive skills—writing and speaking. In addition, the approach put greater focus on the students and their learning processes. Comprehension was perceived as the first step for language learning. This eight-year long experience required the creation of a specific curriculum, the development of listening and reading materials, and the implementation of testing procedures, along with studies of student satisfaction (Corbeil & Thérien, 1992; Cornaire & Tréville, 1992; Courchêne, 1992; LeBlanc, Duquette, & Compain, 1992; Compain, Dionne, Duquette, Rivas-Rivas, & Weinberg, 1995).

While many low-level comprehension courses have been abandoned, one advanced course in French listening comprehension was maintained. The description for this course states that "students will develop their listening strategies and skills and that they will be systematically exposed

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to a variety of accents, registers, environments, text types and delivery modes." The main objective is to prepare the student to easily understand a university course given in French.

No textbook is attached to the course, so the teacher is responsible for selecting the material at the appropriate advanced linguistic level to match the syllabus and course aims. The selection criteria for the material was based on content, authenticity, and variety as stated in the course syllabus. Content was chosen designed to enlarge students' knowledge of the contemporary manifestations and historical context of French culture. The main themes were similar to topics in introductory courses in fields of study such as sociology, history, and so on. All of the audio and video segments used in the course contained authentic French material taken directly from stations such as Radio Canada and SRC (Canada), TV5 (France), and from movies such as Le fleuve aux grandes eaux. Nothing was especially created for the course. A variety of speaking styles were selected to expose the students to various regional accents, gestures, rates of speaking, and discourse levels of the language as specified in the course syllabus. Represented were accents from Alsace, the south of France, Belgium, Switzerland, the Caribbean islands, Africa, and of course from French speaking Canada, especially Acadia, Québec, and Francophone Ontario. The media clips varied in length from 10 to 45 minutes.

The course description features listening strategies, and these strategies represent a major component of this course in order to increase the students' awareness about their learning processes. The definition of strategy here follows the commonly definition of a conscious mental operation applied by learners to help with their language acquisition (O'Malley, Chamot, Stewer-Manzanares, Küpper, & Russo, 1985; Chamot, Küpper, & Impink-Hernandez,1988; Oxford & Crookall, 1989). The typology proposed by O'Malley and Chamot (1990) classifies strategies in three large categories: (a) metacognitive strategies which assist learners in the evaluation and improvement of their own learning processes, (b) cognitive strategies which guide learner interactions with their text, and (c) social-affective strategies which help students with their foreign language interactions with others. By deliberately presenting and discussing learning strategies, the professor trains students to understand their language comprehension processes, to become more autonomous in their learning, and to use these strategies outside the classroom situation (Mendelsohn, 1994; Oxford, 1990).

All listening comprehension activities in the course included prelistening, listening, and postlistening components (Underwood, 1989; Joiner, 1997) and presented inherently interesting subject matter appropriate to the students' level. Working with previewing and prelistening activities reduce some of the difficulties inherent to the use of authentic material and thereby enables students to predict the course of a conversation based on their

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previous knowledge (Duplantie & Massey, 1984; Mendelsohn, 1995). Students were also taught viewing strategies such as segment planning, defining viewing goals, identifying problems, and evaluating the effectiveness of self-teaching methods.

The course is normally based only on the presentation of audio and video material, but, starting in January 2000, students were exposed to multimedia material as well. The class met twice a week for 90 minutes for 12 weeks. One of the two weekly classes was devoted to viewing video segments. This class was held in a small amphitheatre where the video was projected on a large screen (approximately 8 feet high and 12 feet wide). The second of the two weekly classes was devoted to listening to audio clips. Before this time, the audio portion of the course took place in a traditional language laboratory; starting in January 2000, the students went to a computer laboratory for the multimedia part. The audio and video segments presented in the same week had similar themes. The testing for the audio and video components of the course also presented material similar to the themes shown and discussed in class.

THE MULTIMEDIA ENVIRONMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA

The course was held in a brand new multimedia laboratory, opened in May 1999, equipped with 30 Windows 98 workstations each with sound cards and headsets. The laboratory is run from a Prisma Tandberg control panel, and the equipment allows the playing and recording of audiocassettes. The student workstations have limited but useful Internet connections. The firewall on the main multimedia server does not allow students to access sound and video files over the Internet, but these files may be accessed and displayed by the teacher working at the main console. This limitation was implemented to reduce the amount of bandwidth required to service the laboratory. The multimedia materials could be accessed only from the campus multimedia laboratory.

