Another Year of Success -- WebCT Helps Students Learn Japanese

Tuesday, 13 July 2004

This presentation is part of C-13: Teaching Japanese in WebCT

Another Year of Success -- WebCT Helps Students Learn Japanese

Description: This presentation describes the second year of an on-going technology integration project involving Japanese language courses at California State University, Sacramento. In this project, a team collaboratively developed innovative online materials and identified effective instructional approaches to facilitate students' learning. Key to this project was WebCT which served as a hub to integrate these technologies. This second year brought on the use of PHP to generate WebCT-ready quizzes from a MySQL database.
Presentation Format: Oral
Topic: Enabling learning: Effective instructional practices and flexible design models
Target Audience: Course Designers, Faculty and Other Instructors
Appropriate Audience Level: Beginning or new users of WebCT, Experienced WebCT users
WebCT Version:
Abstract Text: This presentation describes the second year of an on-going technology integration project involving Japanese language courses at California State University, Sacramento. In this project, a team collaboratively developed innovative online materials and identified effective instructional approaches to facilitate students' learning. Key to this project was WebCT which served as a hub to integrate these technologies. This second year brought on the use of PHP to generate WebCT-ready quizzes from a MySQL database. This presentation first demonstrate innovative use of WebCT tools such as Student Homepages, the Discussion board, Quizzes, and multilingual encoding (UTF-8) that enabled course content to be displayed in both Japanese and English. It also shows how WebCT courses have been enhanced by the integration of other technologies such as audio and video streaming, web-based databases, Flash programs, and an interactive, collaboratively developed online resource page. Through surveys and interviews, this study examines how students perceived the overall impact of these technologies to be on their Japanese language and culture learning. Specifically, this study discusses how a technology-enhanced course helped students be receptive to independent learning; attain Japanese language proficiency and cultural knowledge; promote collaborative learning and motivation; and improve academic performance. Lastly, identified effective teaching strategies to engage students into learning through WebCT will be introduced. They include (1) routine interaction to form "good learning habits"; (2) advanced organizer for their learning; (3) "minimalist approach" to instruction; (4) modeling; (5) implementation of both instructive & constructive teaching approaches This presentation helps educators be aware of a number of innovative ways to make use of WebCT tools. This study also illuminates a list of effective teaching approaches from students' perspectives.

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See more of The 6th Annual WebCT User Conference

Description:	This presentation describes the second year of an on-going technology integration project involving Japanese language courses at California State University, Sacramento. In this project, a team collaboratively developed innovative online materials and identified effective instructional approaches to facilitate students' learning. Key to this project was WebCT which served as a hub to integrate these technologies. This second year brought on the use of PHP to generate WebCT-ready quizzes from a MySQL database.
Presentation Format:	Oral
Topic:	Enabling learning: Effective instructional practices and flexible design models
Target Audience:	Course Designers, Faculty and Other Instructors
Appropriate Audience Level:	Beginning or new users of WebCT, Experienced WebCT users
WebCT Version:
Abstract Text:	This presentation describes the second year of an on-going technology integration project involving Japanese language courses at California State University, Sacramento. In this project, a team collaboratively developed innovative online materials and identified effective instructional approaches to facilitate students' learning. Key to this project was WebCT which served as a hub to integrate these technologies. This second year brought on the use of PHP to generate WebCT-ready quizzes from a MySQL database. This presentation first demonstrate innovative use of WebCT tools such as Student Homepages, the Discussion board, Quizzes, and multilingual encoding (UTF-8) that enabled course content to be displayed in both Japanese and English. It also shows how WebCT courses have been enhanced by the integration of other technologies such as audio and video streaming, web-based databases, Flash programs, and an interactive, collaboratively developed online resource page. Through surveys and interviews, this study examines how students perceived the overall impact of these technologies to be on their Japanese language and culture learning. Specifically, this study discusses how a technology-enhanced course helped students be receptive to independent learning; attain Japanese language proficiency and cultural knowledge; promote collaborative learning and motivation; and improve academic performance. Lastly, identified effective teaching strategies to engage students into learning through WebCT will be introduced. They include (1) routine interaction to form "good learning habits"; (2) advanced organizer for their learning; (3) "minimalist approach" to instruction; (4) modeling; (5) implementation of both instructive & constructive teaching approaches This presentation helps educators be aware of a number of innovative ways to make use of WebCT tools. This study also illuminates a list of effective teaching approaches from students' perspectives.