THE PARTICIPANTS

In January 2000, 11 students registered for the course and in the middle of the term another student joined the course, making at the end nine women and three men. All were strong students with marks of A or B from the prerequisite advanced listening and speaking course. The total number of 12 students represented a small number of students because there are normally about 25 students in the course. All the students had each spent at least one year at the university; they were in their second, third, or fourth year except for one, a special student over 70 years old who was just taking the course for his own benefit. Seventy-five percent

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of the students had previously taken French courses in our department. None of the students was working towards a minor degree in French or had declared French as a concentrated area of study. All students were Canadians with a rich variety of ethnic backgrounds such as South-American, African, Italian, and Turkish. Some were very familiar with the Internet and the different formats of sound and video files. Others were true beginners with the technology and required regular review of the different steps to start the program, to enlarge the screen, and to move from one screen to the next. Only half of the students had access to the Internet at home. For all students, this course was their first multimedia language course. The students were highly motivated and attended 94% of the classes. The average student mark on the midterm test was 76%, while the average mark for the final exam was 80%.

INTRODUCING MULTIMEDIA FOR LISTENING COMPREHENSION

The inclusion of a multimedia component in the course added variety, quality, and interactivity to interesting topics. The following list of features highlights the advantages of using multimedia components which were not previously available in the traditional language laboratory. (Noblitt, 1990; Furstenberg, 1997; Desmarais, 1998; Lancien, 1998):

•a multimodal presentation combining texts, sounds and videos,

• high quality sound, video, and pictures,

• glossaries, grammatical and lexical reviews, dictionaries, and hyperlinks to related material,

•a variety of interactive question types such as fill in the blank, multiple choice, drag and drop, pairing, associations, and so forth,

•a pleasant-to-use and attractive program interface that allows easy navigation,

• controls to pause and rewind the sound track,

• useful feedback analyzing students' responses,

• different program branching procedures depending on level of language skill, and

•a system to help students monitor what exercises have been completed and what tests have been passed.

The following features of multimedia materials are especially useful in a listening comprehension course:

• The learning activity provides perspectives on different aspects of the same text in order to allow students to understand more fully what is being presented.

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• The clip can be accompanied by a text script or presented without it. The script can include only keywords, the whole script, the whole script with certain keywords hyperlinked to explanations, or a translation of the script.

• The activity can include text, pictures, and diagrams to clarify the historical or cultural context.

• Finally, and most importantly, the audio track is recorded in a high fidelity format.

Implementing a multimedia component into a language course includes a variety of tasks such as courseware selection, installation, activity selection, and user support for the students. Hubbard (1988, 1992, 1996) proposed a framework for CALL courseware evaluation and development. Murphy (1995) listed the six essential characteristics of good software as good documentation, learner control, branching capabilities, portability, ease of use, and cost effectiveness. Robb and Susser (2000) made a study of how foreign language instructors choose courseware and found that, despite the availability of standardized techniques and checklists to select and evaluate courseware, a gap exists between the methodology recommended in the literature and the actual practice by the instructors.

Having decided to introduce multimedia in ones course, the language teacher then faces two options: to buy or to develop brand new material. For our advanced French comprehension course no commercial CDs were used. The ones we considered were flawed in some way that made them unsuitable. Most were aimed at the beginning level and therefore not relevant to this advanced course. Some had poor quality sound or confusing user interfaces. Some commercial CDs could not be installed on the local area network. Some emphasized only French culture from France and were not suitable for a Canadian university. While a single CD may be reasonably priced, the cost of a site license may be prohibitively expensive. We decided then to create our own activities designed specifically for the course. The next section details the challenges and the problems encountered in the development and implementation of the multimedia activities.

PROBLEMS WITH PREPARING VIDEO AND AUDIO FILES FOR USE IN THE LABORATORY

Multimedia File Formats and Student Access

The students needed to have reliable access to video or sound files used in the learning activities but were frustrated by the university Internet firewall that blocked downloading sound and video files to student computers. The professor's computer was also filtered by this firewall, but she

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finally obtained authorization to let sound and video files pass the firewall. These segments could then be displayed to all of the student terminals by mirroring the professor's workstation. Nevertheless, this solution was far from satisfactory for the students because they wanted to have complete control over the video rather than just having the professor play it for them.¹ For the first video segment, the students even had to memorize the information presented in the video in order to answer the subsequent questions on the text. After this first unsatisfactory session, a different approach was used.

Many video files on the Internet are stored as RealPlayer .ram or .ra formats. These formats, referred to as streaming files, have been engineered by the company to prevent Internet users from downloading local copies for copyright reasons. While the video portion cannot be downloaded, the audio portion can be saved while the video is playing. We saved the sound file as an independent file and stored it on the local network. The students could then view the video played by the teacher and also listen to the soundtrack that they could control as they wished.

Connections to Internet sites from the teacher's console, which one would not expect to be a problem, were also unreliable. The Internet site where the video was stored would sometimes return the infamous HTTP 404 error "Requested page not found" because the server was otherwise occupied or the location of the page had been changed. In the morning when network traffic was light, the files were usually easily accessible, but in the afternoon, when more people were using the Internet, the files would not load or would take a very long time.²

Multimedia File Quality

The inferior quality of the original video and audio tracks was another problem. Since file distributors want to minimize the amount of data being sent, they make many compromises in sound and video quality to reduce file size. The transmitted sound track might be encoded at 11 kilohertz, 8-bit mono (which should give adequate sound quality) and then highly compressed, resulting in very poor sound quality. Problems can also occur in the original recording. On one recording, for example, a verbal exchange was badly done because the microphone was held too far away from the people being recorded.

The video portion might also show signs of high compression rates which result in a very small, stamp size image (Godwin-Jones, 1997). Doubling the size of the image or enlarging it to the size of the whole screen makes the image so blurred that users cannot see any details, just colored pixels. Taken together, the video and audio problems make for a very unsatisfactory listening and viewing experience.³

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When downloading multimedia files from the Internet, users encounter frequent pauses as the RealPlayer program waits for the data stream to come down. The video and sound track can be received in drips and drabs, full of stops and pauses, often in the middle of a word. Bush (1996) had already noted that students can become quite frustrated with the poor performance of the ongoing video stream especially because of the lack of synchronization between the lips and the sound.⁴

Size of Sound Files

Seven megabytes per song or video was generally the optimum size of file to be transferred within a local area network. If the size of the file was larger than seven megabytes, conflicts begin to interfere with the transfer when students all tried to access it at the same time. The Audioview 32 program, the sound editing software that was used for the recordings, had its default sound quality set to 44 kilohertz, 16 bit, stereo. These parameters created a sound file with size four times larger than it needed to be. A more satisfactory setting would be 44 kilohertz, 8 bit, mono, which created readily manageable files. Quite audible voices may be recorded at 11 kilohertz, and music pleasant enough to listen to may be recorded at 16 kilohertz. Bush (2000) offered a good suggestion that it is better to save audio or video files under the best format available for archive purposes and then make a second copy in lower quality for immediate distribution.

Problem of Copyright

Scinicariello (1997) pointed out that everyone working with multimedia has to be concerned with copyright issues (see also Pusack and Otto, 1997). The development and pervasiveness of MP3 files has further confused the already murky issue of copyright infringement. The wildly popular Napster and Gnutella programs make music files available to anyone without distinguishing those that are legally or illegally distributed. Downloading a music file for private listening that has also been made available by the copyright holders is certainly legal. However, copying the same file without permission to a local area network to make it available to students infringes on copyright. Some artists provide freely distributable MP3 samples of one or two of their songs. Many music files are made available on the Internet so that the music company benefits from advertising when visitors to their site download them. These files may only be downloaded from the distributor's site and may not be downloaded for any secondary use including educational purposes. As a general rule, it is prudent to assume that the use of any MP3 or video file infringes on copyright unless one has explicit permission to use it for educational purposes from the

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copyright holder. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) (2000) states, "A copyright is infringed when a song is made available to the public by uploading it to an Internet site for other people to download, sending it through an e-mail or chat service, or otherwise reproducing or distributing copies without authorization from the copyright owner. In civil cases copyright infringement can occur whether or not money was exchanged for the music, and in criminal cases there only needs to be a possibility of financial loss to the copyright holder or financial gain to the infringer." (For an introduction to music copyright laws in the USA, see www.riaa.com.) As Dvorak, Charlotteaux, Gilgen, Herren, Jones, and Trometer (1995) noted the language teacher is not only faced with technology but also with the law.

DESIGNING MULTIMEDIA MATERIALS

It was necessary to find both audio and video multimedia files for use in the course. Three video segments were selected from the library of TV5 (www.funambule.com). These videos all dealt with the theme of le diable 'the devil:'L'Exorciste de Nice (an interview with an exorcist priest in the south of France), Le Violon du diable (a story about a Québecois fiddler), and the Les Sorcières de Marchiennes (about a festival of sorcery in the north of France). For the audio component, the following songs were chosen: L'Auvergnat by Brassens, Honte à qui peut chanter by Brassens but sung by Maxime Le Forestier, and Nuit et brouillard by Ferrat, all of whom are classic French folk singers.

While the activities for the songs were first being developed, an e-mail was sent to the singers' official web sites asking for permission to use their material in these activities. No response was ever received. As a result, these web pages were mostly used as proof-of-concept prototypes and only used once locally in a class to see whether students enjoyed working with them. Without the permission of the copyright holder, it is impossible to use these materials regularly or to post them to the Web. Consequently, new activities will be based on the music of less well known artists who are pleased to have the added attention. These new pages will only be developed when proper permissions are received. The web pages for TV5 and Funambule state that their videos may be downloaded and used locally for pedagogical purposes. In fact, their web pages were set up to promote learning the French language.

Outline of the Planned Materials

More activities were planned than were actually used in class. Originally, each class was to have an audio and a video activity, but time permitted only one or the other. The different activities developed around

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each audio or video segment took the students much more time than anticipated. (See the original schedule of multimedia programs prepared for the course and the changes that had to be made in the schedule in Appendix A.)

The students were introduced to the song with prelistening activities which were designed to activate their background knowledge and to give them information on the singer and the theme of the song. Students explored related links that were either stored locally or available on the Web.

The listening section had three parts. The first part was a true or false activity related to the general global comprehension of the song. The second part consisted of fill-in-the-blank questions on the lyrics. These questions were always accompanied by side notes giving historical, cultural, or literary details on the elements in the song, glossary explanations, texts and pictures, and Internet links to related topics. The third part of the section consisted of multiple choice questions focusing on detailed comprehension questions.

Developing Tools for the Server

Two different approaches were used to develop the language activities. Activities related to the video components were developed using the authoring tool Ficelle (aix1.uottawa.ca/~weinberg/ficelle.html), while all the audio activities were encoded in HTML and JavaScript.

Some authoring systems (e.g., ToolBook and Authorware) are difficult to manage without more advanced technical skills and support. Others (e.g., WinCalis from Duke University and Dasher form the University of Iowa) offer simple templates for the language teacher. The Ficelle program was developed in a partnership among Michael Davidson, Alysse Weinberg, and Hélène Knoerr to support the development of multimedia activities for second language learning. The program makes it very easy and fast to develop sophisticated fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice activities for reading, listening, and grammar practice complete with automated generic feedback or customized context-sensitive feedback. The program allows developers to insert sound files, video files, pictures, review links, glossary items, and phonetic characters in lessons. Students can record their own voice and compare it to a standard recording. The program has been used extensively for language activities and for testing at the University of Ottawa where it has been installed on a multimedia network. (For a review of Ficelle, see Saury, DiBella, & Berg, 2001.)

Figure 1 shows a sample screen developed for Le Violon du diable using Ficelle.

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Figure 1

A Ficelle Activity for Le Violon du diable

Students can listen to the soundtrack of the video by clicking on the small wave icon. The screen shows fill-in-the-blank (cloze) boxes with both correct and wrong answers as well as a glossary item from the script of the video.

Developing Tools for the Web

Developing language activities for the Web can either be done from first principles through HTML/JavaScript coding or by using templates like Hot Potatoes from the University of Victoria or Web Author from the Penn Language Center at the University of Pennsylvania. (For links to these sites and other resources including sample activities, see aix1.uottawa.ca/~weinberg/multimedia.html.) Developing customized activities in HTML and JavaScript is technically laborious and time consuming. It requires a team of technical specialists, including JavaScript programmers, to create sophisticated learning activities.⁵ Making canned exercises is fairly simple with packages like Hot Potatoes, but their standard

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format does not provide a satisfactory interface, page presentation, or activity format when these pages are used repeatedly. A novice developer might also have trouble linking two pages created at different times without resorting to modifying the underlying HTML coding. We have used the template and customized HTML approaches. While the necessary JavaScript programming was technically challenging, the task of designing an attractive and appropriate interface for each lesson took a great deal of thought and creativity. Figure 2 shows a sample web-based HTML/ JavaScript activity for a Maxime Le Forestier lesson.

Figure 2

An HTML/JavaScript activity for Maxime Le Forestier lesson

Problems with Designing the Interactive Multimedia Language Activities

Creation of multimedia language learning activities is of course fraught with unexpected difficulties. The two browsers Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer have subtle and not so subtle differences, especially in handling the cursor or in moving graphic objects. Certain JavaScript code may work properly on Explorer but not on Netscape and vice versa.

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Accented characters are handled differently on Macintosh and PC computers and without special HTML/JavaScript coding, these characters will not present consistently across the two types of platforms. Different versions of the browser program will interpret JavaScript code differently.

The key to effective interactive multimedia language activities lies in the presentation of feedback to the student users. If the students fill in a blank and press enter, they expect to see feedback informing them whether or not they entered the correct answer and, if not, a clue about what the right answer is, preferably based on some intelligent interpretation of their wrong answer.

The fill-in-the-blank control we used was straightforward, simply informing students whether they filled in the blank completely correctly. Any small difference from the correct answer would result in the cloze box being blanked out. The students were able to get help by clicking on a help button, but this approach was not entirely satisfactory. The students were frustrated using the help function and specifically mentioned the lack of adequate feedback in their evaluation questionnaires. Frankly, the feedback models found in the interactive language activities on the Internet are disappointing and not user friendly. There does not yet seem to be a JavaScript fill-in-the-blank control with useful and satisfactory feedback response functionality, although the data input controls of WebPractest, a shareware authoring program for HTML using Java and JavaScript, provide an excellent beginning.

Network Support

Vautherin (1999) insists on the presence of a technician to provide support when new technology is introduced. A network technician was available for consultation on this class but provided indifferent to poor service. For example, the latest version of QuickTime was installed on some of the workstations but not all. As a result, the song that was to be studied could not be played on all the workstations thus delaying teaching for 20 minutes. One week, the students were able to print without problems, the next week the printing function failed on some of the workstations. The technician gave up without trying to help, leaving the professor and the students feeling frustrated and abandoned.

PERCEPTION OF THE STUDENTS: LEVEL OF SATISFACTION

At the end of every multimedia session, a short questionnaire was distributed to students to solicit their views on that day's activities. Students' comments were generally very positive with the exception of those on one

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video that had poor sound quality. Students responded favorably to the themes, songs, links, and sound quality of the different activities. (See questionnaire and sample student comments in Appendix B.)

A second, more detailed questionnaire was administered at the end of the term to elicit information on the students' perception of the three different formats to which they had been exposed during the term. This questionnaire contained both Likert-scale items and open-ended comment questions. (See this questionnaire in Appendix C.) Students' responses to selected questions are presented below.

Quantitative Preferences

The first question focused on the student's preference for using video, audio, and multimedia materials. Their responses are summarized in Table

1.

1.What type of activity did you prefer doing? Indicate your preference.

Table 1

Students' Preferences for Video, Audio, and Multimedia Materials

The pattern of students' responses to this question is somewhat puzzling. The students were expected to scale the three presentation formats in a definite order. However, some students had three first choices (preferring all three), two second choices and no third choice, or two first choices and one second. Watching videos was generally the preferred activity. The audio listening was the least popular but was not strongly rejected.

The second question dealt with the ideal distribution of video, audio, and multimedia across the term (see Table 2).

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2. Assume that a semester course has 24 classes. Ideally, what number of classes do you think should be devoted to each different activity type? Enter numbers adding to 24.

• Classes watching videos in the room with the large screen

• Classes listening to audiocassettes in the Multimedia Laboratory.

• Classes working with Ficelle and Internet multimedia exercises in the Multimedia Laboratory.

Table 2

Ideal Distribution of Video, Audio, and Multimedia Materials

For these 12 students, the ideal course of 24 classes would have 10 classes devoted to watching videos, seven classes devoted to listening to audiocassettes, and seven classes devoted to multimedia and Internet activities. These results again show the general preference for watching videos, while listening to cassettes or doing multimedia activities follow second.

Questions 3, 5, and 7 dealt with the level of satisfaction with the different presentation formats the students had been exposed to. Students responded to these questions on a four-point scale ranging from "very dissatisfied" to "very satisfied" (see Table 3)

Table 3

Level of Students' Satisfaction With Audio, Video, and Multimedia Materials

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The students were generally satisfied with the three presentation formats with watching video again being the most satisfactory and listening to audiocassettes being the least.

Students' Reactions

Questions 4, 6, and 8 solicited students comments on the three formats.

Watching Videos

There were two very common praises for the videos. The students praised the very clear pictures and sound quality. Many students also said that the contents of the video were educational in themselves. One limitation was that the students could not rewind or review the video by themselves. The special viewing room with the large screen was very popular and favorably compared to a movie theatre.

Listening to Audiocassettes

This presentation format was less popular. One student said that he "did not find it a very enjoyable activity." It was uncomfortable wearing earphones. Even the same topics seemed less interesting when presented on audio tapes. One student remarked that the sound was unclear. On the positive side, if students just have cassettes with audio and no image to give a context, they are forced to listen more carefully. The most popular feature, mentioned four or five times out of 12, was that students could rewind and listen to the tape as they choose and that they could work at their own pace.

Using Multimedia Language Activities

The comments for the computerized multimedia activities were much richer than for the other two media, although the responses were sometimes very contradictory. In general the positive comments outweighed the negative impressions. Some paraphrased comments follow.

• One student said that he hated computers and preferred to write.

•Technical difficulties complicated the learning.

• There was frustration when the computer did not work.

• Dislikes slowed progress in learning computer technology.

• Dislike of the French keyboard was a problem.

• Some students did not like the automated question correction function in the HTML/JavaScript pages. They had difficulties in printing the HTML pages.

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Other students said they

• enjoyed working with multimedia activities because they felt that they learned more this way;

• liked to be allowed to guess word spelling and that repetition helped understanding;

• never used computer before but really enjoyed it and found it helpful;

• really liked working with Ficelle and the Internet;

• thought it is nice to do hands-on activities with French;

• appreciated the fact that things were interesting and kept them busy, that they tended to use their mind, and that it was great;

• enjoyed working by themselves at their own pace; and

• found the experience enjoyable, that it was interesting and good practice using computers, and that it was fun.

The students enjoyed listening to the songs and having the cultural context explained through side notes and Internet links. Their comments were quite thoughtful and showed no hesitation at expressing their views concerning the programs. Students clearly liked doing multimedia activities that allowed them to control their language learning.

Further analysis of the students' comments revealed that they complained about the sound quality more at the beginning of the course than at the end. At the beginning of the course, they were still learning how to manipulate the sound files, and, in addition, the sound files used in the early classes were copied from Internet video downloads for which the original sound quality was mediocre to poor. For the classes later in the course, we used higher quality sound files which came from music CDs. For these files we received very positive comments about the sound quality and the smooth operation of the programs.

Another problem mentioned by students involved their unfamiliarity with the French keyboard. Although each booth was equipped with a booklet identifying where the French keys were located and how to type French characters, the students resented the foreign keyboard. This comment is quite easy to understand and is a reflection of their lack of automaticity when typing in French. Anyone using a new keyboard would sympathize with this comment. The older student in the group complained quite a lot about difficulty using the computer. As Joiner (1997) has noted, unfamiliarity with a computer (e.g., awkwardness of the fingers on the keys and general fear of technology) is a factor affecting older students' learning.

One other recurrent comment dealt with the fill-in-the-blank type of activity. These blanks focused on verb morphology, and some students thought they were an effective way of reviewing some conjugation (imparfait andpassé composé forms). Some even mentioned they would have liked links to review grammatical concepts.

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Various researchers (e.g., Burston, 1990; Brandl, 1995) have investigated the effectiveness and preferences of students for various feedback mechanisms. Our students also commented on the presentation of feedback for the two interfaces. With Ficelle, students received feedback immediately after entering their answers supported by hints about the correct answer. With the HTML-produced activity, they felt frustrated with the lack of feedback. (It should be recalled that this activity replaced entire incorrect answers by blanks.) In some extreme cases, some students filled in the blanks for the whole song before checking their answers and lost all of their wrong answers. They could of course use the help button, but the help button only provided the correct answer letter by letter, a hardly satisfactory technique.

From one week to the other, students tended to forget the different steps they had to use. They had to be reminded what the passwords were, how to access the activity sites, and how to navigate from one application to another. Most of the students were not familiar with the alt+tab keystroke or any other way to switch application windows. Lafford and Lafford (1997) reported different reactions to the use of the Web. They commented that students are generally quite positive about the information found on the Web but very much frustrated by technical problems. Three years later, the comments of the students in the course described here follow the same track. In spite of technical difficulties and some frustration, the students were very satisfied with the richness of the multimedia activities and the programs.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE IMPLICATIONS

While, on one hand, language teachers continue to struggle to overcome technical and content issues in order to introduce multimedia materials in their classes, on the other hand, the expectation that modern language instruction will include a multimedia component grows stronger and stronger. Harvey and Purnell (1995) defined the three Cs of technology literacy as comfort, confidence, and creativity, and the three Cs are necessary for any professor contemplating the implementation of multimedia or Internet language activities in the language laboratory. The professor must be able to be confident that the programs being used are going to work and believe that any problems that will arise can be solved. Vautherin (1999) insisted that the enthusiasm and positive attitude about the use of technology for language learning instills confidence in professors and students as well as allows the professor to be more creative in the use of the technology.

How does the professor become so knowledgeable and confident with these tools? Reaching this goal will require an investment by both the

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professor and the institution. The professor will have to invest time to learn computer network technology and to keep up to date with commercial language learning packages, HTML/JavaScript, and authoring tools. The institution will have to provide a resource person to give quality network and software support and adequate funding to maintain a language laboratory with modern hardware, operating systems, and full Internet access. The institution also has to allocate time to the professor for the development of interesting and creative course materials using these multimedia tools and recognize the value being added to the courses.

NOTES

¹ Noblitt (1990) showed that learner control is crucial for listening comprehension. Joiner (1997) also stated that professor control of the listening has two major drawbacks: all students have to listen to the same material at the same time, and they have little input into or control over the listening material.

² Bush (1996) referred to problems with bandwidth and slow file downloads as the "World Wide Wait". It is still very difficult to transmit video and audio signals of sufficient fidelity by modem to make them useful for language learning applications.

³ Bush (1996, 2000) has contrasted the low quality of some media files found on the Internet with the high quality sound and video available on CD-ROMs and DVDs.

⁴ Kellerman (1990) and Montgomery (1993) have noted the importance of lip reading for improved comprehension.

⁵ The Dreamweaver program from Macromedia is a web site design and production tool that allows users to develop web pages and interactive exercises without requiring knowledge of HTML or JavaScript. The WebCT suite is an integrated environment for use in an educational institution that allows simplified development of course pages and exercises. Users still have to master all of the technical steps of uploading a web page and making it available on the Web.

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Appendix A

Multimedia Schedule

Appendix B

Sample Short Questionnaire and Student Comments

Directions to students Comment on the following activities giving constructive criticism, proposing any suggestions for improvement, commenting on how clear the sound quality was, ease of use of the user interface, usefulness of any feedback, or saying what you liked or disliked about the activity?

350

351

Video: exorciste de Nice

• Attractive recording, clear information, interesting.

• Great but difficult to guess the answers.

• Video overall interesting.

• A little hard to understand but a good exercise.

Maxime Leforestier: Honte à qui peut chanter

• Clear sound, amusing song, no problem.

• Clear and went smoothly.

• Clear sound no problem. I like the song a lot.

• The song had numerous historical references.

• Really interesting.

Video: Le violon du diable

• Good activity, but the sound wasn't clear.

• Easy interface to use.

• Sound not too clear, but kept my interest.

• Interaction with the computer was easy; the right answer pointed with the help of the computer.

Video: les sorcières de Marchiennes

• Sound quality no good; sound quality very poor.

• Topic interesting. Sound distorted but I like the activity.

Jean Ferrat: Nuit et brouillard

• Song quality good. Good song activity. v

•Very interesting song.

•I like the song that contained a lot of information on history. It was really interesting.

• The song was very interesting thematically. The links are interesting and add to the song.

• The song was moving; interesting activity.

• Site very interesting. Sound clear.

Appendix C

End of Course Questionnaire

The following questions seek to find out your preferences with respect to the different activity types and how they were presented. This is not a question of content, that is whether or not you liked the subject of an activity. We want to know how comfortable you were with the presentation and experience of the different medium.

This article taken from: http://srifebrianimardhiyah.blogspot.com/2010/12/virtual-misadventures-technical.html